The Courage to Think and the Spectre of Dissent Dissidents reject living a lie. That is why they come into conflict with the state, not deliberately but simply because they do what they feel they must do. Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty Rights20/Feb/2021 The dramatic opening lines of Vaclac Havelâs pathbreaking essay ‘The Power of the Powerless’ (1978) read thus: âA spectre is haunting Eastern Europe, the spectre of what in the West is called âdissentâ.â Havel, the well-known Czech playwright, essayist, politician and one-time dissident was the tenth and the last president of Czechoslovakia, and the first president of the Czech Republic. He wrote this essay for a joint Polish Czechoslovak project on freedom and power.