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The Consciousness of a Leader:
Understanding Intentional Change
INTRODUCTION
“Consciousness precedes being.”
1
Vaclav Havel spoke these words on the
oor of the US Senate in 1990. At the time, Havel was the president of
Czechoslovakia, but before the Cold War ended, he had been a dissident,
political prisoner, and playwright. Havel was speaking about how the eco-
nomic philosophy of Communism failed because material realities are not
the fundamental factor in the movement of history. Rather, consciousness—
human awareness, thought, and spirit—is the fundamental factor that
denes history.
2
Havel laid the blame for Marxist oppression not just ...