SOUTHEAST EUROPE SERIESVol. XXII No. 1(Czechoslovakia)

SOME OBSERVATIONS REGARDING "CHARTER 77"

Part I: The Manifesto: Action, Reaction, and Counterreaction

by Dennison I. Rusinow

February 1977

If efforts by citizens to point out breaches of the Charter of Human Rights and ofprevailing laws are regarded from the outset as criminal actions and are answered withvarious kinds of reprisals and discrimination, this only proves how justified and truewas the criticism contained in the manifesto.

"Charter 77," the Czechoslovak human rightsmovement that came dramatically to life at thebeginning of this year, is the latest, the purest, andpotentially the most important manifestation of asignificantly new form and style of protest thatseems to be sweeping across communist-ruledEastern Europe. The Prague regime’s so farnervous and hesitating response is similarlysymptomatic of the agonizing dilemma that theform and timing of such movements are posing forgovernments in the region and indirectly for others,including the new American administration, whomust at least react to regime reactions if not to themovements themselves.

Common to all these movements is their carefullyexclusive focus on widespread violations of specific"human rights" that are guaranteed by their coun-tries’ laws and international agreements. None ofthem is calling for political reforms that challengethe formal system or otherwise assuming a "dissi-dent," anti-Communist Party of anti-regimestance. This is why their spokesmen so vehementlyobject to inclusion under the Western press’s un-helpful catchall label of "dissidents." Moreover, itis this form, including "internationalization" of thelegitimacy of their demands through appeals tointernational accords signed by their govern-mentsmost explicitly and frequently the "finalAct" signed by 35 European and North Americanheads of government at Helsinki in August1975 that makes it unusually difficult for their

open letter to the Czechoslovak Parliament,from Jill Hiek and Jan Patoka, spokesmenfor "Charter 77," February 1977.

regimes to take the radical steps necessary tosilence them. To do so, as early reactions in theWest have already made clear, would invoke aquality and distribution of international criticismthat would be particularly unwelcome for a varietyof reasons at the present time.

On the other hand, the recent history of theregion also suggests to these same regimes thatinitially insignificant movements of criticism andprotest, if not firmly contained, can grow, jumpclass boundaries to engage more than smallcoteries of impotent intellectuals, and escalate intomajor crises. Three times in a little more than twodecadesin 1953, 1956, and 1968a little licensefor criticism, legitimizing popular dissatisfactionand followed by a client regime’s inability to copeor its initiation of reforms that were unacceptableto the region’s paramount power, has led to Sovietmilitary interventions in one or another of thesecountries. While these restored the old order andmaintained Soviet hegemony, they also raised thespecter of an East-West confrontation with incal-culably dangerous potential. The domestic pricewas invariably high, and the fact that East-Westconfrontations did not take place, because thestakes were so enormous and the challenge to the"national interests" of the Western powers was somodest, offers small comfort to those who knowhow many wars have happened because eventsescaped the control of "decision makers" whonever meant them to happen.

Copyright (C) 1977, American Universities Field Staff, Inc.

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The situation today is different in many impor-tant respects. There have been no demands so farfor structural, political, or ideological reforms thatcould be perceived as challenging Soviet hegemonyor one-party rule, although such demands were infact later arrivals in earlier crises that were ulti-mately resolved by the Red Army. Other elements,however, are again present. In Czechoslovakia andPoland dissenting intellectuals and discontentedworkers appear once more to be finding commonground, a rare event that has always alarmed theirrulers. One is thus entitled to join the East Euro-pean regimes in at least wondering what newchallenge to domestic law and order and then tod6tente, the international order, and possibly worldas well as regional peace may ensue this time ifCharter 77 and its analogues elsewhere are notquickly and effectively suppressed.

These considerations constitute the other horn ofthe dilemma presently confronting the affectedregimes in Eastern Europeand also, in differentquality, the Western powers and public opinionswhose moral and political support the humanrights campaigners are demanding. To put it moreprovocatively: are we not about to be presentedwith more evidence in support of the "S0nnenfeldtDoctrine," here understood as really only a newphrasing for an old view that othersat onemoment including Zbigniew Brzezinskihave alsooccasionally tried on for size and fit? Evidence, thatis, for the view that the only real effect of persistentefforts by East Europeans to gain more indepen-dence from Soviet domination and/or from Sovietsociopolitical "models," given the improbability ofchange in geopolitical realities, the global balanceof power, or the nature of the Soviet system, is tocreate an unhealthy regional instability andperiodic crises that merely threaten East-Westpeace, which is the only supervenient Western andAmerican national interest in the area. If this istrte, it can also be argued that the best Americanpolicy is still to pass by on the other side, quicklyand with only a softly muttered word of sympathyfor Charter 77 and its kin and of disapproval whenthey are suppressed.

Meanwhile, and even without dramatic develop-ments that would require urgent and difficultpolicy decisions by the Westwhich most observersconsider unlikelythe immediate regional impor-tance and human drama of present events and

preparations on all sides for the Belgrade confer-ence that will review implementation of theHelsinki "Final Act" in June 1977 have alreadyinvoked an impressive array of descriptions,analyses, and expressions of concern in the Euro-pean and American press and by spokesmen ofvarious political and ideological predispositions(including the Chinese, who have provocativelyforecast "a new Prague spring"). A selection ofthese provides the basis for this Report, whichshould be considered merely a set of random andpremature observations for nonspecialists who maywish to know a little more about a matter that isnow and in the immediate future of concern toAmerican policy makers and public opinion. It islikewise the immediacy of these questionswhether merely in anticipation of Belgrade or inmore critical circumstancesthat excuses violationof a prudent rule: that in a fluid and rapidly de-veloping situation, with partial and often inaccu-rate secondhand information, one should leave"instant analysis" to newspapers and other instantmedia, whose mistakes of fact, interpretation, oranticipation at least will not be confounded byadditional sources or subsequent developmentsbefore they are even published.

I. Prague ’77

A manifesto addressed to the Czechoslovak auth-orities and state news agency, dated January 1,1977, and signed by an initial group of 242 (in otherversions 257) Czechoslovak citizens was the firstpublic appearance of the informal group of humanrights campaigners who call themselves "Charter77." The signatories came from many social strata,including workers and politically heretofore unex-posed academics and scientists as well as promi-nent political and intellectual veterans of the"Prague spring" of 1968. Excerpts from the mani-festo were published in several Western Europeannewspapers on January 7, and the full textappeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.On the same day Prague police detained at leastfour leading signatories for interrogation as"material witnesses," a status that meant they werenot being charged and could not be held but thatalso deprived them of legal rights to counsel or torefuse to give evidence. All were reportedly releasedduring the evening, but they and others were de-tained again for further interrogation on the nextand subsequent days. This was the beginning of a

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campaign of harassment and intimidation that wasto increase in intensity and in imaginativenessduring the following weeks.

The manifesto begins by invoking the authorityof the Czechoslovak Register of Laws, No. 120 ofOctober 13, 1976, which published (and therebyadopted as domestic law) the text of the Inter-national Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,and of the International Covenant on Economic,Social and Cultural Rights, "which were signed onbehalf of our Republic in 1968 reiterated atHelsinki in 1975, and came into force in ourcountry on March 23, 1976. Since that date ourcitizens have enjoyed the rights, and our state theduties, ensuing from them." Regrettably, the mani-festo says, all of this still exists "on paper alone." Itgoes on to cite by article a long series of rights andfreedoms that are guaranteed by one or the other ofthese two United Nations covenants but system-atically violated by official organs of the Czecho-slovak state, in each case also citing specific modesof violation. The list includes freedom of expres-sion, equality of access to education (deniedbecause of one’s own or even one’s parents’political views or past actions, e.g., in 1968), theright to "seek, receive and impart information andideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, eitherorally, in writing, or in print," freedom of religion,rights to free assembly, to participate in publicaffairs, and to equality before the law, freedom totravel and "leave one’s country," and "other civilrights," including restrictions on "arbitrary inter-ference with privacy, life, the family, home, andcorrespondence." It also notes that Czechoslovakcitizens have no constitutional recourse againsteither arbitrary or systematic violations of civilrights or other laws by state or Party organs.

The manifesto goes on to describe "Charter 77"as "a loose, informal, and open association ofpeople...united by the will to strive individuallyand collectively for respect for human and civilrights in our own country and throughout theworld." It is carefully stipulated that this is not anorganization, has no statutes or permanent organs,and "does not form the basis for any oppositionalpolitical activity." The document ends by author-izing three of the signatories "to act as the spokes-men for the Charter." These are Jan Patoka, 69,former professor of philosophy at Charles Univer-sity; Vaelav Havel, 40, an internationally known

noncommunist playwright who was politicallyactive in 1968, now employed in a brewery; and Ji{Htjek, 63, Czechoslovak Foreign Minister in theDubeek period and a pre-1948 Social Democratexpelled from the Communist Party after the 1968Warsaw Pact invasion. The manifesto also onceagain invokes international legitimacy and supportfor its demands:

By its symbolic name Charter 77 denotesthat it has come into being at the start of ayear proclaimed as Political Prisoners’Yeara year in which a conference in Bel-grade is due to review the implementation ofthe obligations assumed at Helsinki.

First Reactions

Two aspects of the story of reaction and counter-reaction to Charter 77 during the first two monthsof its existence are of particular relevance to anyanalysis of the movement’s longer-range prospectsand significance. One is the formand theapparent uncertaintyofthe regime’s actions. Theother concerns the sources and quality of foreignsympathy for the movement and for the tribula-tions of the manifesto’s signatories, of whom therewere to be over 200 morefor a total of 448---byearly February.

The first mention of Charter 77 by name in theCzechoslovak media, on January 12, was inter-preted by most observers as the initial step in a nowpredictable escalation of the regime’s campaignagainst the movement. Identical articles in RudOprltvo (the Party daily in Czech Prague) and inPravda (the Party daily in Slovak Bratislava) de-scribed the Charter 77 manifesto as "an antistate,antisocialist, and demagogic, abusive piece ofwriting" concocted by representatives of "thebankrupt Czechoslovak bourgeoisie and.., the dis-credited organizers of the 1968 counterrevolution,"who were said to be acting "at the order of anti-communist and Zionist centers." Similar or worseepithets, ominously reminiscent of the language ofthe 1950s, were applied to individual signers"traitors and renegades," "a loyal servant andagent of imperialism," "a bankrupt politician,""an international adventurer" or "a foreignerwithout fatherland who was never integrated in theCzech community" (these last with reference to twoleading Jewish signatories). These quickly became

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common currency in the media and in the dutifulletters and resolutions of condemnation that beganto pour in from factories, trade unions, and indi-vidual workers, soldiers, and intellectuals.

Then, on January 17, the official mediaconfirmed the arrest, already reported in theWestern press, of four persons" playwright VclavHavel, former journalist Jifi Lederer, formerPrague theater director Ota Ornest, and theatricalwriter-director Frantiek Pavliek, all vaguelyaccused of "serious crimes against the basic prin-ciples of the Republic." All four, it is worth noting,had been active supporters of the "Prague spring"of the 1960s and only Havelone of the three"designated spokesmen" of Charter 77, as notedabove, and prominent in the writers’ movementduring the Czechoslovak thaw after 1962was notalso a communist expelled from the Party duringthe post-1968 purges. Two of the arrestedOrnestand Ledererare Jews. (Lederer, an outspokenjournalist of the Dubek era, had already spenttime in prison after 1970, purportedly for slander-ing the Polish state in a series of 1968 articles aboutstudent protests and antisemitism in Poland.) Farmore significantly, although overlooked in mostpress reports, one of the arrested had not actuallybeen a signatory of Charter 77. This was the63-year-old Ornest, also somewhat curiously theonly one of the four identified by his full name inthe first official announcement, which merely listedinitials for the other three. On January 23 Praguetelevision hinted at the nature of the charges thatwould be brought against Ornest (and putativelythe others) by broadcasting a short film, apparentlytaken by the police from a parked car, that showedthe former theater director meeting a man who isdescribed as a Western diplomat in a Prague park,walking and chatting and then apparently ex-changing some papers with him. The film clip,which was also televised here in Vienna, came atthe end of a program about alleged British espion-age activities in Czechoslovakia (a British Ambas-sador of the 1960s was accused by name of being aspy), but the man seen with Ornest was later iden-tified by Western sources as a Canadian diplomatrecently stationed in Prague. Although the Ornestfootage did not really show what it purported toprove, it and a blunt statement by police to Havel’swife that his arrest also had "nothing to do withCharter 77" were clear signals that arrests andtrials would at least ostensibly be on grounds other

than participation in a human rights movementdemanding that existing laws should be observed.

There have been, as of the end of February, nofurther reliably confirmed arrests on formalcharges.

What has happened instead is a continuation ofvilification by the media and through "spontane-ous" letters and petitions (with a brief pause at thebeginning of February) and of the campaign ofharassment that began with the first "interroga-tions" of January 7. The latter has frequentlyassumed basically petty but cumulatively tellingforms. Telephones of adherents of Charter 77 whohad phoned or been phoned by Western corre-spondents were disconnected (except for the phoneof Viclav Havel, apparentlymand a crediblytypical Czech touch--because he was on a partyline). Drivers’ licenses or car registration paperswere revoked on minor technical grounds (e.g., thephotograph on a license did not correspond to aface that had subsequently grown a moustache).One particularly outspoken signatory, the play-wright Pavel Kohout, who had kept police waitingoutside his door for hours on January 8 while hecoolly completed a series of phone conversationswith reporters in Vienna and Bonn, had his wiferoughed up by police, then had his phone discon-nected "in the public interest," and then wasserved an eviction notice from his small apartmentnext to Hradeany Palace (allegedly because it waswanted by the Swiss embassy). A number of signa-tories were summarily fired from their jobsoften,to be sure, the kind of petty or inappropriate jobsthat are all that most supporters of the 1968 reformmovement have been permitted to hold in recentyears, but still a livelihood and protection againstarrest as a "parasite." (Thus, for example, ZdenekMlyngf, a leading reformer, Party Presidium mem-ber, and Central Committee Secretary in 1968, losthis position as an entomologist at the PragueNational Museum.)

Briefly, during the last week in January, itappeared that the regime might resort to the tacticused by East Germany in the case of poet-singerWolf Biermann and by the Soviet Union in the caseof Ivan Bukovski and other "dissidents": expulsionto the West. On January 25 the Czechoslovak Am-bassador in Vienna requested a meeting with theAustrian Foreign Minister, Willibald Pahr, to ask

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for official confirmation of a statement made byChancellor Bruno Kreisky, during a press confer-ence several days earlier, that Austria was preparedto offer asylum to persons requesting to leave orexpelled from Czechoslovakia. The Ambassadorwas reported to have presented Pahr with a list ofeight specific names. For several days Prague radioand television broadcast commentaries and inter-views with irate workers, soldiers, and other citi-zens demanding that signers of Charter 77 shouldgo where their money and orders came from. OnJanuary 28 four leading signatoriesMlyntLKohout, former Party Presidium member andChairman of the National Front Frantigek Kriegel,and writer and social scientist Milan Htibl (plus,according to some sources, Hjek and writerLudv{k Vaculk)---were invited to report to thePrague passport office. There they were verypolitely informed that they could have exit visas ifthey did not like living in Czechoslovakia and that,in contrast to recent East German and Sovietpractice, there would be no question of revokingtheir citizenship if they chose to go. All refused theoffer categorically. In Vienna Kreisky publiclyreaffirmed Austria’s traditional readiness to offerpolitical asylum to all who needed it, a subject hesaid he had raised when on an official visit toPrague some months earlier, but preferably tothose who came of their own free will. Expellingdissenters, he and other Western statesmenwarned, would be a serious violation of humanrights and the Helsinki agreements. In Prague theauthorities promptly announced that the idea thatthey might expel anyone was another slanderdreamed up by Western anticommunists.

Meanwhile, Hjek and Patoeka, the two "desig-nated spokesmen" still at liberty, continued toissue statements on behalf of Charter 77."Document No. 3," dated January 15 and pub-lished in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung onJanuary 24, appealed to the regime to stop thecampaign against the movement, detailed arrestsand harassment to that date, and declared themovement’s readiness to negotiate with the appro-priate authorities. "Document No. 4," datedJanuary 23, and sometimes referred to as "thesecond manifesto," described the methods andcriteria used by Czechoslovak educational auth-orities to deny access to higher education to thechildren of politically undesirable elements,ranging from members of the former bourgeoisie to

supporters of the Dubcek reforms in 1968. Severalprominent signatories, including Hajek andKohout, were still able to maintain contact withWestern correspondents, even including interviewsfilmed in their apartments by Western Europeantelevision crews. Mlynar and Kohout sent openletters to specific Western European Communistand Socialist leaders appealing for support, whichseems particularly to have annoyed the authorities,and in early February Western sources reportedthat Alexander Dubcek, an employee of a foodenterprise in Bratislava, had broken silence to saythat police surveillance had prevented him fromsigning Charter 77.

Some Questions Without Answers

Such details are important, in part because theyraise and then cast some shadowy light, capable ofcontradictory interpretations, on a set of still unan-swerable questions. The first because most imme-diate of these: do apparent inconsistencies in theregime’s behavior, like the lack of further arrests,the brief suspension of the media campaign againstCharter 77 (which began with a Rud pravostatement that it would say no more on the subject),or the apparent flirtation with the idea of expellingsome leading signers, reflect divisions or changes ofmind in the Party leadership, ad hoc responses tothe tactics of the movement and internationalreactions, or successive stages in a consistentstrategy? (A secondary and equally unanswerablequestion, which also serves to remind us that devel-opments in Czechoslovakia cannot be considered inisolation from the vicissitudes of human rightsmovements in the Soviet Union, Poland, and EastGermany, is whether the regime’s actions are dic-tated by Moscow or at least follow prior consulta-tion with appropriate Soviet authorities. Mostqualified observers suspect that neither is the casebecause neither is necessary" authorities in Pragueknow intuitively and by watching Soviet handlingof the Russian human rights movement what wouldor would not be acceptable to Moscow.)

Speculation on this question, of which there is alot at the present moment, tends to reflect the indi-vidual speculator’s presuppositions concerning thepreferences and political strength of theCzechoslovak President and Secretary-General ofthe Communist Party, Gustiv Husik. This in turnhas been a much-debated subject ever since Husik

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came to power as a consequence of Soviet occupa-tion and Dubeek’s fall, but with a reputation basedon his own disgrace, imprisonment, and torture inthe Stalinist period, his Slovak patriotism, and hispost-1962 rehabilitation by and association withthose who shaped the ill-fated 1968 reforms. Forthose who still believe that he is in his heart ofhearts a Czechoslovak Jinos Ktdtr, doing his bestto ameliorate the system and minimize repressionin the face of powerful external (Soviet) andinternal ("neo-Stalinist" or "conservative") pres-sures, it is easy to credit Hustk with instances ofapparent restraint in handling Charter 77, to blamethe conservatives around him (like Alois Indra andVasil Bilak)for arrests and other excesses, and tointerpret apparent wavering between restraint andrepression as a sign of intra-regime disagreementsor even a struggle for power and Soviet support.Those inclined to some variant of this view areciting in evidence the otherwise curiously belatedand moderate nature of Husk’s own publicreaction to Charter 77. Only on January 21, in aspeech before a meeting of the CzechoslovakSocialist Party, did Husttk refer to the movement,and then only to say somewhat cryptically: "Thesituation in our country cannot be influenced bythe fact that a pamphlet against socialist Czecho-slovakia was signed by 200 or 300 people." Indra,speaking at the same meeting, was perhaps signifi-cantly far more severe.

A second reason why the day-to-day experiencesof the drafters and signers of Charter 77 are worthexamining, and in greater detail than has beendone here, is the insights they offer into the na-ture of ordinary life and subtler forms of controland coercion in post-Stalinist Eastern Europe. Oneis reminded, for example, that this is no longer theSoviet bloc of 25 years ago, when a dissenting intel-lectual was not likely to have been working in abrewery as punishment for past crimes againstsocialism or to have had a car, a phone, or perhapseven an apartment to be taken away as punishmentfor unregenerately committing new ones. But one isalso reminded that deprivation of such thingswhile not as dramatic as imprisonment, torture, orforced labor--are sanctions that can prove hard tobear especially in a society in which these are butrecent and hard-won means of ameliorating every-day life, otherwise still characterized by inconven-ience, shortages, and bureaucratic arbitrariness ona scale that already severely strains the patience

and dominates the time of citizens of Prague orWarsaw. And that there is still no recourse againstarbitrary and formally even illegal imposition ofsuch sanctionsor of worse ones, as the arrests ofJanuary 17 were a possibly deliberate reminderfor merely expressing an unwelcome view.

(The above should not, however, create the im-pression that there has been a continuous, progres-sive moderation of coercive sanctions over the past25 years. In 1972, for instance, Prague defied theeagerness for East-West d6tente and other factorsthat were then inducing moderation in the behaviorof most bloc regimes by trying and imprisoningmore veterans of the 1968 reforms than at any timesince the invasion. On the other hand, oppressionin communist Czechoslovakia has always and in theworst periods been subject to random mildness, atvarious times and places, reflecting among otherthings a combination of post-Hapsburg Schlam-perei and Czech civility. A recent conversation withan elderly emigr6 here in Vienna produced anexample that is typically although not necessarilyCzechit might also have been Polish or Hun-garian. It seems that her family had been amongthe largest landowners in a certain part of southernBohemia. Although dispossessed of their land soonafter World War II, they stayed on under commu-nism, living in their castle not only unmolested butas active and particularly respected noncommunistparticipants in public affairsapparently as muchbecause of as despite their class origin. When theRussians invaded on August 20, 1968, my inform-ant was routed out of bed by local police officersand Party officials in search of advice and help inorganizing resistance. According to her story, shetook charge of such actions as reversing highwaydirection signs to disorient the Red Army andmoving the local pro-Dubek radio station trans-mitter from place to place to avoid discovery by theRussiansboth characteristic of Czechoslovakpassive resistance during the first days of occupa-tion. It was over four years later, however, thatanother police official came to tell her that shewould do well to be over the frontier by the follow-ing Monday. She took the hint, but succeeded onlyafter being turned back at four different crossingpoints, although her passport was in order and shehad a transit visa for Yugoslavia; apparently shewas already on a list of people to whom exodus wasto be denied. She finally got out partly because shechose a border crossing to Hungary, not Austria or

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West Germany as in her first attempts, and partlybecause she encountered an elderly border officialwho by coincidence had served under her fatherbefore the war and who recognized the name. It isincidentally worth adding that I asked her whetherher family was Czech or German, since most largelandowners in southern Bohemia used to beGerman-Bohemians, and she is indistinguishablybilingual. "Austrian," she snapped back. Becausethe name is Bohemianized French, this is probablytrue.)

What relative judgment do we therefore pass onwhat is now happening in Czechoslovakia and else-where in Eastern Europe? Where do we place theseevents in a typology of objectionable forms of sup-pressing freedom and violating civil rights thatranges from the methods employed in these samelands only recently (and in many lands on othercontinents today) to, let us say, the methods of theMcCarthy era in the United States, when "merely"blacklisting and other forms of publicly sanctionedeconomic and social ostracism were frequentlyquite effective and eventually rejected as politicallyand morally intolerable? And is there a significantcorrelation between a country’s place in such aspectrum of suppression and its level of socio-economic and political "modernization"?

Whether or not they set about doing it con-sciously and deliberately, at least so far the Czecho-slovak authorities are in effect attempting to applyto Charter 77 what might be called a strategy ofMinimum Necessary Repression. (Not a bad stra-tegy, incidentally, for a modern authoritarian statewhose rulers wish to maintain monopolistic polit-ical power but with the least possible publicphysical coercionor what Eastern Europeans call"administrative measures"either as a matter ofprinciple or to avoid international opprobrium ormore concrete sanctions.) The reactions of the tar-gets of this strategy and of the outside world areaising another pair of questions that also make thedetails of the story worth examining: What kind ofcourage does it require to resist such a strategy?And what does our own (American and WesternEuropean) attitude to Charter 77, the Pragueregime’s response, and their analogues elsewhere inEastern Europe tell usperhaps to our surpriseabout our possibly subconscious expectations ofthese regimes and their peoples?

Despite similarities to be found in the Polish,East German, and Soviet human rights movementsand regime responses to them, there is certainlysomething "very Czech" about both the Pragueregime’s methods and the particular quality ofcourage displayed by Charter 77’s adherents. It is aclich6 of contemporary history, rather overused in1968, that Czechs and Slovaks are prudent "goodsoldier Schweiks" who do not fight when the oddsare absurdly unfavorable, unlike their Slaviccousins the Yugoslavs, who do and who incidentallytend to win, again absurdly. But the Czechs andSlovaks do have a kind of courage of their own.Anyone who visited them in the first months afterthe invasion of August 1968, as I did, saw this verymovingly displayed. Then, in October and Novem-ber and in Bratislava and in Prague, I had theprivilege of experiencing a rare event in humanhistory, of witnessing an entire nation standing upand crying with one unanimous, quiet, nonviolentbut firm voice: "Let my people go!" It did not dothem any good, and they were not so unanimouswhen this finally sank in on them a few monthslater, but that is not the point. The point is that itwas dangerous to say and do things so many ofthem were saying and doing that sad autumn, andthey knew it. It was not dangerous, however, in thesame way that it is dangerous to take up armsagainst a powerful enemy or invite the angry atten-tion of authorities that have a known predispositionto kill or torture citizens who disagree with them.Although imprisonment was a risk of unpredictablemagnitude then and is so again today, it is morelikely now, as it was then, that official sanctions willusually take the form that the regime has tended toprefer ever since "Stalinism" became a bad word"the kind of undramatic, often pinpricking harass-ment that makes life as well as protest dreadfullyinconvenient to downright unpleasant.

I don’t know whether it takes more courage toface death, torture, or other dramatic and heroicpunishments for standing up and being counted, orto face undramatic and unheroic sanctions likerepeated summonses to the police for ostensiblypolite interrogations or arbitrary deprivation of adriver’s license, a telephone, an apartment, or ajob. But it surely takes a different kind, the kindthe Czechs and perhaps the Slovaks seem to spe-cialize in, to persevere in defiance of systematicharassment that makes life very uncomfortable butthat does not make one a hero or a martyr.

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Perhaps, then, this is their way of making up, witha touch of deprecatory self-irony, for their failure toshow the Yugoslav kind of courage in September1938, in February 1948, or in August 1968. At leastthis seems to emerge from an otherwise also inter-esting exchange between one of the signers ofCharter 77, former Prague University historianKarel Bartogek, and Franqois Fejt6, a leadingFrench specialist on Eastern Europe. It took placeduring a Paris-Prague telephone interview in mid-January, just before the first arrests"

Fejt6: And what is the attitude of the auth-orities?

Bartogek: They continue to harass us. Summonsto the police, interrogations, searches.It is evident that the police have in-structions to respect legality: in no casehas the limit of 48 hours of provisionaldetention fixed by the law been ex-ceeded. It seems to me that the govern-ment doesn’t want to aggravate thesituation and give the affair a spectacu-lar character.

Fejt6: Yes, I also think that it would not bewise on their part, a few months beforethe opening of the Belgrade conference,where they will be asked to account forthe manner in which the Helsinkiagreements have been implementedBut do you think that your action caninduce the authorities to change?

Bartogek: To tell the truth, I don’t think so. I be-lieve they will not yield. They will try tointimidate us, to divide us, to discour-age us, once again, by making it clearthat our initiative is without effect.Never mind. In the long term our actionwill appear as having been necessaryfor the health of our soul, for the na-tional conscience. 4

The answer to the question of durability of thiskind of courage and determination must depend onthe individual and the circumstances, but the evi-dence of recent Czechoslovak history is not encour-aging. The massive "good soldier Schweik" nonvio-lent resistance of the Czechs and Slovaks duringthe autumn and winter of 1968-69 flaked away in

little shards in the face of persistent "salami tactic"counterreformation. The metal workers who inDecember 1968 had sworn to strike if the noblest ofthe reformers, Josef Smrkovskp, were forced out ofthe Presidency of the National Assembly, did notstrike when he wentunder the pretext of fairSlovak representation. The printers who in January1969 swore not to typeset attacks on the principlesof 1968 did refuse to produce the first issue of a newhardline newspaper, Tribuna, but subsequentissues were published unmolested. And a reformedtrade union organization that had cried its defianceof renewed party dictatorship and reduction to a"transmission belt" at its Congress in January 1969succumbed without a further whimper when Sovietpressure was increased after the "ice-hockeydemonstrations" at the end of March.5 The arrestsgenerally came later, for those few who still had notlearned. On the other hand, the human spirit seemsto have remarkable recuperative powers. Most ofthe signatories of Charter 77 who had been involvedin the Prague spring of 1968 may have graduallysuccumbed to unremitting intimidation, humbly ifsullenly sitting on their hands for the past five, six,or seven years. But when the manifesto of January1, 1977, was offered to them, some subtle battery ofcourage and shame had apparently been recharged.And they were joined by hundreds more who hadnot previously been exposed to official reprisalsbecause of involvement in the Prague spring, andwho therefore were hazarding more by exposingthemselves at this late date, but who for somereason or other have chosen to stand up now. Thisis probably what is most impressive about Charter77.

Meanwhile, Western European and Americanpublic and official opinion, speaking through thepress and with the voices of President Carter, PrimeMinister Callaghan, Chancellor Kreisky, SocialistInternational President Brandt, the heads of mostWestern European communist parties, and manymore, have endorsed Charter 77 and other Sovietbloc human rights movements and condemnedefforts to suppress them with a vehemencenormally reserved for at least a military action onthe scale of Hungary ’56 or Czechoslovakia ’68.This unprecedented passion is being explained interms of the "spirit of Helsinki" (or guilty surprisethat Czechs, Russians, Poles, and East Germansare taking "Basket 3" so seriously?), tactical man-euvering before the Belgrade conference, a new

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international public mood that suffers infringe-ments of human rights less gladly than of late, and(in the case of the American government) a newadministration’s need to be seen taking the highmoral tone and pledges of a recent election cam-paign seriously. One also suspects that manyWestern citizens and governments, and not onlythe Czechs and Slovaks, may be expiating a senseof guilt about their behavior in 1968.

All of these probably are factors, but the passionaroused in the West by Charter 77 and its ilk mayhave another facet that has generally been ignored.Once upon a time, in the heyday of the Cold War,most of the kinds of people who are presently soincensed over the Czechoslovak regime’s treatmentof the Charter 77 movement expected far worse ofSoviet bloc regimes, assumed there was nothingthey could do about it, and were regularly provedright on both counts. As revolutions fought classenemies and then turned to devouring their ownchildren in the purges of "Titoists" and other sup-posedly insubordinate native communists thatmarked Stalin’s last years, it was heads and nottelephones that were cut off. And today whathappens to dissenters, to human rights, and tofreedom and political participation is demonstrablymore shocking in many countries, including severalfrom which the Field Staff reports, than in the newsfrom Prague, Radom, East Berlin, or even Moscowthat has commanded the headlines and roused theconscience of the West in recent weeks.

This observation suggests two possibilities. TheWestern world’s present indignation is merely anupdating of the old (Cold War) double standard,according to which our Western "bourgeois" gov-ernments and peoples were scandalized whencommunist regimes trampled on human rights,violated their own laws, and were generally beastlyto citizens even suspected of dissenting, but madeexcuses or looked away when right-wing dictator-ships in "our" half of a then supposedly bipolarworld did the same sorts of things. Or it is a quitenew and perhaps unconsciously adopted doublestandard, one that somehow expects these commu-nist states to come closer to our own (also imper-fect) behavior in the area of freedom and human

rights than we feel we have reason to expect ofmany states in the Third and Fourth Worlds ofAfrica, Asia, or Latin America.

If the latter is the case, why? Is it, as coltrrnnistAnthony Lewis recently suggested, because we findit easier to empathize with "people who are morelike us," which presumably means that most of usare still white European racists under the skin? Orhas some more subtle change taken place in ourpreconceptions and consequent expectations ofcommunist societies, at least in Europe? The mostthat can be said with any certainty is that Westernreactions to current events appear to indicate thatbehavior by these regimes which would have beenconsidered relatively unbeastly 25 years ago is nolonger regarded as tolerable, and that there is atleast some genuine expectation that internationalobjections to such behavior may really have someeffect. Time will tell, perhaps very soon, whetherthe regimes in question deserve the implied com-pliment.

Among those whose support of the EasternEuropean human rights movements is for severalreasons of particular significance are, of course, theItalian, Spanish, French, and other "Eurocom-munist" parties of Western Europe. The catalogueof their statements in defense of Charter 77 in par-ticular and of their criticism of efforts to suppresssuch movements throughout the Soviet bloc is im-pressive in quantity and quality, in the number andimportance of the Western communist parties thathave spoken up, and in the authoritative level fromwhich many such statements have come. Althougheach of these parties has pressing domestic reasonsfor taking the stand it has, there is no evidence orunchallengeable logic to support suspicions thatthey are insincere or merely opportunistic in doingso. It is worth recalling that the occupation ofCzechoslovakia in 1968 was the occasion for thefirst mammoth, public, no-holds-barred criticismof Soviet methods by most of the parties now called"Eurocommunist." For them, too, Czechoslovakiarepresents a particularly sensitive point.

The significance of their views will be consideredfurther in Part II of this Report.

NOTES

1. From the "authenticated translation" published in TheTimes {London), February 11, 1977. Another but poorerEnglish translation, for the small circulation New Leader ofJanuary 31, 1977, had already appeared in the New YorkTimes (January 27), the International Herald Tribune{Paris, February 1), and the Guardian {London, February 3}.Although the full text was available in the West at leastsince January 7, when the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitungpublished its German translation, it is interesting to notethat {at least as far as I have been able to determine) noother mass circulation Western newspaper seems to havecarried the complete version until the New Leader producedits English rendition nearly four weeks later. Here is an

irony typical of many East-West polemics. Eastern regimesorganize mass popular campaigns against statements or

documents that they decline to publish, so that their citizensare asked to condemn what they have not and cannot read.But Western opinion is similarly asked to be in favor ofstatements that here, too, are hard to find and read in full.The reasons for nonpublication may be different, but theconsequences are analogous. With this in mind (and alsobecause it represents an improved translation), the versionpublished by The Times is reproduced as an Appendix tothis Report.

2. The most detailed and best running accounts that have sofar come to my attention here in Vienna are those carried bythe Frankfurter Allgemene Zeitung, the Financial Times ofLondon, and Le Monde in Paris {primarily from their first-rate correspondents in Vienna: Viktor Meier, Paul Lendvai,and Manuel Lucbert), Austrian radio and television (ORF,also utilizing its own and West German television’s inter-views with signatories in Prague and Czechoslovak exiles inthe West), and in the Research Reports of Radio Free

Europe (see especially Czechoslovak "Situation Reports"1-7 [January-February 1977], for particularly useful dis-tillations of both Eastern and Western reporting).

3. Even the British, with the French the modern inventors(so to speak) of the "liberal myth" of inviolable human rights,can occasionally still move to an intermediate position onsuch a spectrum. On February 8, the same day that Reutersreported from Prague the open letter quoted at the be-ginning of this Report, the same (British) news agencyreported from Strasbourg on a hearing before the EuropeanCourt of Human Rights, which was considering Irishcharges of violations occuring in Ulster: "...Mr. Silkin [U.K.Attorney General] said today his government was not con-

testing the commission’s findings... [He] told the panel of 18judges that British forces would never again use the so-called ’five techniques’ of interrogation about which Irelandhad complained. These are hooding a prisoner, harassinghim with noise, putting him on a bread and water diet, de-priving him of sleep and making him lean against a wall forlong periods, off balance with arms outstretched." Every-thing is relative, as the saying goes!

4. Translated from Le Figaro (Paris), January 16, 1977. Cf.Pato!ka’s statement, quoted in the Washington Post, thatCharter 77 was necessary to restore a "certain moraldignity" to people.

5. Cf. Vladimir Kusin, Political Grouping in the Czecho-slovak Reform Movement (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1972), pp. 39ff. and passim.

6. Comprehensive lists and summaries for the first weekscan be found in the RFE Reports cited in note 2 above.

-11- DIR-l-’77APPENDIX

Full.otext C 7 manife,s:to

The follo is’irst is all<wed to,be ptfllihed no article 8 in the second=mentionedauthenticated translation of the: open criticism can be made of a’b-! covenant.Czechslovak hum rights mani- normal social lhemornena no pu.’b- Fu.rther civic flights, t.ncludingfesto, Charter 77, to reach,London

In ..the Czechoslovak Register ofLaws No 120 of October 13, 1976,texts were published of the Inter-n,atio.na.l Covenan on Civil. andPolitical Rights and of the Inter-national Covenant on Economic,Social and Cultural Rights, whichwere signed On behalf of our re-.public in 1968, reiterated at Hel-sinki in 1975 and came into forcein our c0un.try on March 23, 1976.From that date our citizens haveenjoyed the rights, and our statethe duties, ensuing from them.The human rights and freedoms

underwritten by these covenantsconstitute features: of civilized lifefor which many progressive move-merits have striven throughout his-tory and whose codification could.greatly assist humane developmentsIn our society.We accordingIy welcome the

Czechoslovak Socialist Republic’saccession to those agreements.Their publication, however,

serves as a powerful reminder ofthe extentt0 which basic ’humanrights .in. our country exist, regret’tably, on paper alone.The right to freedom of expres.

sion, for example, guaranteed bararticle 19.: of the first-mentionedcovenant, is in our case purelyillusory. Tens of thousands otour citizens are prevente._d fromworking in’their own fields forthe sole reason, that they holdviews differing from official ones,and are discriminated againstand harassed in all kinds of waysby the authorities and publicorganizatio,ns. Deprived as theyare of any means to defe.ndthemselves, they become victimsof a virtual apartOeid,Hundreds of thousands of other

citizens are denied that :’free-dora from fear" mentioned inthe preamble to the firstcovenant, beihg condemned to theconstant risk of unemploymentor other penaltie if they voicetheir own opinions.In violation of article 13 of

the second-mentioned covenant,guaranteeing everyone the rightto education, countless youngpeople are prevented from study.lng bdcause of their own viewsor even their parents’. Innumer.able citizens live in fear of theirown, or their children,s rightto education being withdrawn ifthey should ever speak, up inaccordance with their convictions,Any exercise of ,the’ right toseek, eceive arid impazt infor-

ma,m a,rd, ideas of all kinds,regar,dles o-.floners, ei.herorally, in wrifixrg or in pdxt or

in the f,ocm of art specifiedIn Ar,ide 19. clause 2 of the firs,tcovera,r is fol,lowed by ex,tra.judicial and een judicial sac-ti.ors, often in he frm of criminalcharges as i,n th recent trim ofyoung_ m.usi,ci:ns.

Freedom- o ptblic exp:resson istnhi,bi.ted by the centrlized can-trol of all the c0mmunicatinmedia and f ptblish.ing and cul-tural in:sti,tu.t.ions. ,No philosalhi-cal. oH,tical or sden,tffic view orartisc ctvity float depas everso siig,hdy fam he n:az,row ho,undsof officia:l i,dalagy or aesthetics

l,ic dfem:e is p.ssble against falsea.nd insulting chages made noffic opagandae legal p-tecon against aa,cks on nourand r.epmon dely g:ua,n-ed by a,de 17 .of Che firstcov ts in prance non-,exis-tern fse usafiOs cav,t berut,tda actempt o securecompefi, cormfionth, :e c is furl]e; n,oopen dbte a,lI: thedomin of oug.ht and .My sol, fis:, awtis.ts

and s e peniz fr hav-i lega,Hy p.bllsh or expressed,y;e o, oni ch are con-d:m,n by ihe who ’hl po,li.cal pow tay.Frdam of religious confesslan,

emphaOly avteed by aicle18 e first coenan:t; is con.finuay curtail by atrar_yoffici’a,1 action by interferencewith he acvRy. churchmen,who are constantly threatened bye rusal of the state to permithem the exercise of heirfuncfios, by the withdraa,I

such permission by financialr oer Sransa,ctions agains thosewho express their religious fai.thord or action- by coasainfs

on velious aining and :so "fh.’One insu,ment fov the curtail.mt or in many cases completoeli.ruination many civic ri’tsis the system ,by which all a,tion.ali,nstifions a,nd ganizations aroin ect ’Sject to politicaldirfives m e ma.inerye ruling par and decision,smae by powerful individuals.e constitution of the repub-tc, its la,ws and lal no,rms donot regulate e fore cont,%e isuing or applicati’ of suchdecisions ey ate ten onlyv o,ut verbally, unknown-to

9bl[c at !.ge. nd beyits po,e [0-hT ;--flbi ’oin-stars are tmible to no onebut themselves and their own hier-archy; yet they have a decisive.impact 0n he decision-making anexecutive organs o,f government,justice, rade unions; interestgroups ad all other orgazafions,of the other poti,fical pa,rfies,enter,prises, actoties, stitufions,ffices and so on,. for whom heseins’ucfions have precedence evenbe’fore the lw.Where organizations or indi-

dUals, in the interetafion aftheir righ.ts and duties, come intoconflict th such directives, theycannot have recourse to any non-pr auofi,, since no suchexist. This consfites, of course,a serious limitation of e figh,tensuing om articles 21 and 22 ofe first-mentioned covenant,which provides for freom ofassociafi and forbids any resec-tio on its .exercise, from arcle25 on the right to "take part: ine conduct of public affairs, andfrom acle 26 stipulating ualproration bY e law outdiscrimination.

This se of affairs likese pre-ven, workers and oers fromexercising the rescted ght tombli.sh ade unions and erorganizations to prott:reconomic and social intrusts, andfrom freely enjoying e right toske prodded for in clause 1 of

the explicit pro’h,bition of abl-trary Interference with privacy,fa,mil.y, home or corres,ponc[ence(article 17 of the .first. coverrant),are. seriously vitiated by thevarious orms of interference-inhe pri.vte’ life o citizens, exer-cis,ed by the M4nistry o,f the .In,teri,or, for exa,mp’le y buggingtelei/aoes and houses,, openingmai, ollowing personal move-ments, searching-,homes, settingup newo,rks of neighbourhood in-formers (olften ecruited by illicitthreats or promises) and i.n otherway. /

The ministry frequen,tly Inter-feres in e,mployers’ decisions, in-sti,gates acts :of discriminati.n byauthorRies and oganizations.brings weight to bear on theorgans of justice and even orches-trates propagan,da campaigns inthe media. This acti.vity isgoverned ,by no law and, beingctandesine, affo,rds the citizen noCha,nce to defend himself.In cases of prosecution on poli-

tical grounds the investigative and’judicial organs violate the rightsof those charged and of those:defending them, as guaranteed byarticle 14 o the first covenant andindeed by Czechoslovak law. Theprison treatment of those sen.tenced in such cases is an affrontto their human dignity and amenace, to their health, beingaimed at breaking their morale.

Clause 2, article 12 of the firs!covenant, guaranteeing’ every citi-zen the right to leave the country,is co,nsistently violated, or underthe pretence ’of "defence ofnational security is subjected tovarious unjustifiable conditions(clause ). The granting of entryvisas to foreigners is also treatedarbitrarily, and many are unableto visit Czechoslovakia merelybecause of professional or personalcontacts with those of our citizenswho are subject to discrimination,

Some of our people--either inprivate, at their places of work.or by the only feasible publicchannel, the foreign mediahavedrawn attention to :the systematic..violation of human rights anddemoceattc freedoms and de-manded amends in specific cases.But their pleas have reflaainedlargely ignored or been madegrounds for police investigation.

Responsibility for the main-tenance of civic rights in ourcountry-,naturally devolves in thefirst place on the political andstate authorities. Yet rot on,ly oftth6m everyone ears his share ofresponsibitifo .the conditidnsthat prevail and hccorngly alsofor the observance of legallyenshrined agreeme:rts, bindi,ngu,pon all individuals as: well asupon governments,

It is this sense of co-respomi-bi,lity, our belief i;n the importa,nceof its conscious public acceptanceand the general need to give inew nd move effective expressionthat led us ,to the idea of creangChavte,r 77, whose inception wetodaypublicly announce.

Ch.aer 77 is a loose, i:nformala.nd op:en ’associa:tion of people ofvaxious shades of opinion, faithsa,nd professions united by the will

to strive individually and collec-tively for the respecting of civicand human ,rights in our oncountry and throughout ,the world--rights accorded to all me.u .bythe two mentioned internationalcovenants, by the Final Act of theHelsinki conference and bynumerous other internafio,na!documents opposing war, violenceand socia’t or spiritual o,ppression,nd which are comprehensivelylaid down in the UN UniversalCharter of Human Rights.Charter 77 springs ,from a back-

giound 0f friendship and sol4-d.arity among people xho shareour concern for those ideals thathave inspired, and continue toinspire, their lives and their work.

Charter 77 is not an organiza-ticm; it has n,o rules, permanentbodies or for,real membership. I.embraces everyone who agreeswih i.ts ideas and participates in,its work. It does not form thebasis for .any oppositional politicalactivity. Like many similar citizeninitiatives in vari,ous countries,West and East, it seeks to promotethe gdneral public interest.

I,t does not aim, then, to setout its own platform of politicalor social reform or change, butwithi,n i.ts own field of impact toconduct a constructive dialogueWith the political and stateauthorities, particularly by draw-ing a.ttention to individual caseswhere human and civic rights areviolated, ,o document suchgrievances and sugges.t remedies,to ,make proposals of a moregeneral character calculated to re-inforce such rights and machineryfor Protecting them, to act as in-termediary i,n situations of conflictwhich: may lead to violation ofrights, and so forth.By its symbolic name Charter 7

denotes that it has come intobeing at the start of a year pro-claimed as Political Prisoners’Year=-a year in which a confer-ence in Beige’sale is due to reviewthe i.mpl’ernentati.on of thobligations assumed at Helsinki.As signatories, we hereby

atthorize Professor De JanPatocka, Dr Vaclav Havel andProfessor Dr Jiri Hajek to actasthe spokesmen for the Charter.These spokesmen are endued withfull authority to represent it vis-a-vis’ state and other bodies, andthe public at home and broad,and their signatures attest theauthenticity of documents issuedby the Charter. "Phey will have usand others who join us as theircolleagues, taking part in anyneedful negotiati,ons, shtulderingparticular tasks and shaxing everyregonsibility.We believe that Charter 77 will

help to enable all the citizensof Czechoslovakia to work andlive as free human beings.