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Thirty years ago, an admirer of Václav Havel expressed his appreciation of the dissident playwright on his 53rd birthday by submitting a glowing tribute to the birthday greetings section of the Czechoslovak Communist Party official paper Rudé Právo. (Thread) 
2/7 The admirer, a young man called Petr Rýgr, knew that the paper wouldn't accept the tribute if he used Havel's real name, so he substituted the name "Ferdinand Vaněk", though he did use a real photo of the playwright.
3/7 Anyone familiar with Havel's work knew that "Ferdinand Vaněk" was a character who appears in several of his plays as a stand-in for Havel himself. But the Rudé Právo employee who accepted the birthday tribute was clearly unaware of this.
4/7 Petr Rýgr managed to get round the strict censorship of the time because he wasn't a known dissident. He was just someone who liked Havel's plays, and he and his friends came up with the idea of tricking Rudé Právo into printing the birthday message as a practical joke.
5/7 When the birthday greeting finally appeared, on 7 October 1989, that day's issue of the paper quickly sold out. The successful prank had several other consequences. For the first time, readers of Rudé Právo could see what Havel actually looked like.
6/7 On the down side, the Czechoslovak secret police became intensely interested in Rýgr. And the hapless Rudé Právo employee who accepted the birthday greeting message was given the sack.
7/7 But the following month, Czechoslavakia's communist regime was toppled by the Velvet Revolution. And by the end of the year, the dissident playwright had become the president of the country. #censorship #freespeech #vaclavhavel
And a postscript: Today, the paper Právo - founded in 1991 by former Rudé Právo journalists - printed a slightly altered version of Rýgr's original birthday greeting to Havel. The new version says that "today... Ferdinand Vaněk would have celebrated his 83rd birthday."
It goes on to say that "his grateful fellow-citizens and friends" hope that "his legacy and work will never be forgotten".
