When I look at the victories of Solidarity, and of Charter 77, I see in them an astonishing fulfillment of the prophecies and knowledge contained in Havel's essay." And the rank and file saw us as leaders of the movement. It maintained our spirits we did not give up, and a year later-in August ig8o-it became clear that the party apparatus and the factory management were afraid of us. Reading it gave us the theoretical underpinnings for our activity.
Shouldn’t we be coming up with other methods, other ways? Why were we doing this? Why were we taking such risks? Not seeing any immediate and tangible results, we began to doubt the purposefulness of what we were doing. There came a moment when people thought we were crazy. Inspired by KOR, we had been speaking on the shop floor, talking to people, participating in public meetings, trying to speak the truth about the factory, the country, and politics. Here is what Zbygniew Bujak, a Solidarity activist, told me: "This essay reached us in the Ursus factory in 1979 at a point when we felt we were at the end of the road. Havel's essay has had a profound impact on Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, in May 1979, some of the Czechoslovak contributors who were also members of VONS (the Committee to Defend the Unjustly Prosecuted), including Havel, were arrested, and it was decided to go ahead and "publish" the Czechoslovak contributions separately. Twenty participants were chosen on both sides, but only the Czechoslovak side was completed.
All the participants were to receive Havel's essay, and then respond to it in writing. "The Power of the Powerless" (October 1978) was originally written ("quickly," Havel said later) as a discussion piece for a projected joint Polish Czechoslovak volume of essays on the subject of freedom and power. "The Power of the Powerless" - Vaclav Havel 12-23-2011
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