Czech Republic president Václav Klaus

Václav Klaus

Biography: 

Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1941 during WW II, Václav Klaus grew up during the Cold War. After earning a doctorate in economics, he pursued a career in academia and at the Czechoslovak State Bank. Immediately after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Klaus entered politics. A founder of the Civic Democratic Party, he served from 1992 to 1997 as prime minister of the Czech Republic. In 2003 he was elected president, a position to which he was reelected in 2008.

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Czech Republic president Václav Klaus

The world with Václav Klaus

by Peter M. Robinsonwith Václav Klausvia Uncommon Knowledge
Wednesday, November 11, 2009

In retelling his experience of living through the Velvet Revolution, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the lifting of the Iron Curtain, Czech Republic president Václav Klaus offers his views on what students today need to understand about life under communism.

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Václav Klaus

A Nation Transformed

by Václav Klausvia Hoover Digest
Thursday, July 30, 1998

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Czech Republic made arguably the most successful transition to democracy and free markets in Eastern Europe. How? By managing “the gap between expectations and reality.” By former prime minister Václav Klaus.

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