Undated filer from the 1970's showing a checkpoint (left) built by Czechoslovak communist secret police next to Vaclav Havel's cottage in Hradecek. On Feb 02 2003 Havel will leave his office as the longest serving European politician and the last active politician from the times of fall of communist rule in Eastern Europe in 1989. Born in Prague in 1936, an active anti-communist playwright and founder of Charter 77 dissident movement, whose work was banned in his home country after 1968 Soviet invasion to Czechoslovakia, spent altogether more than six years in prison on several occassions between 1977 and 1989. After getting elected as Czechoslovak president in 1989, Havel resigned to protest against the split of Czechoslovakia in 1992 only to be elected again as president of the independent Czech Republic. During Havel's term in office the former Warsaw Pact member country has joined the NATO a has been successfuly negotiating its admission to the EU.