Written by Noah Carl.
What do Madeleine Albright, the controversial US Secretary of State, and Václav Havel, the playwright and first president of the Czech Republic, have in common?
Both were born into elite Czech families in the 1930s. Albright, born Marie Jana Körbelová, was the daughter of a prominent diplomat who served as the Czech ambassador to Yugoslavia. Havel was the son of a wealthy real estate developer who owned the Lucerna Palace shopping complex. Following the communist coup in 1948, both families had their property confiscated by the state. Owing to his bourgeois background, Havel was branded a “class enemy” and could not pursue the education he wanted. He later spent time in prison as a political dissident. Albright would have likely faced the same fate had her family not fled to the US when the communists took over. (They had already fled the country once in 1939, before returning at the war’s end.)
Despite all this, Albright and Havel went on to achieve great success in their respective fields. Which illustrates an important point: you cannot destroy the elite. You can seize people’s property. You can round them up and put them in camps. You can even kill their family members. But sooner or later, they will regain their former status.