On Freedom

by Timothy Snyder

Havel’s essay “The Power of the Powerless,” a profound meditation on freedom. In the essay, Havel translated the experience of “normalized” Czechoslovakia into general political lessons. “Normalization” meant adaptation to the party line, even though no one believed it expressed anything beyond the convenience of the powerful. Normality in this sense of “normalization” has no substance, only form. It is the habit of saying (and then thinking) what seems necessary, while agreeing implicitly (and then explicitly) that nothing really matters. Life becomes an echo chamber of all the things we never dare to say. The pretending was what Havel called “unfreedom,” the concession of the authentic self. All the authorities needed was for people to react to stimuli: positively to consumer goods, negatively to the threat of prison. Modern tyranny, Havel concluded, required not devotion but predictability. Normalization forced life into “the most probable states.”