Charter 77 in the Struggle for Human Rights and Civil Liberties
Policy Statement of the International Conference Project
The appearance of Charter 77 on the political horizon of Czechoslovakia marked an essential dividing line in the development of the country after the defeat of the reformatory movement of 1968. It was a flash whose light elucidated the fact that history never ends and that it always remains open. The ideological orientation of Charter 77 – the principle of the indivisibility of liberty and the universal validity of human and civil rights which it professed was in itself a radical challenge to the totalitarian communist regime. Through the Charter, a new epoch of politics began, aimed at the re-establishment of civil society, democracy and legal order, based on the universal acceptance of human and civil rights. The idea of each citizen's responsibility for the state of affairs, and the activities of Charter 77 ensuing from this principle constituted a distinctive moral revolution and lead to the constitution of the initial centers of civil society.
The Charter remains an evidence of the value of personal resolve – people became signatories of the Declaration of Charter 77 from January 1, 1977 mostly because of their own personal integrity; they said their “no” and “yes”, because they could not keep quiet in the face of the official lie. The Charter is thus the history of an act which was given birth by highly moral motives and which became a political act afterwards, since it was driven by the will not to wait for the times to change, but to do “here and now” what is right according to one's conscience, to search for new ways of expression, and to extend the limits of what is possible.
It was also a social experience and the struggle of those who, by their signature on the charter, undertook to respect civil and human rights in their own country and internationally, acknowledging their responsibility for the state of affairs and convicted that civic involvement is worthwhile, and that it will contribute to the development of Czechoslovakia into a country where everyone could live and work as free people.
The Charter became a community of people, each of whom retained their own human and political integrity and outlook, their independence and moral responsibility. Each of the signatories brought their own personality and opinions, and their conception of what the Charter should or could be. The fact that the Charter never ceased to look for its identity, that it kept inquiring into its sense, searched, in often tormenting debates, how to fulfill its pledge, was given not only by the surrounding conditions, but also by the differences in notions of its signatories concerning the meaning of the Charter and possible means of its fulfillment. It was also a constant search for and finding consensus about a common way, and reassurance of mutual solidarity. Without the willingness to find consensus and without solidarity, it would not survive even the first year of its existence.
Documents of Charter 77
In the life of Charter 77, texts published by its spokespeople, and generally known afterwards, were of outstanding importance. This monitoring activity of the Charter elucidated and permeated virtually all spheres of life in Czechoslovakia – social (among others economical legislative and the situation in labor unions), economic a cultural spheres, justice, education, environment, health services, penology, the practices of institutions limiting the free travel of citizens abroad, forms and methods of civic discrimination in employment, the situation of minorities and churches, and the situation in the field of religious law. It was concerned with individual cases to which it wanted to draw attention, or whole areas of life and concerns of the society; the documents often presented the only un-censored source of information about the state of the country. Thus, Charter 77 mapped out the whole Czechoslovakian legislation from the perspective of the international pacts on human, civil, economic and social rights; it documented which Czechoslovakian laws contradicted the international obligations of the republic in detail, and proposed ways of solution. The Charter commented upon many eminent political problems in the first decade of its existence: from 1978 onwards it published annual statements on the military intervention of 1968 and requests to withdraw the soviet armies from Czechoslovakia, later accompanied by more political requests; repeatedly it dealt with the situation in Poland and published many open and brave declarations, such as “Hands off Poland” in December 1980.
International Impact of Charter 77
In this respect, the matters connected with the so-called Helsinki Process are of utmost importance. In the introductory declaration of the principles which the signatories of the Helsinki Final Act should follow, principle VII was included, in which the member countries of the Conference of Safety and Cooperation in Europe undertook to respect the freedom of thought, conscience, religion and conviction, to support the enforcement of civil, political, cultural and other laws, and to act in accordance with international bonds concerned with human rights. By accepting this principle about human rights and liberties, the signatories of the Final Act confirmed the right of the individual to know their rights and duties and to act in accordance with them.
The rise of civil initiatives in communist countries, who asked the governments to act in accordance with its obligations, and requested “to know one’s rights and to act according to them”, presented the Helsinki Process with an initially unforeseen dimension and new dynamics. Citizens who convicted governments of not fulfilling their international obligations entered the picture, and made requests, the legitimacy of which was supported by the Final Act and other international agreements. By critical analyses of the state of human rights and protests against their violation, Charter 77 and similar initiatives in many countries, associated in the international Helsinki federation for human rights, helped in the creation of conditions for an effective pressure of the Western governments on the Soviet-bloc countries at subsequent meetings of CSCE in Beograd, Madrid and Vienna. Thus, the ability of the communist regimes to prosecute the defenders of human and civil rights in their countries was limited. They attempted to do that, nevertheless, finding new, fabricated reasons, yet they had to face domestic civil initiatives, unintentionally involving broader circles of society, and therefore were repeatedly pilloried internationally. By signing international declarations, pacts and agreements about human and civil rights, communist governments entered a trap from which they could not escape so easily.
In due proportion to the increase of activity of those authentic, independent initiatives of citizens, the support and solidarity on the part of the international democratic public as well as the support of democratic governments extended, no matter how precautious it was not to disturb the fragile détente and be pointed out as interference in the internal affairs of other countries. In the context of those conflicts, the principle of non-interference and non-intervention was the matter of meritorious discussion as to when such interference would be justified from the point of view of the principles which were assumed by all participating states as the basis of the Helsinki process.
Remarkable activity was endeavored by Charter 77 in the discussions and contacts with various non-governmental organizations and groups of defenders of peace in the countries of the West, including the German green party, and by its argumentation about the inseparability of the inner and the outer peace, and the connection between civil and human rights and the questions of war and peace, it influenced the attitudes of foreign peace initiatives.
The Charter joined the dialogue and discussion on all consequential questions of the period, and brought its independent contribution to the search for the route out of the world crisis. It was concerned that another voice was heard, apart from that of the representatives of the Czechoslovakian regime, at important international forums, one which would not disguise the truth about the state of affairs in the country under ideological phraseology. Thus it became an important agent in international relationships: the spokespeople of the Charter and its other representatives became respected partners in the discussions with distinguished official visitors to Prague.
A separate page of international impact of Charter 77 was its activity inside the Soviet bloc. In time the Charter established a connection with its natural partners in Poland, Hungary, the Soviet Union, and East Germany, and participated in the creation of an international network of cooperation and solidarity of the defenders of human and civil rights in the Soviet bloc countries; the cooperation of Charter 77 with the Polish Committee of civil self-defense and later with the Solidarity movement opened a new chapter of relations between Poland and Czechoslovakia, and the Czech Republic afterwards.
Charter 77 and the Fall of the Communist Regime in the Last Six Weeks of 1989
The Czechoslovakian route to the democratic revolution was significantly different from how the abdication of the communist party was achieved in neighboring Poland and Hungary, where the peaceful nature of the revolution was determined by agreements between the communist establishment and the opposition. What characterized this process in Czechoslovakia was an incessant confrontation of the establishment with the centers of civil society, from which the democratic opposition gradually emerged. The rejection of proposals for dialogue and requests for the democratization of the system, as well as a persistent policy of hostility towards anyone unwilling to submit to the dictate of the communist regime, characterized the policy of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party even after the representatives of the Solidarity movement became leaders of the government in Poland, and Hungary witnessed an agreement on free elections and the free formation of political parties – even after the fall of the Berlin wall.
Eventually, even in Czechoslovakia the pressure of history towards the creation of a civil society prevailed. Czechs and Slovaks were not liberated from without, although they regained their freedom in the most propitious international circumstances: the miracle of liberty was an act of self-liberation. Two conditions were crucial:
Hundreds of thousands of people in the streets were the first factor. They openly dissociated themselves from the regime which could not find any support abroad; in this sense the fate of the communist power was decided upon in the streets, but also in factories, schools, villages – everywhere; the turning point was, apart from the demonstrations, the general strike on November 27.
The second decisive factor was the ability of the spontaneously emerging representatives of the public – the Civic Forum and the Public against Violence from Bratislava – to gain and retain the confidence of the public, to use the mass movement as a means of pressure on the establishment, and to become the decisive political power in the country, thus securing the democratic transformation.
There the opposition played a major role. By the end of the year 1988, a network of several dozens of independent initiatives with spontaneous distribution of labor had originated in Czechoslovakia. They had their own system of communication, reaching the public through “samizdat” periodicals and foreign radio stations, and maintained many connections to foreign, especially neighboring, countries, and particularly a systematically growing and intensifying network of contacts with centers of political exile. Apart from the initial growth of these civil initiatives, a significant politicization of their programs was obvious. At the turn of 1988 and 1989 one can speak of a political opposition. This opposition’s aim of 1989 was the program of a systematic change. It cannot be doubted that its essence was the route towards democracy. The right of the Communist Party to the so-called leading role was openly challenged.
In connection with this development, the Charter was gradually losing its exclusiveness, and in a sense also its original form, since it became – while being the initiator of the broader movement for the most part – increasingly engaged in the plurality of the parallel actions of the initiatives, which would join ad hoc for particular purposes. Many protagonists of Charter 77 were engaged in other independent communities oriented on politics, mainly the Movement for Civil Liberty, which appeared in October 1988 with an integrated program formulated in the manifesto Democracy for Everyone. Seventy-six out of one hundred and twenty-six first signatories were connected with Charter 77; twenty-one of them had been in the position of the spokesperson of Charter 77 during the preceding twelve years; seven of them had their full addresses listed in the manifesto out of the total of eleven people. The main organizer of the Movement for Civil Liberty, Rudolf Battìk, was the spokesman of the Charter in 1980, the year in which he was convicted and imprisoned for more that five years. The final version of the manifesto was written by Václav Havel. The program of assertion of human and civil rights was never forsaken – it was integrated into the concept of “democracy for everyone”. A similar case occurred with the signature campaign “A Few Sentences” in the summer of 1989.
Until the moment of the final crisis of the regime, which broke out on 18th and 19th November 1989, the opposition was a loose structure of independent initiatives. A radical change occurred in the evening of the latter day, when two civil organizations representing the public were established independently in Prague and Bratislava – the Civic Forum and the Public against Violence. Seven out of the eighteen initial signatories of the original declaration of the Civic Forum were connected with Charter 77, and Václav Havel, one of the three original spokespeople of Charter 77, became the representative of the Forum. However, Charter 77 as such receded into the background as soon as its signatories entered the world of high politics.
Public figures who participated in the Charter, men and women coming from its environment or from the dissent inspired by and cooperating with the Charter, played an important, or even vital part at the moment of the crisis of the regime. Their main contribution was that they managed, both before November 1989 and then during the democratic revolution, to integrate all anti-totalitarian powers and to create democratic environment of coalition, which gave rise to the democratic transformation.
The Civic Forum, in which the signatories of the Charter enjoyed a natural authority, became the prominent political power in no more that two weeks from its establishment. Between 5th and 7th December 1989, the Forum crossed its Rubicon with the decision to assume a significant part of the rule, to enter the negotiations about the new federal government, to assert that the government lead by Marián Èalfa would be appointed on December 10, and its members would be primarily chosen according to a preliminary agreement of the Forum and the Movement for Civil Liberty, and to intervene in the negotiations about the post of the president of the republic.
Such quick development of the readiness and willingness of the Forum to participate on the rule, and to make joint decisions about the transformation of the system from the government, the parliament and the Prague Castle, if not to influence and direct this transformation in a decisive manner, helped the country to minimize the delay of the democratic transformation that Czechoslovakia suffered when compared to Poland or Hungary.
Following November 1989, everyone who was known and distinguished as a person connected with Charter 77 and had the necessary experience and moral and political authority, could immediately make themselves useful: they helped to form a new political representation and the structures of a transforming social system; they participated in the decisions about the direction of the transformation and the new international policy of the country; they took positions in governments and parliaments or among the newly appointed university rectors, among those who were rebuilding the media into instruments of the freedom of speech and the creation of an independent public opinion; some of them founded publishing and newspaper companies. One of the original three spokespeople of the Charter became the president of the republic, and a symbol of the continuity between the new establishment and the democratic tradition of the ante-bellum Czechoslovakia.
Vilém Preèan