ABSTRACT
A place for encountering Vaclav Havel in his early role as dissident is found in his 1978 essay, The Power of the Powerless. Havel’s mission has been to combat evil, whether the iron-boot of a dictator, or the more subtle brain-wash of Communist ideology, with the truth all. In the modern environment of eroded values and certainties, Havel adds, exercising his playwright’s knowledge of human nature, “it has a certain hypnotic charm.” Havel’s 1978 essay opens with a reasoned analysis of why his country possesses faint hopes for liberation. The Western superpower is ready with sympathy, but little else, for the benighted satellite countries. Everyone knows the greengrocer, the humblest of traders, would prefer to concentrate on his onions and carrots, and that the placard no doubt was received with the wholesaler’s shipment, and on and on to the summit of arbitrary power.
