Havel’s Letter to Husák: still an inspiration 40 years on

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.