On this day: Václav Havel’s 1990 address to U.S. Congress looks starkly different today

On this day in 1990, former President Václav Havel stood before the U.S. Congress in what was hailed as the “golden hour” of free Czechoslovakia. Fresh from the Velvet Revolution, he urged Americans to support his country and the Soviet Union’s transition to democracy.

This was Havel’s first trip to the U.S., and he was the first politician from the newly liberated Eastern bloc to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress. His Feb. 21, 1990, speech was met with applause 23 times.

Perhaps the most quoted passage was about America's ability to benefit Czechoslovakia through its aid to the Soviet Union.

“The sooner, faster, and more peacefully the Soviet Union begins to move along the path of true political plurality, respect for the rights of nations to self-determination and functioning, i.e., market economy, the better it will be not only for the Czechs and Slovaks but for the whole world. The sooner you can reduce the burden of the American people’s military budget, the sooner you will also be able to bear it. Metaphorically speaking, the millions you give to the East now will soon return to you in the form of billions saved.”

His message was clear: democracy was a shared responsibility, and America’s role as a beacon of freedom was crucial.

Three decades later, that vision has unraveled. Not only is the U.S. no longer a steadfast supporter of Havel’s envisioned democracy, it is actively undermining it.

As columnist Jan Lipold writes for Seznam Zprávy, “Havel remarked in Congress that it was not his place to advise Americans. But when compared to what he said then, it is obvious that [U.S. President] Donald Trump is essentially doing everything the other way around.”

The U.S. is still aiding the successor to the Soviet Union, except not really “on its irreversible, yet immensely complicated path to democracy” but rather its authoritarian resurgence, he adds.

Trump’s labeling of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “a dictator without elections” and his move to shut European allies out of peace negotiations with Russia has showcased the widening chasm between what democracy means in Europe versus across the Atlantic.

Speaking at a Council of Higher Education assembly this week, Czech President Petr Pavel said: “We also need to talk about education and understanding democracy. It’s very relevant because today, we have at least two interpretations of democracy. And the interpretation between North America and Europe is starting to differ significantly.”

In the U.S., democracy is framed around individual liberties, fierce debates over free speech and gun rights, and government limits. European democracies place stronger importance on collective responsibility, social welfare, and legal safeguards against extremism, writes historian Mark Mazower in The Financial Times.

For Europe, fascism is a living memory, shaping strict democratic safeguards and a rejection of extremist ideologies, Mazower says. The U.S., having never experienced fascist rule on its soil, lacks this historical burden, making it more susceptible to political forces that Europe has long sought to contain.

Once bound by a common vision of freedom, they now approach democracy from different angles—one shaped by the weight of history, the other by an evolving, often contradictory, interpretation of liberty.

"It will certainly be interesting to see how to approach this from a scientific perspective, where the foundations, the roots, are that we can return to so that we don’t diverge into directions that can no longer be connected," the current Czech president remarked this week.

Had Havel been alive to witness this week’s events, he might have expressed the same astonishment he did in his 1990 speech to Congress. Reflecting on his country’s rapid and profound transformation—and his transformation from prisoner to president in four months’ time—he said: “It is all very extraordinary indeed.”

Had he witnessed the current erosion of democratic values, his sense of astonishment might have deepened. 

Read the full text of Havel's Feb. 21, 1990 speech here.