Czech president Vaclav Havel, a poet and playwright, says freedoms taken away by totalitarian leaders can be restored overnight on paper. But he warned today in a speech in St. Paul keeping a democracy alive requires a civil society - one where people are free to associate with others and where the power of government is limited and decentralized. The former Communist government in Czechoslavakia banned Havel's writing, and put him prison three times. Ten years ago he helped create the political movement which negotiated the "velvet revolution" - the Czech Republic's peaceful handover of power from Communists to a democracy.