David Remnick in The New Yorker, Vaclav Havel in Jerusalem:
Not long after his unlikely rise from Czech prisoner to Czech President, Václav Havel paid a visit to Moscow. Until that moment, the leaders of Eastern and Central Europe had arrived at the gates of the Kremlin as little more than nerve-racked supplicants. They came to receive instructions and to pay obeisance to the General Secretary. Now Havel was there to see Mikhail Gorbachev, but, with an air of modest self-confidence, he carried a set of demands and an ironic prop. As Michael Žantovský tells the story in his excellent new biography, Havel asked that the Soviet Union remove its troops from Czech territory, and that the two nations sign a statement declaring them equals. Gorbachev, who had already relinquished his imperial holdings, agreed, at which point Havel produced a peace pipe, telling Gorbachev that it had been given to him by the chief of a Native American tribe during a recent trip to the United States. “Mr. President,” Havel said, “it occurred to me right there and then that I should bring this pipe to Moscow and that the two of us should smoke it together.” Žantovský, who was Havel’s press aide at the time, recalls that Gorbachev “looked at the pipe as if it were a hand grenade.” Then the Soviet leader turned to Havel and stammered, “But I . . . don’t smoke.”