Thirty years ago, almost to the day, I moved from Washington, DC to Prague to find a profession and to pursue an interest in the postcommunist transition. I had already left behind Plan A (return to the family farm), and what might have been Plan B (pursue a career in GOP politics) had foundered on the irreconcilability of the Gingrich Revolution and my own move to the left. In 1997, my parents had taken my brother and me on a tour of Scandinavia that had a four-day side trip to the Soviet Union. That brief sojourn to Mikhail Gorbachev’s USSR had lit a spark, but it took the kindling of a chance encounter with an Illinois farmer who had visited Ukraine in the early 1990s for the intellectual fire to ignite. Soon I had a job helping Czech entrepreneurs to write business plans and secure bank loans. It was the start of a three-year stay in Eastern Europe that launched my academic career.

Imagine, then, my thrill at the visit this week of Czech President Petr Pavel, who gave the first annual Václav Havel lecture at the University of Chicago. Pavel, a retired general, won election in 2023, a victory against pro-Russian populism and a statement of Czech solidarity with Ukraine. In person, Pavel cuts a good figure. I learned at lunch that he had invited some members of the Czech community in Chicago to join him for a run along the lakefront at 7 am. His lecture three hours later was predictable, but in conversation with Northwestern historian Benjamin Frommer he was direct and thoughtful, and he seemed to delight in the outstanding questions posed by University students. After the talk, he and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson laid a wreath at a nearby monument to Tomáš Masaryk, the father of the Czech nation.

Students of European politics may be interested in some of what Pavel said. This is what I remember:

• The first meeting with U.S. officers in the 1990s was a revelation. The Czechs were accustomed to taking orders from Moscow. The Americans wanted to hear Czech officers’ ideas.

• It took time for the Czech nation to wake up after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. People were accustomed to living in peace, which led to paralysis.

• Russia has always been an imperialist country. Putin made no secret of this. We should have listened to what he was saying.

• The Višegrad Group—formed during the 1990s of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland—is today more V2+2 than V4, given political trends in Slovakia and Hungary. But Pavel is in favor of retaining the alliance for the sake of cultural, academic, and similar ties.

• Vis-à-vis Ukraine, the final objective is a fully sovereign country with full control over its territory. Achieving that objective in the near term is unlikely, however. To regain full control—and here Pavel emphasized his military background—would require many more “military capabilities” than Ukraine currently has, and the Russian response is unpredictable. The goal should be to hold the line, pressure Russia to the negotiating table, never accept that occupied territories are Russian, and invite Ukraine into NATO and the EU. Over time, a successful Ukraine will convince those in the occupied territories that they are better off in Ukraine than in Russia, which will help to achieve the long-term goal.

• Should there be a pathway to citizenship for Ukrainian refugees in Czechia? Ukraine needs these people after the war, and it would be unfair if Czechs filled gaps in their labor market at the expense of Ukraine. We need a Marshall Plan for Ukraine to create conditions for refugees to return home, though there should be a path to citizenship for those who remain. (The student who asked this question also asked about Russians who had fled to Europe to escape conscription, but Pavel’s response focused on Ukrainians.)