TOPSHOT-BIO-HAVEL-VELVET REVOLUTION-COMMUNISM

TOPSHOT - Vaclav Havel (2nd-R), a dissident playwright and leading member of the Czechoslovak opposition Civic Forum, attends a meeting with several leaders of the Civic Forum movement and Charter 77, particularly: Jiri Dienstbier (3rd-R), Vaclav Klaus (6th-R), who in February 2003 succeeded Vaclav Havel as a Czech President, and Monika Pajerova (2nd-L), spokeswoman of students, 28 November 1989 in Prague. Charter 77, founded in 1977 by Czech dissident intellectuals was a "loose, informal and open association of people" commited to human rights. Civic Forum, founded in November 1989 as an informal coalition of independent opposition groups, sought primarily to establish full democracy in Czechoslovakia. At the end of 1989, Havel was elected first president of the then Czechoslovakia when the state-communist system crumbled in the Velvet Revolution. AFP PHOTO LUBOMIR KOTEK (Photo by LUBOMIR KOTEK / AFP) (Photo by LUBOMIR KOTEK/AFP via Getty Images)