Czech Revolutionary Václav Havel Dies

The dissident was a leader in the Velvet Revolution and the first post-communist president of his country.

Václav Havel, the great Czech playwright and politician, has died at the age of 75. After his writing was banned by the communist government for being too “bourgeois,” his plays and essays became popular in the underground movement as he became a leading dissident. Perhaps best known for co-writing the Charter 77 movement for democratic change, Havel spent much of his adult life in jail. He became the last President of Czechoslovakia in 1989 and the first President of the Czech Republic. After leaving office in 2003, Havel continued to write plays and other works right up to his death.