Havel changed a nation.

Byline: The Register-Guard

THIRTEEN YEARS after leading Czechoslovakia through its transition from communist rule to a functioning democracy, Vaclav Havel stepped down this week as president of the Czech Republic. His retirement closes an important chapter in the history of not only his own country, but of all Europe.

It was in 1989 that the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe collapsed and countries as disparate - and yet as similar - as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia embraced economic and political reforms. Idolized for his radical plays of the 1960s, his development of the anti-authoritarian, pro-democracy underground movement and his unquestioned moral power, Havel was swept into the Czech presidency in his country's "velvet revolution" surrounded by "Havel to the Castle" signs painted by ordinary Czechs on Prague's city walls.

Havel, who dubbed the old communist regime "Absurdistan," left office no longer lionized by Czech citizens. Not disliked or dismissed, mind you, but no longer the central focus of the country or its citizens. Czechs today are far more interested in the price of oranges and the ups and downs of capitalism than they are in Havel's broad dreams of a perfect democracy.

"I was really catapulted overnight into a world of fairy tales - and then, in the years that followed, I had to return to earth," Havel said in a recent speech at City University in New York. "I was given no diplomatic immunity from that hard fall to earth, from the exhilarating world of revolutionary excitement into the mundane world of bureaucratic routine."

But managing that transition, of the country and its people, from idealism to coping with daily life in a democracy will be Havel's most enduring legacy. An extraordinary man succeeded in making the Czech Republic an ordinary country.

His most bitter disappointment was the 1993 breakup of Czechoslovakia into two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. And although some fault Havel for not preventing the breakup, he can take comfort - as can both countries' citizens - that the split occurred without bloodshed in what came to be called the "velvet divorce."

Communist candidates grabbed 15 percent of the vote to finish third in last year's elections, suggesting that there remains some nostalgia for the days when everyone had work and prices remained unchanged for years. But Havel and his democratic compatriots of 13 years ago provided the groundwork and showed the way toward a freer, more diverse and more democratic society.

Now, the Czech Republic is a member of NATO and will join the European Union next year. Havel's country is no longer a satellite but a voluntary member of the world's most vital economic and military alliances, and an important country in its own right. For that startlingly rapid evolution, much of the credit belongs to Vaclav Havel - poet, prod, philosopher, playwright and president.