Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0100Tue, 21 Jul 2026 23:39:17 +0200https://english.radio.cz/havels-letter-husak-still-inspiration-40-years-8263435© 2026 Radio Prague International Forty years ago this week, on 8 April 1975, Václav Havel sent an open letter to Czechoslovakia’s President Gustav Husák. The letter was to become one of the key documents of dissent during the period of “normalization”. It outlined the creeping fear, apathy and humiliation faced by Czechs and Slovaks amid the cultural stagnation in the first years after the Soviet-led invasion of 1968. Today times are very different, but the warnings in the letter remain as relevant as ever. Azadeh Mohammadi is a Prague-based student from Iran, who came across the letter in Farsi translation and found many parallels with her own experiences growing up in Iran over three decades after it was written. She decided to find out more and part of that process was a radio discussion that she recorded about the letter’s legacy with Barbara Day and Viera Langerová, who have both studied Havel’s work closely, and Omid Nikfarjam, a Prague-based Iranian journalist and translator. In a few minutes we shall be hearing that discussion, but we’ll start with Azadeh herself, talking to me about what Havel’s Letter to Husák means to her personally. encr@radio.cz (Cesky Rozhlas)webmaster@radio.cz (CRo Webmaster) https://english.radio.cz/sites/default/files/images/havel_vaclav1_3.jpg?timestamp=1728466240 https://english.radio.cz/havels-letter-husak-still-inspiration-40-years-8263435 Radio Prague International Radio Prague International radio.prague.int@gmail.com clean 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9