Former Czech President Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright who led the peaceful revolution that toppled communism in the former Czechoslovakia, has died. He was 75.
A spokeswoman said Havel died in his sleep early Sunday at his weekend house in the northern Czech Republic with his wife and a nun at his side. A former chain smoker, he had a history of chronic respiratory problems that physicians traced back to his Cold War years in communist prisons.
Havel was his country's first democratically-elected president after the 1989 non-violent "Velvet Revolution" that ended four decades of communist repression. On taking office, he oversaw Czechoslovakia's transition to a free-market economy and democracy, as well as its peaceful 1993 breakup into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Havel left office in 2003, just months before the two countries joined the European Union. He was credited with laying the groundwork that brought the Czech Republic into the 27-nation bloc, and was president when the republic joined NATO in 1999. But he said his proudest presidential achievement was the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact - the Moscow-led military alliance that lasted until 1991.
Havel first rose to prominence after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion that crushed the "Prague Spring" reforms of Alexander Dubcek and other liberally-minded communists in the former Czechoslovakia. His plays were then banned by hardliners installed by Moscow who sought to crush any traces of those reforms.
However, he continued to write a series of underground essays widely seen as some of the most damning critiques of what communism did to society and the individual in post-World War II Europe. VoA
UPDATE 12/19/12:
Thousands of Czech mourners have gathered to remember former president Vaclav Havel, who died in his sleep of respiratory problems Sunday at the age of 75.
Mourners stood in a long line Monday at a church in Prague, and lit candles in cities and towns across the country and in Slovakia for the man who led the Velvet Revolution that toppled the communist government in 1989.
Mr. Havel, a dissident playwright, was his country's first democratically elected president after 45 years of Soviet Oppression and their Communist Puppet Government. Czechoslovakia had previously earned Independence following WWI and had become the world's 7th largest economy by the time of the Munich Agreement, wherein Neville Chamberlain of Britain, Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union, and France gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler to appease Nazi Germany and avoid a European War in 1938.
On taking office, Havel oversaw Czechoslovakia's transition and return to a free-market economy and democracy, as well as its peaceful 1993 division into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Mr. Havel's coffin will be on display in the Prague church before being moved Wednesday to lie in state at Prague Castle. The Czech Cabinet is scheduled to be meet later in the day to plan a state funeral that is expected to be held Friday.
Vaclav Havel was the president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 1992, and the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003.
Dignitaries from around the world are expected to attend the funeral, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed Mr. Havel as “a great European” who fought for freedom on the continent, while British Prime Minister David Cameron said all of Europe owes the former president a “profound debt” for bringing freedom and democracy to the continent.
Former Polish president Lech Walesa, who spurred the fall of communism in his homeland, said Vaclav Havel's voice will “be greatly missed” in Europe, “above all now, when it is experiencing a great crisis.”
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, in a message posted on Twitter, called the Czech icon “a voice for freedom” and “one of the greatest Europeans of our age.”