Vaclav Havel, an anti-Communist playwright and dissident who became Czechoslovakia’s president in 1989, and later the Czech president when the country split into two, died on Sunday.

He was 75.

Havel’s former spokesman Ladislav Spacek told Bloomberg news Havel died in his sleep at a weekend cottage in Hradecek, Czech Republic.

He served in prison at one point due to his dissident activities and played a leading part in the non-violent “Velvet Revolution” which led to the establishment of a democratic Czechoslovakia.