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How far did Vaclav Havel's poltitical reforms resolve Czech Republic

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How far did Vaclav Havel's poltitical reforms resolve Czech Republic
How far did Václav Havel’s political reforms resolve Czech Republic 's identity crisis from 1989 to 2002?
Lea Meisel
3909 words

Abstract
This essay attempts to answer the question of how far Vaclav Havel’s political policies helped resolve the Czech Republic’s Identity crisis from the years 1989 to 2002. This research questions is important because, as world war one and two had such a great impact on the whole world, the Czech Republic has been quite unnoticed in its progress in resolving its identity crisis after both wars, the communist invasion and manipulation of powerful countries such as the USA. There has been limited literature and texts on this topic that showed a neutral aspect about the effect of communism on the country and about how far Havel resolved the Czech Identity, which either glorified him or condemned him, and through this essay a more focused and unbiased opinion will come to being. In order to investigate how far Havel resolved the Czech identity crisis through his political policies, I researched articles from newspapers such as The Economist, The Guardian and The Times, analytical and personal books written by Havel himself, and interviews with eyewitness journalists at the time. The conclusion to the essay shows that it is clear that Havel resolved the identity crisis of the Czech Republic in relation to his political policies. His greatest achievement that had the unintentional domino effect in 1989 of creating the Velvet Divorce, which first seemed like a failure but turned out to be a success, was the Velvet Revolution. There were some failures of Havel such as joining political groups such as NATO that seemed good but had many set backs and many of the policies that were generally good had a few costs. In general Havel’s free democratic elections, the Velvet Divorce, his literature and especially his part in the Velvet Revolution helped the Czech Republic tremendously in resolving their identity crisis.
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Bibliography: Administrator, "Politics of Difference: The Delusion of Liberality in Post-War Britain." New Histories: accessed May 23, 2013, http://newhistories.group.shef.ac.uk/wordpress/wordpress/. Bartonova, Michaela, interview by Lea Meisel, July, 2013, “Citizen’s opinions on Havel.” Czech Republic/Switzerland. The Economist Newspaper Limited. "Vaclav Havel 1936-2011 - Living in truth," The Economist (2011): accessed May 23, 2013, http://www.economist.com/node/21542169. Gawdiak, Ihor, "Czechoslovak Democracy." Country Studies: accessed May 6, 2013, http://countrystudies.us/czech-republic/22.htm. Gawdiak, Ihor, "Ninth-of-May Constitution Articles and Information." Country Studies: accessed May 6, 2013, http://countrystudies.us/czech-republic/22.htm Havel, Václav, To the castle and back The Time Magazine, “C z e c h o s l o v a k i a: I n t o U n e x p l o r e d T e r r a i n” Time Magazine (1968): http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,900048,00.html. Vlček, Tomáš “Charta 77” Totalita (1999): http://www.totalita.cz/vysvetlivky/ch77.php Zednik, Rick, “A Mutually Velvet Divorce” The New York Times (2012): http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/opinion/a-mutually-velvet-divorce.html?_r=0

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