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HAPPY NEW YEAR... OR IS IT? - VACLAV
HAVEL 1990
We Live in a Contaminated Moral
Environment
Go here for more about
Vaclav Havel.
Go here for more about
Havel's New Year's Speech.
It follows the English
translation of the full text transcript of Vaclav Havel's
New Year's Address to the Nation, delivered at Prague
Castle, Czechoslovakia - January 1, 1990.
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My dear fellow
citizens, |
For forty years
you heard from my predecessors on this day
different variations on the same theme: how our
country was flourishing, how many million tons
of steel we produced, how happy we all were, how
we trusted our government, and what bright
perspectives were unfolding in front of us.
I assume you did not propose me for this office
so that I, too, would lie to you.
Our country is not flourishing. The enormous
creative and spiritual potential of our nations
is not being used sensibly. Entire branches of
industry are producing goods that are of no
interest to anyone, while we are lacking the
things we need. A state which calls itself a
workers' state humiliates and exploits workers.
Our obsolete economy is wasting the little
energy we have available. A country that once
could be proud of the educational level of its
citizens spends so little on education that it
ranks today as seventy-second in the world. We
have polluted the soil, rivers and forests
bequeathed to us by our ancestors, and we have
today the most contaminated environment in
Europe. Adults in our country die earlier than
in most other European countries.
Allow me a small personal observation. When I
flew recently to Bratislava, I found some time
during discussions to look out of the plane
window. I saw the industrial complex of Slovnaft
chemical factory and the giant Petr'alka housing
estate right behind it. The view was enough for
me to understand that for decades our statesmen
and political leaders did not look or did not
want to look out of the windows of their planes.
No study of statistics available to me would
enable me to understand faster and better the
situation in which we find ourselves.
But all this is still not the main problem. The
worst thing is that we live in a contaminated
moral environment. We fell morally ill because
we became used to saying something different
from what we thought. We learned not to believe
in anything, to ignore one another, to care only
about ourselves. Concepts such as love,
friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness
lost their depth and dimension, and for many of
us they represented only psychological
peculiarities, or they resembled gone-astray
greetings from ancient times, a little
ridiculous in the era of computers and
spaceships. Only a few of us were able to cry
out loudly that the powers that be should not be
all-powerful and that the special farms, which
produced ecologically pure and top-quality food
just for them, should send their produce to
schools, children's homes and hospitals if our
agriculture was unable to offer them to all.
The previous regime - armed with its arrogant
and intolerant ideology - reduced man to a force
of production, and nature to a tool of
production. In this it attacked both their very
substance and their mutual relationship. It
reduced gifted and autonomous people, skillfully
working in their own country, to the nuts and
bolts of some monstrously huge, noisy and
stinking machine, whose real meaning was not
clear to anyone. It could not do more than
slowly but inexorably wear out itself and all
its nuts and bolts.
When I talk about the contaminated moral
atmosphere, I am not talking just about the
gentlemen who eat organic vegetables and do not
look out of the plane windows. I am talking
about all of us. We had all become used to the
totalitarian system and accepted it as an
unchangeable fact and thus helped to perpetuate
it. In other words, we are all - though
naturally to differing extents - responsible for
the operation of the totalitarian machinery.
None of us is just its victim. We are all also
its co-creators.
Why do I say this? It would be very unreasonable
to understand the sad legacy of the last forty
years as something alien, which some distant
relative bequeathed to us. On the contrary. We
have to accept this legacy as a sin we committed
against ourselves. If we accept it as such we
will understand that it is up to us all and up
to us alone to do something about it. We cannot
blame the previous rulers for everything, not
only because it would be untrue, but also
because it would blunt the duty that each of us
faces today: namely, the obligation to act
independently, freely, reasonably and quickly.
Let us not be mistaken: the best government in
the world, the best parliament and the best
president, cannot achieve much on their own. And
it would be wrong to expect a general remedy
from them alone. Freedom and democracy include
participation and therefore responsibility from
us all.
If we realize this, then all the horrors that
the new Czechoslovak democracy inherited will
cease to appear so terrible. If we realize this,
hope will return to our hearts.
In the effort to rectify matters of common
concern, we have something to lean on. The
recent period - and in particular the last six
weeks of our peaceful revolution - has shown the
enormous human, moral and spiritual potential,
and the civic culture that slumbered in our
society under the enforced mask of apathy.
Whenever someone categorically claimed that we
were this or that, I always objected that
society is a very mysterious creature and that
it is unwise to trust only the face it presents
to you. I am happy that I was not mistaken.
Everywhere in the world people wonder where
those meek, humiliated, skeptical and seemingly
cynical citizens of Czechoslovakia found the
marvelous strength to shake the totalitarian
yoke from their shoulders in several weeks, and
in a decent and peaceful way. And let us ask:
Where did the young people who never knew
another system get their desire for truth, their
love of free thought, their political ideas,
their civic courage and civic prudence? How did
it happen that their parents -- the very
generation that had been considered lost --
joined them? How is it that so many people
immediately knew what to do and none needed any
advice or instruction?
I think there are two main reasons for the
hopeful face of our present situation. First of
all, people are never just a product of the
external world; they are also able to relate
themselves to something superior, however
systematically the external world tries to kill
that ability in them. Secondly, the humanistic
and democratic traditions, about which there had
been so much idle talk, did after all slumber in
the unconsciousness of our nations and ethnic
minorities, and were inconspicuously passed from
one generation to another, so that each of us
could discover them at the right time and
transform them into deeds.
We had to pay, however, for our present freedom.
Many citizens perished in jails in the 1950s,
many were executed, thousands of human lives
were destroyed, hundreds of thousands of
talented people were forced to leave the
country. Those who defended the honor of our
nations during the Second World War, those who
rebelled against totalitarian rule and those who
simply managed to remain themselves and think
freely, were all persecuted. We should not
forget any of those who paid for our present
freedom in one way or another. Independent
courts should impartially consider the possible
guilt of those who were responsible for the
persecutions, so that the truth about our recent
past might be fully revealed.
We must also bear in mind that other nations
have paid even more dearly for their present
freedom, and that indirectly they have also paid
for ours. The rivers of blood that have flowed
in Hungary, Poland, Germany and recently in such
a horrific manner in Romania, as well as the sea
of blood shed by the nations of the Soviet
Union, must not be forgotten. First of all
because all human suffering concerns every other
human being. But more than this, they must also
not be forgotten because it is these great
sacrifices that form the tragic background of
today's freedom or the gradual emancipation of
the nations of the Soviet Bloc, and thus the
background of our own newfound freedom. Without
the changes in the Soviet Union, Poland,
Hungary, and the German Democratic Republic,
what has happened in our country would have
scarcely happened. And if it did, it certainly
would not have followed such a peaceful course.
The fact that we enjoyed optimal international
conditions does not mean that anyone else has
directly helped us during the recent weeks. In
fact, after hundreds of years, both our nations
have raised their heads high of their own
initiative without relying on the help of
stronger nations or powers. It seems to me that
this constitutes the great moral asset of the
present moment. This moment holds within itself
the hope that in the future we will no longer
suffer from the complex of those who must always
express their gratitude to somebody. It now
depends only on us whether this hope will be
realized and whether our civic, national, and
political self-confidence will be awakened in a
historically new way.
Self-confidence is not pride. Just the contrary:
only a person or a nation that is
self-confident, in the best sense of the word,
is capable of listening to others, accepting
them as equals, forgiving its enemies and
regretting its own guilt. Let us try to
introduce this kind of self-confidence into the
life of our community and, as nations, into our
behavior on the international stage. Only thus
can we restore our self-respect and our respect
for one another as well as the respect of other
nations.
Our state should never again be an appendage or
a poor relative of anyone else. It is true that
we must accept and learn many things from
others, but we must do this in the future as
their equal partners, who also have something to
offer.
Our first president wrote: "Jesus, not Caesar."
In this he followed our philosophers Chel'ick
and Komensk. I dare to say that we may even have
an opportunity to spread this idea further and
introduce a new element into European and global
politics. Our country, if that is what we want,
can now permanently radiate love, understanding,
the power of the spirit and of ideas. It is
precisely this glow that we can offer as our
specific contribution to international politics.
Masaryk [Tom Masaryk, first president of
Czechoslovakia] based his politics on morality.
Let us try, in a new time and in a new way, to
restore this concept of politics. Let us teach
ourselves and others that politics should be an
expression of a desire to contribute to the
happiness of the community rather than of a need
to cheat or rape the community. Let us teach
ourselves and others that politics can be not
simply the art of the possible, especially if
this means the art of speculation, calculation,
intrigue, secret deals and pragmatic
maneuvering, but that it can also be the art of
the impossible, that is, the art of improving
ourselves and the world.
We are a small country, yet at one time we were
the spiritual crossroads of Europe. Is there a
reason why we could not again become one? Would
it not be another asset with which to repay the
help of others that we are going to need?
Our homegrown Mafia, those who do not look out
of the plane windows and who eat specially fed
pigs, may still be around and at times may muddy
the waters, but they are no longer our main
enemy. Even less so is our main enemy any kind
of international Mafia. Our main enemy today is
our own bad traits: indifference to the common
good, vanity, personal ambition, selfishness,
and rivalry. The main struggle will have to be
fought on this field.
There are free elections and an election
campaign ahead of us. Let us not allow this
struggle to dirty the so-far clean face of our
gentle revolution. Let us not allow the
sympathies of the world, which we have won so
fast, to be equally rapidly lost through our
becoming entangled in the jungle of skirmishes
for power. Let us not allow the desire to serve
oneself to bloom once again under the stately
garb of the desire to serve the common good. It
is not really important now which party, club or
group prevails in the elections. The important
thing is that the winners will be the best of
us, in the moral, civic, political and
professional sense, regardless of their
political affiliations. The future policies and
prestige of our state will depend on the
personalities we select, and later, elect to our
representative bodies.
My dear fellow citizens!
Three days ago I became the president of the
republic as a consequence of your will,
expressed through the deputies of the Federal
Assembly. You have a right to expect me to
mention the tasks I see before me as president.
The first of these is to use all my power and
influence to ensure that we soon step up to the
ballot boxes in a free election, and that our
path toward this historic milestone will be
dignified and peaceful.
My second task is to guarantee that we approach
these elections as two self-governing nations
who respect each other's interests, national
identity, religious traditions, and symbols. As
a Czech who has given his presidential oath to
an important Slovak who is personally close to
him, I feel a special obligation -- after the
bitter experiences that Slovaks had in the past
-- to see that all the interests of the Slovak
nation are respected and that no state office,
including the highest one, will ever be barred
to it in the future.
My third task is to support everything that will
lead to better circumstances for our children,
the elderly, women, the sick, the hardworking
laborers, the national minorities and all
citizens who are for any reason worse off than
others. High-quality food or hospitals must no
longer be a prerogative of the powerful; they
must be available to those who need them the
most.
As supreme commander of the armed forces I want
to guarantee that the defensive capability of
our country will no longer be used as a pretext
for anyone to stand in the way of courageous
peace initiatives, the reduction of military
service, the establishment of alternative
military service and the overall humanization of
military life.
In our country there are many prisoners who,
though they may have committed serious crimes
and have been punished for them, have had to
submit -- despite the goodwill of some
investigators, judges and above all defense
lawyers -- to a debased judiciary process that
curtailed their rights. They now have to live in
prisons that do not strive to awaken the better
qualities contained in every person, but rather
humiliate them and destroy them physically and
mentally. In a view of this fact, I have decided
to declare a relatively extensive amnesty. At
the same time I call on the prisoners to
understand that forty years of unjust
investigations, trials and imprisonments cannot
be put right overnight, and to understand that
the changes that are being speedily prepared
still require time to implement. By rebelling,
the prisoners would help neither society nor
themselves. I also call on the public not to
fear the prisoners once they are released, not
to make their lives difficult, to help them, in
the Christian spirit, after their return among
us to find within themselves that which jails
could not find in them: the capacity to repent
and the desire to live a respectable life.
My honorable task is to strengthen the authority
of our country in the world. I would be glad if
other states respected us for showing
understanding, tolerance and love for peace. I
would be happy if Pope John Paul II and the
Dalai Lama of Tibet could visit our country
before the elections, if only for a day. I would
be happy if our friendly relations with all
nations were strengthened. I would be happy if
we succeeded before the elections in
establishing diplomatic relations with the
Vatican and Israel. I would also like to
contribute to peace by briefly visiting our
close neighbors, the German Democratic Republic
and the Federal Republic of Germany. Neither
shall I forget our other neighbors -- fraternal
Poland and the ever-closer countries of Hungary
and Austria.
In conclusion, I would like to say that I want
to be a president who will speak less and work
more. To be a president who will not only look
out of the windows of his airplane but who,
first and foremost, will always be present among
his fellow citizens and listen to them well.
You may ask what kind of republic I dream of.
Let me reply: I dream of a republic independent,
free, and democratic, of a republic economically
prosperous and yet socially just; in short, of a
humane republic that serves the individual and
that therefore holds the hope that the
individual will serve it in turn. Of a republic
of well-rounded people, because without such
people it is impossible to solve any of our
problems -- human, economic, ecological, social,
or political.
The most distinguished of my predecessors opened
his first speech with a quotation from the great
Czech educator Komensk. Allow me to conclude my
first speech with my own paraphrase of the same
statement:
People, your government has returned to you!
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