Είχα κρατήσει την ομιλία αυτή του Vaclav Havel και αυτή είναι η ώρα να τη μοιραστώ με σας που έχετε την υπομονή να επισκέπτεστε αυτό το blog. Αφιερώστε της λίγα λεπτά. Και δείτε πόσες φράσεις θα μπορούσαν να έχουν ειπωθεί, 21 χρόνια μετά, και για τη δική μας πατρίδα. Γιατί αλήθεια να μη μιλάνε έτσι απλά και κατευθείαν στην καρδιά όλοι οι πολιτικοί;
New Year's Address to the Nation
Prague, January 1, 1990
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 Chelyicky and Komensky. 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(*) 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, Komensky. Allow me to conclude my first
speech with my own paraphrase of the same statement:
People, your government has returned to you!
* Tom Garrigue Masaryk (1850-1937), Czech statesman and philosopher,
the first president of Czechoslovakia.
