# The Power of the Powerless

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/vaclav-havel/the-power-of-the-powerless/9781784875046

![The Power of the Powerless](https://quivercdn.com/covers/vintage-classics/vaclav-havel/the-power-of-the-powerless_978-17-8487-504-6-b96cff6e.webp?v=2026-09-26%2002%3A59%3A28)

- Book: [The Power of the Powerless](https://www.bookquiver.com/vaclav-havel/the-power-of-the-powerless) ([The Power of the Powerless.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/vaclav-havel/the-power-of-the-powerless.md))
- Authors: [Václav Havel](https://www.bookquiver.com/vaclav-havel)
- Publisher: vintage_classics
- ISBN: 978-17-8487-504-6
- Pages: 176
- Published: 2018-09-27
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

Václav Havel’s remarkable and rousing essay on the tyranny of apathy, with a new introduction by Timothy Snyder Cowed by life under Communist Party rule, a greengrocer hangs a placard in their shop window: Workers of the world, unite! Is it a sign of the grocer’s unerring ideology? Or a symbol of the lies we perform to protect ourselves? Written in 1978, Václav Havel’s meditation on political dissent – the rituals of its suppression, and the sparks that re-ignite it – would prove the guiding manifesto for uniting Solidarity movements across the Soviet Union. A portrait of activism in the face of falsehood and intimidation, The Power of the Powerless remains a rousing call against the allure of apathy. 'Havel’s diagnosis of political pathologies has a special resonance in the age of Trump' Pankaj Mishra