7 Dalai Lama XIV 7

plight of Tibet. He continued to advocate what he called a
“middle way approach” between the complete indepen-
dence of Tibet and its complete absorption into the
People’s Republic of China. He also sent numerous dele-
gations to China to discuss such proposals, but they met
with little success. In recognition of his efforts, he was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. His other goal was
to disseminate the central tenets of Buddhism to a wide
audience.
After the Dalai Lama reached the age of 70, the ques-
tion of his successor was repeatedly raised. In the 1980s his
public speculation about whether there would be a need
for another Dalai Lama was taken by some as a call to the
Tibetan community to preserve its culture in exile. During
the first decade of the 21st century, however, he declared
that there will be a 15th Dalai Lama and that he will be
discovered not in Chinese-controlled Tibet, but in exile.

Václav Havel

(b. Oct. 5, 1936, Prague, Czechoslovakia [now in Czech Republic])

V

áclav Havel is a Czech playwright, poet, and political
dissident, who, after the fall of Communism, was
president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 1992 and of the
Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003.
Havel was the son of a wealthy restaurateur whose
property was confiscated by the Communist govern-
ment of Czechoslovakia in 1948. As the son of bourgeois
parents, Havel was denied easy access to education but
managed to finish high school and study on the university
level. He found work as a stagehand in a Prague theatrical
company in 1959 and soon began writing plays with Ivan
Vyskowil. By 1968 Havel had progressed to the position of
resident playwright of the Theatre of the Balustrade com-
pany. He was a prominent participant in the liberal reforms