Slavoj Žižek reviews ‘Václav Havel’ by John Keane · LRB 28 October 1999

The Leader in fact is like the Lady in courtly love poetry – cold, distanced, inhuman. Both the Leninist and the Stalinist Leader are thoroughly alienated, but in opposite ways: the Leninist Leader displays radical self-instrumentalisation on behalf of the Revolution, while in the case of the Stalinist Leader, the ‘real person’ is treated as an appendix to the fetishised and celebrated public image. No wonder the official photos of the Stalinist era were so often retouched, and with a clumsiness so obvious it almost seemed intentional. It signalled that the ‘real person’ with all his idiosyncrasies had been replaced by a wooden effigy. One rumour circulating about Kim Il Yong is that he actually died in a car crash a couple of years ago and a double has taken his place for rare public appearances, so that the crowds can catch a glimpse of the object of their worship. This is the ultimate confirmation that the ‘real personality’ of the Stalinist leader is thoroughly irrelevant. Havel of course is the inverse of that: while the Stalinist Leader is reduced to a ritualistically praised effigy, Havel’s charisma is that of a ‘real person’. The paradox is that a genuine ‘cult of personality’ can thrive only in a democracy.