Transnationalism from the Bottom Up: Charter 77 Activists and International Human Rights Networks

• In Event: New Directions in the Study of Czechoslovak Dissidence: Charter 77 in Transnational Perspective

Abstract

The transnational dimension has been present in Charter 77 since its inception and its history cannot be written without it. At the same time, this issue has received only unsystematic attention in the literature so far. The history of the Charter has always been interpreted within the framework of the so-called Helsinki process, which began in the early 1970s and led, among other things, to the creation of the permanent Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Sometimes, the view from a global and transnational perspective goes to the extreme presupposing that there would be no Charter 77 or other human rights advocacy groups in communist Europe without Helsinki. From the local historical perspective, things look differently. Although nobody ever contested the importance of Helsinki, there is hardly any direct causal relation between Helsinki and the origins of Charter 77. This paper intends to offer a view from below. How did the transnational human rights networks look for the Chartists themselves? How did the transnational connections work in practice, and what were their chances, possibilities, and limits? The paper is based on original archival research in Czechia, Great Britain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Hungary, and other countries. The relation of Charter 77 to transnational human rights processes will be shown through the example of three specific organizations, the CSCE, Amnesty International, and the International Labour Organization, each representing a human rights transnationalism that is different in character.

Author

• Michal Kopecek, Institute of Contemporary History CAS (Czech Republic)