Havel - Community

The feelings that arose in Havel at the trial of a rock band were shared by a group of other dissidents who gathered to support the accused.

"Only the exalting awareness of an important, shared experience, and only the urgency of the challenge that everyone felt in it, could have explained the rapid genesis of that very special, improvised community that came into being here for the duration of the trial, and which was definitely something more than an accidental assembly of friends of the accused and people who were interested in the trial.  For instance, a new and quite unusual etiquette appeared: no one bothered with introductions, getting acquainted or feeling one another out.  The usual conventions were dropped and the usual reticence disappeared, and this happened right before the eyes of several squads of those 'others' (though they wore no uniforms, they were identifiable at once).  Dozens of things were discussed that many of us, in other circumstances, might have been afraid to talk about even with one other person.  It was a community of people who were not only more considerate, communicative, and trusting toward each other, they were in as strange way democratic.  A distinguished elderly gentleman, a former member of the praesidium of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, spoke with long-haired youths he'd never seen in his life before, and they spoke uninhibitedly with him, though they had known him only from photographs.  In this situation, all reserve and inner reticence seemed to lose its point; in this atmosphere, all the inevitable 'buts' seemed ridiculous, insignificant, and evasive.  Everyone seemed to feel that at a time when all the chips are down, there are only two things one can do: gamble everything or throw in the cards."