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Václav vs. Václav

How the Velvet Revolution's two greatest rivals met — and kept from killing each other
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May 9th, 2007 issue

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By Václav Havel

translated from the Czech and annotated by Paul Wilson

Former President Václav Havel’s memoirs came out in Czech last May titled Please, Be Brief, revealing much that had never before come to light about his thorny relationship with his successor, Václav Klaus, the bitter rival who was prime minister from 1992–97.

The tension between the two men during Havel’s presidency, from 1990 to 2003, defined the era. Beneath their different exteriors — Klaus abrasive to the point of arrogance, Havel polite to the point of shyness — each man possessed a firm will that made their differences seem inevitable and irresolvable.

As finance minister of Czechoslovakia from 1990 to 1992, Klaus introduced the restitution of property to former owners, large-scale privatization and the coupon scheme for distributing property converted into shares. This rapidly transformed the command economy into a market-based system but also provided unprecedented opportunities for corruption.

Klaus also formed a new right-leaning political party, the Civic Democrats (ODS), from the Civic Forum, the ad hoc citizens’ movement that, under Havel’s leadership, had negotiated the Communist Party out of power during the Velvet Revolution in November and December 1989.

Here, in the first of two weekly parts, is an excerpt from the new English-language edition, published as To the Castle and Back by Knopf in the United States.

Havel responded to questions by journalist Karel Hvížďala.

Karel Hvížďala: There are subjects we can’t seriously broach without saying something about this undeniably forceful figure in our post-revolutionary history. From where do you know each other? How did Klaus get into politics?

Václav Havel: In the 1960s, we were both members of the editorial board of a noncommunist literary magazine called Tvář. I don’t remember much about him from that time, but I do remember his articles on economics, which were interesting in that they made almost no use of the reform communist economic jargon — or, if they did, they did not strike one that way in the given context.

Then, as the Velvet Revolution was getting under way, he suddenly appeared in the Civic Forum. Rita Klímová, who was spokeswoman for the Civic Forum at the time, brought him in because we were looking for economists to help us, and because she knew him well from certain private economic discussions that had taken place in people’s flats in the 1980s, and later perhaps in certain research institutes about which I knew almost nothing.

He was hard-working and at times quite pleasant, but at other times utterly unbearable. We quickly got used to his presence. He became a part of the Civic Forum team, and, as an expert in economics, he was invited to go along with me to press conferences. We got used to the fact that Klaus sometimes got under our skin, and to his capacity for radiating a negative energy, to his brand of irony, to his narcissism and to his aversion — which he mostly kept well hidden — to the rest of us, whom he had clearly consigned to the same dumpster, with a sign on it saying “left-wing intellectuals.”

KH: In the first government put together at your roundtable discussions during the revolution, Klaus was put forward as finance minister at the recommendation of the Civic Forum. Weren’t you wary of giving him such an important ministry?

VH: I remember quite vividly my private conversation in the cloakroom of the Magic Lantern Theater in Prague with Václav Valeš, my longtime friend and fellow prisoner, an economist with a lot of practical knowledge. I asked him if he thought this annoying fellow Klaus could be finance minister. He said that he could, because his job would be to look after the state treasury and he wouldn’t get mixed up in politics. That type of person, he said, was ideal for minding the till.

KH: After the first free elections in June 1990, he again became finance minister.

VH: In the first place, all the members of the first post-revolutionary government became big stars overnight. Suddenly, for the first time in 40 years, the country saw normal, free-speaking people in the highest positions, not party bureaucrats, and in the atmosphere of general euphoria they quickly made them their darlings. Klaus, naturally, was among them, and, like Jiří Dienstbier (who became foreign affairs minister), he always knew where to stand so that the cameras would pick him up.

In the second place, Klaus, inconspicuously but systematically worked at being perceived, at home and abroad, as the father of the radical Czech economic reforms. He was not entirely the direct author of these reforms — they were created rather by people like Tomáš Ježek, Dušan Tříska, Valeš and several others — but he really was their most energetic defender, and I would say it was Klaus who most aggressively pushed them through.

In the third place, in spite of everything, the leadership of the Civic Forum … was meant to recommend a new government — [and] decided not to include Klaus in the Cabinet. And so the Civic Forum gave me, as president, the unpleasant task of telling Klaus he wasn’t going to be finance minister, but rather chairman of the Czechoslovak State Bank.

I failed shamefully. When I informed Klaus of this, he shot back that it was out of the question, that the entire world knew him as the Czechoslovak finance minister, that he could hold no other position and that his departure from the government would be catastrophic. And, rather than telling him that was the decision of the winning party, and if he didn’t want to head the state bank, then he could do whatever he pleased, I politely backed down and said something like “All right, then.” The Civic Forum was very upset with me for not doing the job, and Klaus’ antipathy toward me grew into hatred. I had behaved like a typical bad politician: I hadn’t done what I’d promised to do and in the process managed to make everyone mad at me.

KH: How did the two of you get along during the next two years (1990–92), when the country was still a federation of Czechs and Slovaks?

VH: Moderately well. Naturally, some sparks flew here and there. He never liked any of my speeches, above all my New Year’s speeches, and he always chided me for them. The snide brigade, as I called the pro-Klaus press, took potshots at me as well. Klaus’ Civic Democratic Party emerged from the Civic Forum, and I didn’t get involved much in that, nor could I have; the breakup of the Civic Forum was a result not only of Klaus’ capacity for hard work, his cunning, his discreet lack of scruples and his ability to attract various lackeys and supporters, but, also, in equal measure, of the inability of his opponents to maneuver skillfully in the sphere of power.

KH: Do you think that if Klaus had not become the first finance minister right after the revolution, and if he had not continued in that post after the first elections, he would really have stayed out of politics?

VH: I don’t think so. On the contrary, I have the feeling that, sooner or later, regardless of circumstances, he would have risen to the top, and perhaps even become the head of state. He knows how to promote himself, and he’s ambitious. But please understand me: I don’t mean to say one should not strive for power or that anyone who does so should not act pragmatically and deliberately. It has to be that way, and, in that regard, Klaus is remarkable. But sometimes he pushed it to the very limits of what was ethically acceptable.

KH: How did you and Klaus get along after the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993?

VH: Not very well. It is true that both he and his party supported my candidacy for the presidency, certainly not out of any love for me but simply because it was generally expected, perhaps even demanded, of them. Klaus tried to stay one step ahead, so before the first presidential election of the new Czech Republic in January 1993, he used all kinds of techniques to soften me up just so that I would enter the job appropriately humbled. That was his method, and I’ve seen it in action many times.

Because of my innate sense of courtesy and my distaste for confrontation, I was often the loser, but fortunately never in anything of fundamental importance. For example, sometime in the mid-1990s, at a meeting of all the political parties at Prague Castle, he kept withholding his assent to our entry into NATO; he had various excuses, but I ultimately managed to get him to agree by gently manipulating events.

My worst memories of all are the Wednesday meetings. He suggested that, just as the UK prime minister visits the queen every Wednesday afternoon to report to her on Cabinet meetings and the situation in the country, he would come to the castle every Wednesday afternoon for an hour. I couldn’t refuse. There would be 15 or 20 minutes of friendly conversation about everything under the sun, and then the moment of truth would come, the reason why this was all taking place, some complaint about my recent behavior.

I remember a typical instance: At a certain moment, he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a well-thumbed newspaper clipping, apologized several times for even bothering to bring it up, and then read from it a report that I had expressed my regrets at the death of Frank Zappa. Then, very politely, he suggested that it was inappropriate for a head of state to express regret at the death of a foreign rock musician, when so many of our domestic giants had passed away without a word of commiseration from me appearing in the papers.

What was I to do in such an absurd situation? The proper response would have been to stand up and say, “Václav, this meeting is over.” But I can almost never carry anything like that off, maybe once in 200 years.

I don’t think there was any deliberate, cold-blooded strategy behind Klaus’ behavior. It’s simply a matter of character and instinct. He doesn’t know any other way to behave. Either he’s afraid of someone, or he’s out to humiliate him.

I don’t think that modern, post-revolutionary Czech history ought to be seen as the history of the personal relationship between me and Klaus. It’s a journalistic cliché and it still upsets me after all these years. On the other hand, I recognize that I have to say something on that subject. … More important than whether two people get on each other’s nerves, of course, is what their views of the world are, their political actions, their speeches and writings, their influence and perhaps their legacy. And that is something others must judge.

The second part of this excerpt will be published in the next issue.

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