Suppressed Works · Banned Texts
The Power of the Powerless
Written for a collection that was suppressed before it could appear, circulated in samizdat, and smuggled out. Havel builds the whole argument from a greengrocer who puts "Workers of the world, unite!" in his window — not because he believes it but because not doing so is the dangerous option — and calls the alternative living in truth. It was read across the Eastern Bloc by people who could be arrested for holding it, and Havel was imprisoned the year after writing it. Eleven years later he was president.
- Period
- 1978
- Region
- Czechoslovakia
- Language
- English
- Rights
- In copyright, and not ours. The author published it free to read at the address above, which remains the version of record. It is held here as an archival exception — the same allowance the other in-copyright entries carry — because a text that exists on one server maintained by one person is one hosting decision away from being gone. No licence is claimed. If the rights holder asks, the text comes down and the citation stays. Václav Havel died in 2011, so the term runs from that date and the monitor can watch it; it is recorded here as authorDied rather than as a guess at a public-domain year, because the year the term expires depends on the jurisdiction and on when the work was first published.
- Source
- https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-power-of-the-powerless-vaclav-havel-2011-12-23
This record is catalogued here; the text is held at the original source.
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