Comments for Havel Laments as ‘Consumer Palaces’ Occupy Nation - Bloomberg.com »
Posted By gamahuche 6 months, 1 week ago in Political NewsFor Vaclav Havel , the leader of the 1989 “Velvet Revolution” that peacefully overthrew Communism in what became the Czech Republic, the optimism of 20 years ago has given way to a troubled present. Czechs are building “palaces of consumerism” that will occupy a third of the country in the next two decades, politicians can’t see farther than the next opinion poll and mobsters and money-changers have become the new economic elite, Havel said in an interview this week.
“Not many of us thought the door would be opened so quickly to all the mafiosi and back-street money-changers” who have now become “millionaires and billionaires,” he said. “We are living in the first truly atheistic society, and there’s no feeling that there is any kind of moral anchor.”
Havel, 72, said he would much rather be writing plays than stepping into the political fray after almost 13 years as president of Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic. He said the economic and political imbalances compel him to speak out from his book-lined office in a Baroque palace in Prague.
His country is in the middle of an economic surge. Gross domestic product per capita almost tripled from 1995 to 2008. The amount of shopping mall space has increased 40-fold in the past 12 years, to about 2 million square meters (21.5 million square feet) in 2009 from about 50,000 square meters, according to CB Richard Ellis, a London-based real estate broker.
Smashed Furniture
Even with the economic growth, Havel says the Czech Republic still has far to go. Rebuilding a country that has been kicked apart by four decades of communist rule “is of course harder than the kick itself,” he said.
“When you have a beautiful table, or a piece of furniture, it can be kicked to bits in half a minute, but it takes weeks, months, to put it all together again,” Havel said.
Countries can’t switch political systems the way commuters change trams, Havel said. “We had communism only once in history and now we have post-communism for the only time in history.”
The disappointments of post-revolutionary life “could to a degree have been been predicted, but it turned out to be worse than anyone expected.”
Corruption among the new political class has long preoccupied Havel, who used an address to the Czech parliament in 1997 to voice his disapproval. Six years after leaving Prague Castle, the presidential office, Havel expressed disappointment that the story he described as a “fairy tale” in his 2006 autobiography “To the Castle and Back,” hasn’t achieved a happy ending.
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gamahuche6 months, 1 week ago
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If you're really interested in Havel's point of view the very long speech linked here to an Address by Václav Havel, President of the Czech Republic, before the Members of Parliament
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Prague, 9 December 1997
will provide it:
http://www.vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=projev...
The dissipation of the inspiration behind the Velvet Revolution, with the concomitant "velvet divorce" with Slovakia has definitely been a grievous loss for the Czech and Slovak people and arguably for Europe and the world. -
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gamahuche6 months, 1 week ago
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CORRECTED LINK for Havel's speech!
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http://www.vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=projev... -
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gamahuche6 months, 1 week ago
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I can't get the link to show properly.
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HOWEVER if you use the usual http://www
and then add all of the following it should work:
vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=projevy=144_aj_pr... -
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gamahuche6 months, 1 week ago
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The link I've been trying to give can be accessed from the original story at bloomberg.com by clicking on the highlighted word "address" in this sentence: Corruption among the new political class has long preoccupied Havel, who used an address to the Czech parliament in 1997 to voice his disapproval.
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Candida6 months, 1 week ago
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Let's try whether this will work:
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http://tinyurl.com/mje43s-
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gamahuche6 months, 1 week ago
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I had to give up on the story.c. 3 a.m. Central European Time when It all seemed too mind boggling to deal with..
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It sure does - I didn't find your comment till the next day.
I'll try it again though one of these days.
How did you do that?!
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earthlingerer6 months, 1 week ago
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Yeah, it's kind of sad to see "mall culture" explode in central and eastern europe in the last ten years.
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After years of railing against the consumer culture of the US, they seem to be eating it up.
But they aren't total fools: No one here buys into the rip-off scam known in the west as "401Ks" or investment retirement plans.
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