The Czechs in a Nutshell

From the publication of its first document in January 1977 until the Velvet Revolution threw the Bolshevik regime into history’s dustbin in 1989, fewer than 1,900 Czechs and Slovaks officially signed the Charter 77 document. Considering that the population numbered 15 million people, this is perhaps not such a dazzling a figure. Considering the constant police harassment, jail sentences (Havel himself served more than four years behind bars) and the loss of jobs and educational opportunities, combined with social excommunication and strong pressure to emigrate, it’s impressive that at least 1,900 individuals were brave and unselfish enough to risk their very existence in the name of some abstract ideals.

Yet the Charter 77 signatories’ courage and rare idealism have not automatically secured them common respect and eternal glory. True, the Civic Forum, which took political power after the Velvet Revolution, was totally dominated by Charter signatories, and hundreds of other Charter people were, quite deservedly, rewarded with official postings as ambassadors, mayors, professors and rectors. But as things usually go in Czech history, the number of opponents to a rotten regime quadruples at the moment the rotten regime is overturned. So as soon as the post-revolutionary euphoria had evaporated, wild discussions broke out about Charter 77’s real impact on the Bolshevik regime.

One of the less creative and most common excuses for not supporting Charter 77 is that the movement “was dominated by reform communists”. As Miroslav Kalousek, a Christian Democrat politician of the post 1989-generation puts it: “I had too little courage, while the Charter had too many Marxists.”

This is, however, quite transparent demagogy. Even though some leading Charter 77 signatories never concealed that they had once been members of the Communist Party, the movement’s official standpoints were always painstakingly formulated to defend human rights issues in general. Some of the Charter’s most high-profile signatories, such as Václav Havel, the Catholic priest Václav Malý or actor Pavel Landovský could hardly be accused of communist sympathies, and in the trio that fronted the Charter as its spokespersons (every year, three new people were elected) there was never more than one ex-communist at a time.

Another objection is that Charter 77 was a social club reserved for Prague intellectuals with personal connections to Václav Havel and his theatre friends. This is also a rather handy excuse. Intellectuals were admittedly represented in large force, but on the list of signatories published after the Velvet Revolution there are surprisingly many railway workers, housewives, cooks and other completely ordinary people who simply saw the Charter as a way to react against the widespread moral corruption that characterized the Husák era.

Only the allegations about Pragocentricism can be said to have some substance. People in Moravia hate to admit it, but the Czech elite has always been based in the capital. So were the Charter signatories, who moreover found it easier to help and support each other in Czechoslovakia’s only city with more than a million inhabitants. It’s fair to say that the number of Charter people became smaller and smaller the farther away you got from Prague, and to find Slovak signatories, you almost needed a magnifying glass.

Today, Charter 77 definitely belongs to history. The movement was formally dissolved in the mid-1990s, and most of the signatories who entered politics in the wake of the Velvet Revolution, have left their offices. Symbolically, the most loaded change took place in the spring of 2003, when Charter 77’s co-founder Václav Havel was replaced as the Czech Republic’s president by Václav Klaus, a sly technocrat, who openly questions whether Charter had any political impact at all.

But that question is somewhat misplaced. The philosopher Jan Patočka, the Charter’s spiritual guru who died from a heart attack during a 10-hour interrogation by the secret police, warned from the very beginning that Charter 77 had more to do with morality than politics. And that warning fits perfectly also as an epitaph:

To the millions of decent people who, for better or worse reasoning, never dared to protest openly against the Bolshevik regime, Charter 77 proved that the Czechs were not a nation of spineless Švejks who would support any rotten regime that happened to be in power (see: National Identity). Of course, there is also a not-insignificant part of the population who detest everything connected to the Charter 77, because it constantly reminds them of their own lack of courage.

Cimrman, Jára