Article July 9, 1990 Issue

SECOND THOUGHT

Looking again at news and commentary

Vaclav Havel

Excerpts from a speech by former playwright and now president of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel, before the Congress of the United States

"I don't think any of us knew how little it would take ... for the longings of these nations to emerge in all their strength. The mask fell away so rapidly that, in the flood of work, we have literally no time even to be astonished....

"The main thing is, it seems to me, that these revolutionary changes will enable us to escape from the rather antiquated straitjacket of this bipolar view of the world and to enter at last into an era of multipolarity, that is, into an era in which all of us, large and small, former slaves and former masters, will be able to create what your great President [Abraham] Lincoln called 'the family of man....'

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