You are here

The Power of the Powerless

Author: Václav Havel

Editor: Jan Vladislav

In: , Living in Truth: 22 Essays Published on the Occasion of the Award of the Erasmus Prize to Vaclav Havel London, Faber, , 1987, pp. 36-122

(Also available in other collections.)
Influential analysis of ‘post-totalitarian’ society and politics in the Soviet bloc in the 1970s and eloquent argument for individual integrity and acts of dissent by lead Czechoslovak playwright and dissident, who became President after 1989. This text inspired many activists in Eastern Europe and others round the world, including Aung San Suu Kyi, leading figure in the nonviolent resistance in Burma from 1988.