Latest news with #VaclavHavel
New York Times
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
William H. Luers, Diplomat Who Backed Czech Dissident Leader, Dies at 95
In 1983, William H. Luers, a new American ambassador to Czechoslovakia, bet on a long shot for its future: Vaclav Havel, the often-imprisoned poet-playwright and enemy of the Communist state. But after leading a peaceful revolution to oust the regime, the long shot cultural leader became the democratically-elected last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of its successor, the Czech Republic. The ambassador's contribution to Mr. Havel's very survival in the last years of Communist rule, and his subsequent political successes were, in his own telling, results of maneuvers as gentle as the so-called Velvet Revolution that extricated Czechoslovakia from the Communists in 1989. To spare Mr. Havel from an assassin's bullet, a poison pill or a return to prison — where he might have been snuffed out quietly — Mr. Luers enlisted dozens of American cultural celebrities, mostly friends of his, to visit Prague, meet the playwright and then, at news conferences outside the reach of the government-controlled Czech news media, recast him in a protective armor of global publicity. 'I spent a lot of my career with artists and writers, promoting the arts,' Mr. Luers said in a 2022 interview for this obituary. 'I was worried that the Communists might poison him or put him back in prison. My strategy was to shine as much light on Havel as possible. So I brought in John Updike, Edward Albee and many other people to talk about how great an artist and cultural leader he was.' The recruited celebrities, Mr. Luers said, included the novelists E.L. Doctorow, Kurt Vonnegut and William Styron; Philippe de Montebello, the director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art; Joseph Papp, the producer-director who created Shakespeare in the Park; the California abstract painter Richard Diebenkorn; and Katharine Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post. The secret police filmed and photographed the visitors, but they were hardly people who could be intimidated. Indeed, Mr. Luers said, it was ultimately the Communist authorities who were cowed by the worldwide attention accorded to Mr. Havel. The underlying message, he said, was that harming Mr. Havel might risk incalculable international consequences for the Czech government. Mr. Luers, who retired from the Foreign Service in 1986 and became president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for 13 years, died on Saturday at his home in Washington Depot, in western Connecticut. He was 95. His wife, Wendy Luers, said the cause was prostate cancer. In a 29-year Foreign Service career, Mr. Luers was a blend of diplomat and showman who cultivated friendships with artists and writers while seeking solutions to Cold War problems for five presidential administrations, from Dwight D. Eisenhower's in the 1950s to Ronald Reagan's in the '80s. It was an era of nuclear perils, regional conflicts and fast-moving economic and political changes. Specializing in Soviet and East European affairs, and fluent in Russian, Spanish and Italian, Mr. Luers worked at embassies in Moscow, Rome and other capitals of Europe and Latin America. At his career's end, he was ambassador to Venezuela (1978-82) as well as Czechoslovakia (1983-86). On his last and most important diplomatic assignment, Mr. Luers arrived in Prague months after Mr. Havel, the scion of a wealthy Czech family noted for its cultural accomplishments, was released from four years in prison, the longest of his several sentences for political activities in defiance of the government. Mr. Havel's absurdist plays ridiculing Moscow's satellite state had already raised him to international prominence, but had left him an official pariah and his works blacklisted at home for years after Soviet tanks crushed the brief Prague Spring uprisings of 1968. Mr. Luers set his leadership sights on Mr. Havel for his artistic talents and magnetic personality, and contacted him through dissident intellectuals in the Civic Forum, a notable opponent of the Communist Party. His American celebrity friends burnished Mr. Havel's name as a writer, but not as a statesman, which might have increased Mr. Havel's perils. Inside Czechoslovakia, only the underground samizdat press circulated the encomiums to him. Long after Mr. Luers left Prague and retired in 1986, the protective effects of his stratagem lingered, and Mr. Havel played a major role in the peaceful revolution that toppled the Czech puppet government in 1989. Weeks after that revolution, Mr. Havel was named president of Czechoslovakia by a unanimous vote of the Federal Assembly. In 1990, his presidency was affirmed by a landslide in the nation's first free elections since 1946. And when the Czech Republic and Slovakia were created as successor states in 1993, Mr. Havel became the republic's first president. Re-elected in 1998, he left office at the end of his second term in 2003. 'Bill Luers had a remarkable career — in fact many careers,' James L. Greenfield, a former State Department colleague who later was an assistant managing editor of The New York Times, said in a 2022 email for this obituary. (Mr. Greenfield died in 2024.) 'He was the ambassador to Venezuela, but more importantly to Czechoslovakia. While there he became the main supporter, defender and protector of Vaclav Havel.' William Henry Luers was born on May 15, 1929, in Springfield, Ill., the youngest of three children of Carl and Ann (Lynd) Luers. William and his sisters, Gloria and Mary, grew up in Springfield. Their father was president of a local bank and their mother was an avid bridge player. William attended Springfield High School, where he played basketball and golf and was the senior class president; he graduated in 1947. At Hamilton College in upstate New York, he majored in chemistry and math and earned a bachelor's degree in 1951. He studied philosophy at Northwestern University briefly, but joined the Navy in 1952, according to an oral history. He graduated from officers' candidate school, became a deck officer on aircraft carriers in the Atlantic and Pacific and was discharged as a lieutenant in 1957. He then joined the Foreign Service, and in 1958 earned a master's degree in Russian studies at Columbia University. In 1957, he married Jane Fuller, an artist. They had four children: Mark, David, William and Amy, and were divorced in 1979. That year he married Wendy (Woods) Turnbull, the founder and president of the Foundation for a Civil Society, who had two daughters, Ramsay and Connor Turnbull, from a previous marriage. His son Mark died of esophageal cancer in 2020. In addition to his wife, he is survived by his other children along with five grandchildren and five step-grandchildren. After 16 years in the Foreign Service at lower ranks, Mr. Luers became an aide to Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger in 1973 (and personally delivered to him President Richard M. Nixon's 1974 letter of resignation in the Watergate scandal.) He became deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs in 1975, and for European affairs in 1977. Retiring from the Foreign Service, he joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art as president in a leadership-sharing arrangement with Mr. de Montebello, who as director presided over artistic matters and was the Met's spokesman. Mr. Luers, as chief executive, handled finances, fund-raising and outreach to government agencies. The dual leadership, at times tense, lasted until 1999. His strong suit was fund-raising. 'He's indefatigable,' Carl Spielvogel, a trustee, said of Mr. Luers. 'I don't know many people willing to be out at breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week, but he was. And he's very good at it.' Mr. Luers doubled the museum's endowment, modernized its financial systems, enlarged its staff to 1,800 full-time employees, secured the $1 billion Walter Annenberg collection of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings for the museum, and oversaw the construction of new galleries, wings, exhibitions and public programs. When he stepped down, the museum had a $116 million budget, and crowds that often exceeded 50,000 visitors on weekends. In 1990, Mr. Luers arranged for Mr. Havel, who was conferring with President George W. Bush on a state visit to the White House, to make a side trip to New York to visit the museum. It was a touching reunion for Mr. Luers, who returned many times to the Czech Republic for meetings with old friends and Mr. Havel, who died in 2011. After the Met, Mr. Luers was chairman and president of the United Nations Association of the U.S.A., which provides research and other services for the U.N. For many years, he also directed the Iran Project, a nongovernmental organization that supported United States negotiations with Iran. Mr. Luers, who had homes in Manhattan and Washington Depot, wrote scores of articles for foreign policy journals and newspapers, including The Times. He lectured widely and taught at Princeton, George Washington, Columbia and Seton Hall Universities, and at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Last fall, he released a memoir, 'Uncommon Company: Dissidents and Diplomats, Enemies and Artists.' 'My greatest satisfaction was the success of Vaclav Havel,' he said in the 2022 interview. 'Havel proved my point that culture makes a difference, especially in international relations. The Communist system was deeply flawed. It underestimated cultural leaders' influence on the people.'
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Silencing Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty is a gift to autocrats
In 1989, with breathtaking speed, the Communist dictatorships that had ruled Eastern Europe for more than 40 years fell. Two years later, their sponsor, the Soviet Union, disintegrated. A crucial factor contributing to the decay and fall of these autocratic regimes was freedom of information. People across the region learned of the latest developments, of brave demonstrators and heroes such as Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, from Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. It was not propaganda they heard, nor was it stories of life in America — that was the role of Voice of America. Rather, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty reported on life in their listeners' own countries, in their own languages, telling people what their regimes would not. First started as a Cold War tool funded by the CIA, these services were reshaped and merged into a private independent corporation under the supervision of what is now the U.S. Agency for Global Media and funded by Congress. I served as director of research for Radio Free Europe during the momentous years of 1989 to 1991. This gave me a day-to-day, inside look at the extraordinary work done by dedicated journalists, editors, technicians and by brave freelance reporters working in the countries we covered. It is worth remembering, especially by those disparaging Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, that roughly two-thirds of those working for these media organizations are not permanent employees but freelance reporters. These journalists risk their lives and freedom to report from countries under dictatorships, whose leaders are deeply hostile to the U.S. and even more hostile to the spread of information they don't control. In Russia, even to call the invasion of Ukraine a 'war,' rather than a 'special military operation,' risks a prison sentence. Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, in its broadcasting to Serbia, Bosnia, Ukraine, Iran, Afghanistan as well as Russia, does not regurgitate such dissembling euphemisms. That is why regimes like the one in Moscow declare them to be enemies of their states. As Mark Pomar, author of 'Cold War Radio,' put it in a recent interview, in Soviet times Radio Liberty was considered the most dangerous of Western broadcasts precisely 'because it dealt far more with domestic issues.' As revolutionary sentiment spread across East Europe, we met every morning to go over the upcoming day's reporting. In the face of such unprecedented upheaval, the dissemination of unsupported rumors, cheerleading or fearmongering was ruled out. Stories for broadcast were based on facts that could be validated, on analysis of actual developments inside the countries. The Radio Free Europe teams supported the challenges to dictatorship, but inflammatory rhetoric was flagged by a broadcast analysis division that listened to and checked our work. At a time of crisis and a turning point in history — like now — simply reporting what was happening was powerful enough. Radio Free Europe was and remains a 'surrogate free press' for people who live where there is none. The outlets provide a reliable, comprehensive picture of developments where people live. They inform people about things that are happening in their own country that the regimes hide or distort, thus validating people's own knowledge and experience — which is usually at odds with regime's media. More broadly, millions of listeners, viewers and readers see on a daily basis how free media should operate in a democracy. In our contemporary environment, one might ask if radio stations are still worth supporting. In fact, the term 'radio' is misleading as the organizations publish written stories, interviews and broadcasts daily across the internet, via YouTube and podcasts on a variety of accessible media, in addition to radio. Precisely because the internet is flooded with disinformation on massive scale by Russia and other autocratic regimes, there needs to be a fact-checked, independent, authentic voice created for people who otherwise would not hear anything like the full story. Do people in Russia know the real numbers of Russian casualties in Ukraine? Do people in Asia know what the Chinese regime is doing to its Uyghur population? They won't, unless services like Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty can stay active. Moreover, information dissemination goes both ways. One of the most vital functions Radio Free Europe serves is to provide accurate analysis and description of what is happening in these countries and regions. People who want to know these countries and create effective policies toward them have a comprehensive source of uncensored information. The research and broadcast teams produce daily articles and reports that delve into the dynamics of countries that are not only closed but also threaten American interests. Both those who live there, those who left and those who have to deal with these countries need an accurate picture. As Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty President and CEO Stephen Capus said, 'This is not the time to cede terrain to the propaganda and censorship of America's adversaries.' Shutting down such a valuable service in the name of 'government efficiency' is as insulting as it is ludicrous. Elon Musk proclaimed on his own information service that 'Nobody listens to them anymore' and that they were 'just radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money.' Wrong on all counts. Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty reaches 47 million people a week in 27 different languages, with more than 9 billion videos viewed. Not a bad return for an annual budget of $142 million — two-thousandths of a percent of the federal government's annual budget. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the division of Europe was ended not by an invading army but by an invading idea: that people have a right to know what is happening in their own land and thus a right to take part in decisions made in their name. This is anathema to every would-be autocrat who sees an enemy behind all who might disagree with them. Autocrats know now, as they did in 1989, that they must control the information environment. America should challenge those efforts with the powerful voices we have and, at the very least, not put out of business one of our most valuable instruments of global influence. Ronald H. Linden is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as director of the European Studies Center and director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies. He was director of research for Radio Free Europe in Munich, Germany from 1989 to 1991. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
26-03-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Silencing Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty is a gift to autocrats
In 1989, with breathtaking speed, the Communist dictatorships that had ruled Eastern Europe for more than 40 years fell. Two years later, their sponsor, the Soviet Union, disintegrated. A crucial factor contributing to the decay and fall of these autocratic regimes was freedom of information. People across the region learned of the latest developments, of brave demonstrators and heroes such as Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, from Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. It was not propaganda they heard, nor was it stories of life in America — that was the role of Voice of America. Rather, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty reported on life in their listeners' own countries, in their own languages, telling people what their regimes would not. First started as a Cold War tool funded by the CIA, these services were reshaped and merged into a private independent corporation under the supervision of what is now the U.S. Agency for Global Media and funded by Congress. I served as director of research for Radio Free Europe during the momentous years of 1989 to 1991. This gave me a day-to-day, inside look at the extraordinary work done by dedicated journalists, editors, technicians and by brave freelance reporters working in the countries we covered. It is worth remembering, especially by those disparaging Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, that roughly two-thirds of those working for these media organizations are not permanent employees but freelance reporters. These journalists risk their lives and freedom to report from countries under dictatorships, whose leaders are deeply hostile to the U.S. and even more hostile to the spread of information they don't control. In Russia, even to call the invasion of Ukraine a 'war,' rather than a 'special military operation,' risks a prison sentence. Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, in its broadcasting to Serbia, Bosnia, Ukraine, Iran, Afghanistan as well as Russia, does not regurgitate such dissembling euphemisms. That is why regimes like the one in Moscow declare them to be enemies of their states. As Mark Pomar, author of 'Cold War Radio,' put it in a recent interview, in Soviet times Radio Liberty was considered the most dangerous of Western broadcasts precisely 'because it dealt far more with domestic issues.' As revolutionary sentiment spread across East Europe, we met every morning to go over the upcoming day's reporting. In the face of such unprecedented upheaval, the dissemination of unsupported rumors, cheerleading or fearmongering was ruled out. Stories for broadcast were based on facts that could be validated, on analysis of actual developments inside the countries. The Radio Free Europe teams supported the challenges to dictatorship, but inflammatory rhetoric was flagged by a broadcast analysis division that listened to and checked our work. At a time of crisis and a turning point in history — like now — simply reporting what was happening was powerful enough. Radio Free Europe was and remains a 'surrogate free press' for people who live where there is none. The outlets provide a reliable, comprehensive picture of developments where people live. They inform people about things that are happening in their own country that the regimes hide or distort, thus validating people's own knowledge and experience — which is usually at odds with regime's media. More broadly, millions of listeners, viewers and readers see on a daily basis how free media should operate in a democracy. In our contemporary environment, one might ask if radio stations are still worth supporting. In fact, the term 'radio' is misleading as the organizations publish written stories, interviews and broadcasts daily across the internet, via YouTube and podcasts on a variety of accessible media, in addition to radio. Precisely because the internet is flooded with disinformation on massive scale by Russia and other autocratic regimes, there needs to be a fact-checked, independent, authentic voice created for people who otherwise would not hear anything like the full story. Do people in Russia know the real numbers of Russian casualties in Ukraine? Do people in Asia know what the Chinese regime is doing to its Uyghur population? They won't, unless services like Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty can stay active. Moreover, information dissemination goes both ways. One of the most vital functions Radio Free Europe serves is to provide accurate analysis and description of what is happening in these countries and regions. People who want to know these countries and create effective policies toward them have a comprehensive source of uncensored information. The research and broadcast teams produce daily articles and reports that delve into the dynamics of countries that are not only closed but also threaten American interests. Both those who live there, those who left and those who have to deal with these countries need an accurate picture. As Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty President and CEO Stephen Capus said, 'This is not the time to cede terrain to the propaganda and censorship of America's adversaries.' Shutting down such a valuable service in the name of 'government efficiency' is as insulting as it is ludicrous. Elon Musk proclaimed on his own information service that 'Nobody listens to them anymore' and that they were 'just radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money.' Wrong on all counts. Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty reaches 47 million people a week in 27 different languages, with more than 9 billion videos viewed. Not a bad return for an annual budget of $142 million — two-thousandths of a percent of the federal government's annual budget. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the division of Europe was ended not by an invading army but by an invading idea: that people have a right to know what is happening in their own land and thus a right to take part in decisions made in their name. This is anathema to every would-be autocrat who sees an enemy behind all who might disagree with them. Autocrats know now, as they did in 1989, that they must control the information environment. America should challenge those efforts with the powerful voices we have and, at the very least, not put out of business one of our most valuable instruments of global influence. Ronald H. Linden is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as director of the European Studies Center and director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies. He was director of research for Radio Free Europe in Munich, Germany from 1989 to 1991.
