POLITICAL LEADER

"The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both." ~ Václav Havel

The Velvet Revolution brought democracy back to the Czech lands in 1989. The peaceful revolution in the then Czechoslovakia was initially led by student protests and set the stage for the dissident political movement Civic Forum, many of its leaders being of the Charter 77 initiative. Václav Havel, its founding member, was elected President and led the nation in its transition from a totalitarian state through the re-establishment of democracy and onto a path to join NATO and the European Union.           
Photo © Oldřich Škácha
November 23, 1989 – Prague, Letná