ALL TEN of the Charter 77 activists arrested in Czechoslovakia at the end of May now face sentences of three to ten years on charges of subversion 'on a Diensibier [both Charter spokespersons], Vaclay Havel, Ladislay Lis, Vaclay Eastern Europe since the 1950s — could take place at any time after the second ALMOST EXACTLY three years ago, a Czech revolutionary Marxist called Petr Uh! set off across Prague to visit the apartment of a former Czechoslovak CP Central Committee secretary and Politburo member by the name of Zdenek Mlynar. This was to be the first of a wide range of discussions from which came the alliance that launched Charter 77 at the beginning of 1977.
Petr Uhl made his journey in response to a of some nonconformist musicians by a Pragne court on 6 July 1976. Uhl and his friends on the radical left had good contact with the Czech musical underground.
On the day in 1973 when he had completed his four-year prison sentence for his role in the political struggle against the Soviet invasion, Uhl had been greeted by a concert laid on to celebrate his release.
Zdenek Mlynar inhabited another world. For many years a shadowy presence in the upper reaches of the bureaucracy, he was a key figure in the Dubcekite leadership in 1968, though more cautious than some others at that tim With a reputation for astuteness and flexibility he had voluntarily retired into the background after the Soviet invasion. And in 1976 he was the undisputed leader of the Prague Club of Dubcekite former party leaders in opposition to the Husak regime.
Takeover For a long time, radical left and the Dubcekites in opposition had been bad. Many of the latter had supported Husak's takeover in 1969, alliance with him against the open opponents of the Prague Spring.
In the early seeking an alliance with the Russians against the Husak regime, and during the run-up to the European Communist Party summit in July 1976 they had tried to use the Western CPs as a lever to pressurise the intervening against Husak.
Such moves, all aimed at restoring the Dubcekites to leading positions in the party, evoked deep suspicions among other sectors of the opposition. opposition had maintained contact with the Soviet military time, and had also had intermittent contact will une bally cagersa.
people information gained by about other sectors of the opposition end up?
But the efforts of Petr Uhl and others to achieve united action Dubcekites eventually paid off. Mlynar himself was already breaking short-term re-integration of the Prague Spring leaders, and he saw the value of linking up with the younger generation of oppositionists. The alliance thus formed in defence of the musicial underground laid the basis Charter 77 in January 1977.
Extended The general situation in Czechoslovakia in 1976-77 was not especially favourable for any attempt to engage in an open political struggle. Unlike Poland, there was no acute economic CTISIS. Though the «COTONY long-term structural problems, standards of the population had been rising steadily in the first half of the 1970s.
And as East European regimes go, Husak team was strongly entrenched. It had shown the masses is capa s, early gained a lot from the purges of 1970-71, firmly united against any moves for political reform.
for the half million members, 99 per cent of them had long since given up any thought of political opposition despite myths in the West to the contrary. The one social group incipient revolt was the especially working class youth in the industrial cities of the Czech part of the country.
but ine musak regime racea international situation on the Charter's foundation. as the product of the 1968 invasion, its existence and repressive policies remained a bone of contention between Moscow and the Western CPs. And the latter had indeed been focusing 'attention on Czechoslovakia in their growing dispute with Moscow in the mid-1970s. Socialist Challenge 5 July 2979 relations between the hoping lor an *70s, they had swung round to Russians into After all, the Dubcekites mission in Prague for some asked, would certain Dubcekites the former of any for launching suffered from the living the to crush all and the replenished by people who had was purged party which showed signs of young people, and La delicate eve of the Universally recognised base capitalisin, information bulletin].
week in July.
At the same time, the Helsinki review conference was due to open in Belgrade in the autumn of 1977 and some of the East European regimes, notably the Hungarian and Polish governments, would be very unhappy to their painstaking efforts to improve relations with the capitalist world jeopardised on the eve of that conference by a new crackdown against the opposition in Czechoslovakia.
The Charter movement was launched as a campaign to obtain signatures for a short document, the Charter, demanding Czechoslovak authorities observe basic civil polițical rights which were enshrined in Czechoslovak law.
Such demands as freedom of information, oi speech. and fundamental working class demands bureaucratised workers' states. The Stalinist bureaucracy, lacking the independent in the economic field can maintain through denying all political rights to other the first steps which have been taken in building a solidarity campaign.
must see socialists.
especially that the which the already bureaucratic violence.
Secondly, of in the against the regime.
class enjoyed by an apparently power only The ten are: Olka Bednarova, Jarmila Belikova, Vaclay Benda and Jiri Dana Vemenva, Jiri Nemec, and Petr Uhl (editor of the Charter sections of the population.
Any attempt to mobilise sections of the masses in a political struggle to win these rights unconditionally supported The issue of civil rights gave the Chartists two levers for their attempt to prise open the lid of repression. By linking up with the burning concerns of a large number of young people, those involved in the cultural underground, the Chartists could hope to cut a path for the opposition into broader layers of the population and thereby gain a base from movement could withstand the Chartists could use the international conjuncture before the Belgrade conference and the various elections in Western Europe to protect themselves in the short term The slogan of human rights had grown, like a great inflatable balloon, until it had become dominating feature of political landscape in Europe. Despite all the hot air which they blew into it, neither the imperialist balloon. by would be responsible for bursting it. political issue.
Carter administration.
the bourgeoisies nor the Stalinist leaders cared a damn about this human rights But they cared even less to be the ones who seen throughout the world to be This gave the Chartists an opening for political action.
Some Marxists and socialists in the West have been disoriented by the use which some imperialist leaders, notably Carter, have made of human and civil rights. Living in a world of simple schemas they have had difficulty in grasping that at any given moment absolutely heterogeneous class forces in different parts of the world simultaneously make use of the same working class interests in Eastern Europe have involved a struggle for the same rights that were being used for quite different propagandistic and diplomatic reasons by the And because, for a limited time, some of the imperialist powers could harness the struggle in to their own propaganda offensive, these socialists lose sight of the basic
in Czechoslovakia reformist political awareness Survival within the movement.
Others liberties oriented wing occasions took very sharp forms provided a framework within which various ideological and political currents could debate with each other and define themselves. There has been the emergence of various strands of Dubcekite CATCHLO democrats reformist socialists, revolutionary Marxists and libertarians as well as Christian socialists.
The large majority of the Chartists do not necessarily identify themselves with any one strand of political thinking, and many within the movement see themselves purely as human rights camoaigners. Nevertheless. the Charte has brought a new generation of activists to and experience, possible the continuity and development of the anti-Stalinist movement in Czechoslovakia.
However, the basic tenet for the Charter since its foundation has been its ability to sink firm enough roots in the society and to operate in a clear enough direction to ensure its survival in the face of the regime's desire to crush it.
It has been these questions of orientation which have caused the most intense debate The radical left has sought to strengthen the movement's organisation and the pluralism within it, directing its etforts towards voicing the real grievances and concerns of the broad masses of the Czechoslovak population.
notably of the exDubcekites, have sought to limit the movement to the role of a loose protest campaign over civil and the strict application of legal norms. Last year, the more radical and socially of the movement won ascendancy, but the debate continued and on
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The need to build solidarity is now very urgent, as their trial-the biggest in Below OLIVER MACDONALD looks at the significance of Charter 77 and