Czechoslovakia A Historic Encounter

All day the Prague apartment of Vaclav Havel had been filled with friends welcoming home Czechoslovakia's most famous dissident playwright. Only that morning Havel, 52, had been released from prison after serving half of an eight-month term for inciting antigovernment demonstrations. Most of the ) visitors had left, when the doorbell rang. The erect, sad-eyed man in the hallway seemed like a ghostly apparition, his palms outstretched almost sheepishly and on his face a mysterious but familiar half-smile. The apartment fell silent. Then someone murmured, "Dubcek." Said Alexander Dubcek, hero of 1968's Prague Spring: "I had to come."

In the years since Warsaw Pact tanks brought an end to Dubcek's brief experiment with liberalization, the former Communist Party leader, now 67, has been living humbly in Bratislava, working as a minor forestry official until his retirement in 1982, when he turned his attention to gardening. During the same period, Havel has become internationally famous both for his plays, such as The Memorandum and Temptation, and for his role as a leader of Czech dissent.

TIME's Walter Isaacson and Michal Donath were the only journalists present as the two men talked, sitting side by side, Havel animated and excited, Dubcek reserved and stiff. "I was expecting every miracle today except that I would meet you," said the playwright. The aging politician recalled one of Havel's plays, though none have been performed in Czechoslovakia since 1968. Havel leaped up and gathered a stack of foreign editions that had been smuggled into the country. "I will sign them for you in green ink because green is the color of hope, and I am an optimist." Answered Dubcek: "I was always an optimist. I remain an optimist; I have never lost my spirit."

Though Dubcek insists that he is "just a gardener," his recent meetings with opponents of the regime suggest that he has not ruled out a future role in politics. Indeed, only two Czechs are known widely enough to serve as symbols for change in their country; both were sitting there on the couch. As Havel's wife Olga noted when the meeting was over, it was "a moment of history."