June 18 (Bloomberg) -- For Vaclav Havel, the leader of the 1989 “Velvet Revolution” that peacefully overthrew communism in what became the Czech Republic, the optimism of 20 years ago has given way to a troubled present.

Czechs are building “palaces of consumerism” that will occupy a third of the country in the next two decades, politicians can’t see farther than the next opinion poll and mobsters and money-changers have become the new economic elite, Havel said in an interview this week.

“Not many of us thought the door would be opened so quickly to all the mafiosi and back-street money-changers” who have now become “millionaires and billionaires,” he said. “We are living in the first truly atheistic society, and there’s no feeling that there is any kind of moral anchor.”

Havel, 72, said he would much rather be writing plays than stepping into the political fray after almost 13 years as president of Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic. He said the economic and political imbalances compel him to speak out from his book-lined office in a Baroque palace in Prague.

His country is in the middle of an economic surge. Gross domestic product per capita almost tripled from 1995 to 2008. The amount of shopping mall space has increased 40-fold in the past 12 years, to about 2 million square meters (21.5 million square feet) in 2009 from about 50,000 square meters, according to CB Richard Ellis, a London-based real estate broker.

Smashed Furniture

Even with the economic growth, Havel says the Czech Republic still has far to go. Rebuilding a country that has been kicked apart by four decades of communist rule “is of course harder than the kick itself,” he said.

“When you have a beautiful table, or a piece of furniture, it can be kicked to bits in half a minute, but it takes weeks, months, to put it all together again,” Havel said.

Countries can’t switch political systems the way commuters change trams, Havel said. “We had communism only once in history and now we have post-communism for the only time in history.”

The disappointments of post-revolutionary life “could to a degree have been been predicted, but it turned out to be worse than anyone expected.”

Corruption among the new political class has long preoccupied Havel, who used an address to the Czech parliament in 1997 to voice his disapproval. Six years after leaving Prague Castle, the presidential office, Havel expressed disappointment that the story he described as a “fairy tale” in his 2006 autobiography “To the Castle and Back,” hasn’t achieved a happy ending.

‘What Is Proper’

“The moral code is something unwritten but understood about what is proper and what is improper, what is right, what is wrong,” Havel said in the interview. “There exist no perfect laws which can’t in some way be circumvented.”

The Czech Republic slipped four places to 45th position in Transparency International’s 2008 corruption perceptions index, tied with Bhutan in South Asia. Denmark, New Zealand, Sweden and Singapore tied for first in the report by the Berlin-based anti- graft group. Somalia was last, in 180th place.

The revolutionaries of 1989 had hoped for something better, Havel said. The new political parties won’t change the electoral system because “it just doesn’t happen that lawmakers elected under one system would vote for a different system.”

Demonstrators gathered outside Prague Castle yesterday demanding the resignation of Havel’s successor, President Vaclav Klaus, who they accused of failing to respect the law and damaging the Czech Republic’s image abroad. Klaus supporters held a counter-demonstration attacking Havel.

Truth and Lies

Havel recalled one of his best-known phrases from the 1989 revolution, delivered to a crowd of several hundred thousand protesters in Prague’s Wenceslas Square, on a November day in the middle of the Velvet Revolution.

“Truth and love will triumph over lies and hatred,” he said then. After 20 years, the phrase “still nags some people,” he said.

“Even if they ridicule it in the newspapers, that’s better than if it’s completely erased from people’s minds.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Peter S. Green in Prague at psgreen@bloomberg.net; Andrea Dudikova in Prague at adudikova@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 18, 2009 08:56 EDT