新年致辭英文

　　the previous regime - armed with its arrogant and intolerant ideology - reduced man to a force of production, and nature to a tool of production. in this it attacked both their very substance and their mutual relationship. it reduced gifted and autonomous people, skillfully working in their own country, to the nuts and bolts of some monstrously huge, noisy and stinking machine, whose real meaning was not clear to anyone. it could not do more than slowly but inexorably wear out itself and all its nuts and bolts.

　　when i talk about the contaminated moral atmosphere, i am not talking just about the gentlemen who eat organic vegetables and do not look out of the plane windows. i am talking about all of us. we had all become used to the totalitarian system and accepted it as an unchangeable fact and thus helped to perpetuate it. in other words, we are all - though naturally to differing extents - responsible for the operation of the totalitarian machinery. none of us is just its victim. we are all also its co-creators.

　　why do i say this? it would be very unreasonable to understand the sad legacy of the last forty years as something alien, which some distant relative bequeathed to us. on the contrary, we have to accept this legacy as a sin we committed against ourselves. if we accept it as such, we will understand that it is up to us all, and up to us alone to do something about it. we cannot blame the previous rulers for everything, not only because it would be untrue, but also because it would blunt the duty that each of us faces today: namely, the obligation to act independently, freely, reasonably and quickly. let us not be mistaken: the best government in the world, the best parliament and the best president, cannot achieve much on their own. and it would be wrong to expect a general remedy from them alone. freedom and democracy include participation and therefore responsibility from us all.

　　if we realize this, then all the horrors that the new czechoslovak democracy inherited will cease to appear so terrible. if we realize this, hope will return to our hearts.

　　in the effort to rectify matters of common concern, we have something to lean on. the recent period - and in particular the last six weeks of our peaceful revolution - has shown the enormous human, moral and spiritual potential, and the civic culture that slumbered in our society under the enforced mask of apathy. whenever someone categorically claimed that we were this or that, i always objected that society is a very mysterious creature and that it is unwise to trust only the face it presents to you. i am happy that i was not mistaken. everywhere in the world people wonder where those meek, humiliated, skeptical and seemingly cynical citizens of czechoslovakia found the marvelous strength to shake the totalitarian yoke from their shoulders in several weeks, and in a decent and peaceful way. and let us ask: where did the young people who never knew another system get their desire for truth, their love of free thought, their political ideas, their civic courage and civic prudence? how did it happen that their parents -- the very generation that had been considered lost -- joined them? how is it that so many people immediately knew what to do and none needed any advice or instruction?