William J. Clinton and Václav Havel: Friendship and Mutual Inspiration

Václav Havel was born on October 5, 1936, in Prague and passed away on December 18, 2011, at his country house in Hrádeček, near Trutnov. He was a playwright, writer, essayist, dissident, defender of human rights, a fierce critic of the communist dictatorship, and was jailed repeatedly for his political views. Havel was a co-founder of Charter 77 and the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Persecuted, and was also a leading figure in the political changes of the Velvet Revolution in November 1989. He also penned 13 stage plays, numerous essays, the best known of which being The Power of the Powerless (1978), and the books Letters to Olga (1979–1982), Disturbing the Peace (1986), Summer Meditations (1991) and To the Castle and Back (2006).

Havel was elected President of Czechoslovakia on December 29, 1989, becoming the country’s first non-communist leader since 1948. He held that position until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992. After that, Havel successfully ran for President of the new Czech Republic in 1993, and held that position until 2003.

After his Presidency, Václav Havel remained an active citizen closely involved in public affairs. He also made his lifelong dream come true, directing the movie version of The Leaving, originally a theater play he had finished writing during his stay in the United States in 2006. To learn more concerning the roles Vaclav Havel held during his life, as well as the history of human rights through his life and work, please visit the Václav Havel Library e-learning site.

Madeleine Albright was an American diplomat and politician who served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in 1993-1997, and became the first female Secretary of State, serving from 1997-2001. Albright was born in Prague in 1937 into a family dedicated to humanism and democracy. Albright’s family lived in Great Britain during World War II, and emigrated to the USA after the 1948 communist coup d’état in Czechoslovakia. She died in 2022 in Washington D.C.

Madeleine Albright first met Václav Havel in 1990 in Prague. Albright was also with Havel February 21, 1990 when he addressed a Joint Session of the U.S. Congress, where Havel acknowledged the importance of his country's efforts in leading a democratic transition as the former communist Soviet Union crumbled. Secretary Albright understood the importance of Václav Havel’s role as a symbol of Czechoslovakian democracy. In a memorandum to President Clinton, Albright stressed that President Havel was a "unique resource…" and he was "grounded in our common democratic values."

Albright played a fundamental role in the friendship between President Clinton and Václav Havel. In an interview with Czech Journalist, Lenka Kabrhelova, Clinton recalled that he met Havel for the first time at a dinner at Madeleine Albright’s home. Countless dinners followed after that, and these informal meetings were an opportunity for the two statesmen to engage in profound debate about their opinions of the world and the solutions to pressing matters. As President Clinton noted in My Life:

“Havel was a good friend of our UN Ambassador, Madeleine Albright, who was born in Czechoslovakia and delighted in every opportunity she had to speak with him in their native tongue.”

President Bill Clionton, My Life

In an interview with Presidential Historian, Russell Riley Václav Havel said of Madeleine Albright:

"…we are very good friends and she used to come here and she gladly used to visit this country. She helped us a lot. She helped us to arrange a few things and to negotiate a few things. I remember one particular occasion when she organized dinner at her private home in Georgetown, and she invited the Clintons for dinner. We had a very intimate and private conversation about NATO expansion and about all these things."

Václav Havel, Oral History, May 29, 2009

Havel summarized his friendship with President Clinton in a 1995 thank you letter following dinner with President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton:

“It is of great value to me that we share a friendship which enables us to talk in the most open terms even about such political subjects that heads of state tend to discuss in a rather roundabout way, or with considerable reserve.”

Václav Havel , Letter to President Clinton, June 22, 1995

The first official meeting between the Presidents took place in April 1993. Václav Havel was in Washington, DC, to attend the opening of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and visited the White House on April 20. Clinton and Havel held a bilateral meeting in which they discussed the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, the future of Central Europe, developments in Russia, and other topics.

It was important for President Clinton and his advisors to know Havel’s opinion. For them, he was an inspiring and amicable man with a good understanding of Central Europe. The memorandum of conversation includes the following statement by Clinton: “I would like to hear your thoughts on relations between our two countries and on other European issues on which I have to make decisions.” He also asked Havel about his opinion regarding the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina where the first war in Europe since the end of World War II was taking place.

It was important for President Havel to relay the message that the Czech Republic belonged in the West, and that the extension of NATO was important not only for the Czech Republic but also for the entire region. Havel considered the extension as the definitive end of the policy of spheres of influence, the bipolar division of the world and the Cold War in general. One of his most important political priorities was “to put the Czech Republic back on the world map,” including membership in NATO and the EU.

In January 1994, President Clinton visited Prague, along with Brussels, Kyiv, Moscow, Minsk and Geneva. His historic return to Prague came 24 years to the week after his first visit to the city as a student on winter break from Oxford University in 1970.

During his stay in Prague, he met the presidents of four states, the so-called Visegrad Four – the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. At a bilateral meeting, President Clinton and President Havel discussed the relocation of Radio Free Europe to Prague, the Partnership for Peace initiative, the Czech economic situation and trade.

In a multilateral meeting, President Clinton and the leaders of Slovakia, Poland and Hungary discussed the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Russia, and Ukraine, as well as the economy and Partnership for Peace. In a press conference, President Clinton stated:

“While the Partnership is not NATO membership, neither is it a permanent holding room, it changes the entire NATO dialogue so that now the question is no longer whether NATO will take on new members, but when and how.”

President Bill Clinton, Press Conference, U.S. Ambassador's Residence, Prague, Czech Republic, January 12, 1994

When President Clinton was not participating in discussions with world leaders, he joined Holocaust survivor and National Security Council staffer, Richard Schifter to visit the Holocaust memorial at the Pinkas Synagogue and the Old Jewish Cemetary. He also visited a K-Mart store in Prague to emphasize the successful expansion of trade in Eastern European markets.

In addition to the formal official agenda, a very important informal agenda deepened the friendship between the two Presidents. The pre-advance trip report noted this as, “Boys’ Night Out.” Still grieving the recent death of his mother, Virginia Clinton Kelly, it was questionable if President Clinton would be in the mood for a night out. However after a long day of diplomatic activities, President Clinton did join President Havel that historic evening. The Presidents took a walk along Charles Bridge, went to the U Zlateho Tygra pub, and later proceeded to the ‘Reduta’ jazz club where Václav Havel gave Clinton a saxophone with his engraved signature and heart. Read the press pool report of the Presidents’ night out in Prague.

In the letter of thanks, Madeleine Albright wrote about the evening in Prague:

“President Clinton at every occasion tells me and all those around who listen that he considered the walk across Charles Bridge and the jazz club one of the high points of his life.”

Madeleine Albright, Letter to Václav Havel

President Clinton recounts the visit to Reduta in My Life:

“Havel took me to one of the jazz clubs that had been hotbeds of support for his Velvet Revolution. After the group played a couple of tunes, he brought me up to meet the band and presented me with another new saxophone, this one made in Prague by a company that, in Communist times, had produced saxophones for the military bands throughout the Warsaw Pact nations. He invited me to play it with the band. We did ‘Summertime’ and ‘My Funny Valentine’ with Havel enthusiastically joining in on the tambourine.”

President Bill Clinton, My Life

In October 1995, Presidents Havel and Clinton met to mark the dedication of a new building for the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. President Clinton said in his speech:

“We have to continue to stand by them by opening the doors to new NATO members, by supporting their integration into the other institutions of Europe, by improving access to our own markets and enabling them to move from aid to trade… The Czech and the Slovak people who came to the United States helped us to build our country. It’s time for us to return the favor.”

President Bill Clinton, October 21, 1995

In a bilateral meeting, Clinton and Havel discussed the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Czech involvement in the UN Peace Corps in the Balkans. As in the previous year, Havel emphasized the leading role played by the U.S. in the peace process.

“Let me continue by saying that I believe the United States is aware of its responsibility in Europe and the world. The United States won the Cold War but it has not yet won the peace. The new order of the world has still not emerged and it cannot emerge without the participation and leadership of the United States.”

Memorandum of Conversation, October 21, 1995

They further discussed the Russian response to the possible extension of NATO, and Yeltsin’s role on the domestic and international scene. Two days later, President Clinton had a meeting with Yeltsin in Hyde Park, which is the subject of another digital library exhibit, "Laughter and Diplomacy: The 1995 Hyde Park Conference."

At the July 1997 NATO summit in Madrid, Spain, President Clinton and other NATO heads of state and government invited the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland to begin accession talks with the Alliance. The U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty on NATO Accession for the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland on April 30, 1998, by a vote of 80-19. The Czech Republic joined NATO in March 1999, as one of the Alliance’s first new members since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The state visit on 16 September, 1998, was an opportunity to express gratitude, and celebrate an important milestone – the ratification of the Czech NATO membership. It was the only state visit with all the accompanying honors for the Czech president: landing at Joint Base Andrews, accommodation in Blair House, the arrival ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House with national anthems, military honors and a 21-gun salute. The visit included bilateral meetings, a press conference, and a dinner with a cultural program.

At the bilateral meetings, President Clinton again sought Havel's opinion on the situation in Russia, Slovakia, and the future of NATO. The discussion also touched upon the discrimination against the Roma minority in the Czech Republic.

Havel’s wife Dagmar Havlová and Hillary Rodham Clinton met over coffee in the Yellow Oval Room.

At the press conference, President Havel expressed his support for President Clinton during the Independent Counsel investigation. In his interview for the UVA - Miller Center Oral History Project, Havel said:

“After the negotiations we had a press conference at the State Department and President Clinton said something and I said something and after these introductory words this forest of hands went up and everybody wanted to know about Monica Lewinsky of course, nobody was interested in our country, hearing about the Czech President, about me. Then they turned the question to me as well, what I thought of this, and I said it in English and President Clinton mentions it in his memoirs. I said to him, America has thousands of faces and I understand most of them but some of them I don’t, and I don’t really want to talk about things that I don’t understand.”

President Václav Havel, May 29, 2009, Václav Havel Oral History Transcript, UVA Miller Center

Havel spoke English for a part of the press conference, and also made notes in Czech and English. Eventually, saying he was tired, he switched to Czech.

During State visits, a regular occurrence is the State Dinner. These dinners are an opportunity to celebrate the connections between the countries and to create the bond that happens over food. The guest list is curated and includes political figures and celebrities as well as high-profile personalities with family ties to the country of the visiting leader.

During the Havel State Dinner, addresses were given by both Presidents, and Havel awarded Clinton the Order of the White Lion, the country’s highest honor. It is intended to honor persons who are not citizens of the Czech Republic for superior accomplishments contributing to the welfare of the Czech Republic.

The dinner was attended by a number of figures from the world of art and entertainment, such as Joan Baez, David Duchovny, Bob Dylan, Mia Farrow, Arthur Miller, Paul Newman, Yoko Ono, William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut, Steve Wonder, Patti Smith, Miloš Forman, Jaromír Jágr, Dominik Hašek, Eva Herzigová, Paulina Pořízková and others.

Havel specifically requested to see Lou Reed, the former leader of the American band the Velvet Underground, perform as the State Dinner's entertainment. During some of the darkest days of the Soviet oppression of Czechoslovakia, Reed’s music had been personally inspiring to Havel. While the Velvet Revolution derived its name from its peaceful nature, it is also true that many of the dissidents involved in the leadership of the effort listened to the Velvet Underground in the lead up to the revolution.

The lead-up to Reed’s performance was not without drama at the White House. White House Social Secretary Capricia Penavic Marshall recounts her failed attempts to get the band to reduce their “chandelier-shaking” loudness heard at the afternoon rehearsal and other conflicts with Lou Reed and his bandmates that evening.

As both Presidents became friends while in office, they continued to meet after the end of their respective administrations, Clinton in 2001 and Havel in 2003. They met in Prague in October 2001, at the Forum 2000 conference. The Forum 2000 Foundation is an NGO founded by Václav Havel that holds annual conferences at which people from various countries, cultures and of various faiths and professions meet and debate topics of global importance to civilization.

Havel and Clinton also met in September 2002, at the ‘Playwright as President’ symposium on Havel, held by the City University of New York. In a joint appearance they evaluated their presidential terms.

Their next meetings were in Prague in November 2005, at the Club of Madrid gathering, and in April 2006, at a panel held by Columbia University. The Kraft Program Series, titled "Challenges of New Democracies: A conversation with President Havel and President Clinton."

The last time the two Presidents would meet was at President Clinton's office in New York in May 2010.

In March 2024, Clinton returned to Prague to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the country’s accession to NATO. The incumbent Czech President Petr Pavel awarded him the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, which is intended to honor persons who have made eminent contributions to the development of democracy, humanity and human rights. Clinton also met the Czech President at the Reduta jazz club where he had been given the saxophone by Václav Havel in January 1994. Clinton stated that his night at the Reduta jazz club [was] "one of the most memorable nights of his life." During a short speech at the Reduta, Clinton gave his thanks for the Czech aid to Ukraine:

"Mr. President, the standing of your country is still very high in the world, and you have enormous credibility. And the fact that you have stood up for our friends in Ukraine means more to me than you will ever know. So this place will always symbolize the man I love, President Havel, a country I came to admire and cherish, the unforgettable night I had playing here, and the unforgettable first trip I had when I was just a young boy, another impoverished student who had no idea what would happen to me in my life. You symbolize a lot of good turning points for me and I am very, very grateful to be here."

President Bill Clinton

At the March 2024 National Security Conference entitled, “Our Security Cannot Be Taken For Granted,” President Clinton stated:

“I miss Václav Havel and I miss Madeleine Albright. But I am glad that after 25 years at least I was still standing and able to come and speak for – I hope – them and for all of us who were there. Václav Havel was a remarkable man who had a good sense of humor and was not particularly overbearing (…) He was a playwright with amazing imagination. But he was adamant about one thing from the first time I met him until I went with Madeleine to your beautiful cathedral to his funeral and that was that the Czech Republic would never be totally secure unless it was in a network of European security anchored by NATO.”

President Bill Clinton

Letters

Presidents Clinton and Havel exchanged many letters and phone calls, some of which are available here. Several letters deal with foreign policy whereas others are more personal in nature. In several of them, Václav Havel added his typical heart symbol to his signature.

Veronika Pikola Brazdilova was born in Brno, Czech Republic. After graduating from a bilingual high school in Brno, she studied at the French university Sciences Po Paris (Paris Institute of Political Studies) where she acquired a master’s degree, specializing in communications. She later worked for the European Commission in Brussels and at the Representation of the European Commission in Prague.

In 2013, she started to work at the Václav Havel Library as a Program Coordinator and in 2019, her position changed to an International Projects Manager.

She received a Fulbright scholarship for NGOs and from February 2024 to July 2024 she was undertaking her Fulbright project in the United States. She was learning more about the American Presidential Libraries which were an inspiration for Vaclav Havel when he founded his Presidential Library in 2004.

Veronika was therefore traveling and visiting the Presidential Libraries and she spent 4 months at the Clinton Presidential Library. She participated in the panel discussion about the Václav Havel State Visit in 1998, she did a special edition of the public outreach event “Ask an Archivist, Converse with a Curator“ and she worked on this digital library exhibit.

While working at this exhibit, Veronika was helped by her colleagues from the Vaclav Havel Library, namely Martin Vidlak, Head of the Documentation Center, Hynek Zlatnik and Steve Coleman, the translators.