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Post-Communist
Book Reviewed
To the Editor:
The May 27 issue of “The New York Review of Books,” which may be found at the Rappahannock County Library, contains a valuable article by President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, called “The Post-Communist Nightmare.”
Vaclav Havel expresses in a few eloquent paragraphs reasons why we find this era in our history upsetting and baffling, even though it is marked by the longed-for end of communism. He compares the importance of what has happened to the fall of the Roman empire.
Havel cautions, “The temptation must be resisted to adopt a disparaging and slightly astonished attitude, one based on a subconscious feeling of superiority on the part of observers who are better off.” In addition to describing what has happened, he has several things to say about what is called for now. Any thoughtful person is a least bound to consider his ideas.
I don't believe Vaclav Havel has said the last or the most important word on what we need to do to keep the world from becoming more and more frightful, but I think he has provided us with a framework that is useful within which to discuss national and international affairs. That is why I commend it to you.
Vaclav Havel’s approach elevates and stimulates public debate. Of all the things needed today, that is surely one of the most pressing. The dangerous times in which we live make it imperative, as Havel shows, that we drop our low-life attitudes to politics and instead take our citizen’s responsibilities seriously.
DIANA BiRI)
Washington
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