17:30 MSU Czech Club held a round table talk “History and personality. Václav Havel – a writer, a dissident and the president” | |
On February 29th MSU Czech Club organized a round table talk “History and personality. Václav Havel – a writer, a dissident and the president”, dedicated to the life and the legacy of that well-known political and public leader of the Czech Republic. Václav Havel had played a prominent role in combating the totalitarian regime in the Czech Republic and in Eastern Europe as a whole. Being a playwright, an intellectual and a true citizen, Václav Havel had been the leader of the dissident movement in the Czech Republic of the communist era. He had advocated the human rights and freedoms and protected those whose views had not been very much to his liking, adhering to Voltaire’s statement: “I don’t subscribe to your point of view. But I am ready to die on barricades for you to be able to express them freely”. Becoming the president after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Havel had managed to carry the country through the test brought about by economic reforms and succession of political regimes. “He wasn’t the best politician. But he was among those few ones who were trying to act inside the politics on the basis of the principles of morality” – that was what the Czech had thought of Václav Havel. He had been a true authority of the nation, and his death in December 2011 had made even his most irreconcilable opponents bow their heads with respect. At the time of the round table talk, MSU Czech Club discussed a variety of questions linked to Václav Havel’s literary, legal and political activities. Apart from the reports, there was a dispute “Moral in politics”. The discussion was attended by students and instructors from Foreign Relations & Foreign Policy Department as well as from Russian Philology & Interpreting Department. English Language Chair and MSU scientific library had helped draw up the round table talk abstracts. The abstracts had been published on the eve of the round table talk and given to the participants and the guests of the event. Not the instructors and the students alone took an interest in the topic of the round table talk. The city’s residents of Czech origin also became very much interested. It was MSU Czech Club that joined them. | |
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