Czech playwright, author, poet, dissident, and politician Václav Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and then as the first president of the Czech Republic (1993-2003). Although born into an affluent family of real-estate developers, Havel was denied proper education by the Communist government because of his bourgeois background. He later began a career as a playwright and penned socially relevant works such as The Garden Party and The Memorandum. In the wake of the Prague Spring in the late 1960s, he became a prominent opposition leader. He later penned the human rights manifesto Charter 77. Jailed for his activism and then released, he joined the Civic Forum, a coalition of democratic groups, which eventually replaced the Communist government through the Velvet Revolution. Later, as the president of his nation, he witnessed the Czech Republic join the NATO. He also won countless honors and awards, such as the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.