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Article: SYMBOLISM IN THE DIPLOMACY OF CZECH PRESIDENT VACLAV HAVEL.
- Article from:
- East European Quarterly
- Article date:
- March 22, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 East European Quarterly. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Sir Ernest Satow celebratedly added to the prerequisites of a diplomat the qualification of "use of intelligence and tact."(1) To that maxim the former dissident and later Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel added "good taste," which he explained serves politics, and by extension diplomacy, better than a graduate degree in political science.
Applicable to both the content and expression of his beliefs, "good taste" is only one of several metaphors Havel used to express his ideas. When he was elected President of Czechoslovakia on 29 December 1989 he said unambiguously that the beliefs he expressed in his writings(2) of the 1970s and 1980s were all the more ...