Beautiful Souls: The Courage and Conscience of Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times Highlight

In his famous essay “The Power of the Powerless,” the Czech dissident Václav Havel offered the example of an employee at a brewery (“a certain S”) who had the temerity to write a critical letter to the authorities about the plant manager, who everyone knew was driving the establishment to ruin. The worker took the trouble to exercise voice, and his reward was to be labeled a “political saboteur” and shifted to a different plant where he would never be heard from again, a fairly predictable (and mild) rebuke in light of the fact that the manager of the brewery was a well-connected member of the Communist Party’s district committee. “By speaking the truth, S had stepped out of line, broken the rules, cast himself out, and he ended up as a sub-citizen,” wrote Havel.