Václav Havel, for one, was a CZECH politician and writer who served as the last President of Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 1992 and the first President of the CZECH Republic from 1993 to 2003. He was also a leader of the Czechoslovakian dissident movement during the Communist era and a prominent figure in the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Havel was a SLAV, a member of the Slavic ethnic group that includes Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, and other Eastern European peoples.