This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, December 21st, 2011.

I'm Kila Brown.

He opposed communists and helped secure lasting victory for the Czech people.

Vasslav Havel led the velvet revolution and served

as the Czech Republic's first president.

Havel died over the weekend at the age of 75.

Marion Tupi is a former policy analyst at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at the Cato Institute.

He comments.

How was really the leader of the opposition movement in Czechoslovakia during gender communist era.

In 1976 he wrote this memorandum called Charter 77, which was then published in

1977 when Cato incidentally was established.

And Charter 77 was really a document which

attacked the communist authorities for compromising human rights, for, it attacked them for

compromising civil liberties.

Why should anyone have listened to him in 1977?

Well, that's the point is that there were very few people who had the courage to speak out against the communists back then communist

regime was quite strong and as a consequence of this Charter 77, he was of course immediately taken to prison and in prison for a number of years.

As a result of this courage that he had shown in opposing

communists already back in the 70s, he became something of a leader of this opposition movement in Czechoslovakia.

And so when the events of November 1989 happened, which is to say when the people took to the streets, they

had a natural leader in Havel, somebody that everyone who opposed communism could rally around.

And it provided also the communist regime with an interlocutor, somebody they could talk to and negotiate with an orderly transition of power.

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