Hello, and thank you for downloading Witness from the BBC World Service. 35 years ago, a document was published that would change the course of Czechoslovakian history. Charter 77 was a petition calling on the Soviet-backed Communist government in Prague to respect basic human rights. It gave birth to a movement that would help bring about Communism's fall.
Luis I'dalgo has been talking to one of the original signatories. It's January the 6th, 1977, Prague. And just before midday, three men set off on a car journey to deliver a pamphlet to Czechoslovakia's communist government. The three men are the playwright van Stav Havel, the writer Ludwig Vasudic, and the actor Parvel Landowski.
And the pamphlet is Charter 77, a groundbreaking call for the Czech authorities to abide by the international agreements they've signed up to and respect people's human rights. It basically was about our common determination to speak truth and to start a genuine dialogue about human rights and call things their right names. Martin Perlet was a young philosophy student, one of the 242 mainly writers and intellectuals who first put their signature to the Charter, that cold Prague winter. I remember I was visiting my parents that day and my father was one of the signatories too.
One fun I think was that we really were good conspirators because we only informed each other that we are both signatories of Charter 77. Only weeks after we really signed the document, it was I think in the Christmas time, 1976. Those three men in the car, the architects of Charter 77, planned to publish it abroad and also in Czechoslovakia. It was to be delivered to official organs of Czechoslovakia, about the car with Vasud Havel and others was stopped by secret police.
And these gentlemen were arrested at that moment, but early January was the beginning of New Era with Charter 77. Nine years earlier, Soviet tanks had rolled into Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring, a brief period of liberalisation and reform. The Soviets had installed a new leader, Gustav Husak, to run the country, which he did loyally along the orbit of Soviet lines. That's just because of his case, so seriously it's here at the Greek day.
I swear by my honour and conscience to be faithful to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the cause of socialism. I shall work for the prosperity of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and observe the constitution and all the other laws of the socialist state. The Doctor of Law himself, Husak was insisted that his government acted within the law, but that wasn't how those who signed the charter saw it. In the 70s, even to make unauthorized copies of something, to use a copying machine was a serious criminal offence, carrying the same penalties, rape.
Playwrights and authors who'd fallen foul of the authorities had to distribute their work secretly, a paid at a time. Musicians suffered too. The plastic people of the universe were a Prague-based rock group heavily influenced by the counterculture of artists like the Velvet Underground and Frank Zapper in the US. And the need to judge and all the scargent and go through hope.
A band from performing publicly at home, they played secretly in farmhouses and other venues. But their arrest and trial in 1976 inspired Harville and the others to write the charter that would help shape the lives of a generation of young Czechoslovaks, including Martin Paluch. Obviously the trial with plastic people was a very important impulsive. I was also a student of Jan Patochka, Czech philosopher who was one of the initiators of the whole movement.
So when I was then asked to join, I did that without much hesitation. The effect of the publication of Charter 77 that January, 35 years ago, was instantaneous. From the next day, obviously things started to evolve with invitations for interrogations, arrests, this public campaign against charter and so on so forth. The government liked to boast that Czechoslovaks had never had it so good, and that only 10 people in the whole country actively opposed them.
Charter 77 exploded that myth. The day after Harville and the others' car was stopped, copies of the original document appeared in several major western newspapers. The 242 people who'd signed it were mainly intellectuals, but there were also factory workers and pro-reform communists. The government couldn't arrest them all, so instead it tried to bury the charter.
This editorial appeared in one state newspaper. The so-called Charter 77 is an anti-state, anti-socialist, anti-people demagogic and libelous rag. Its supporters are a motley group of human and political husbands. They include Buttslav Harville, a man from a millionaire family, Yuri Hayek, a bankrupt politician, and reliable agent of imperialism, and Jan Patochka, a reactionary professor who went to the services of anti-communism.
Two days after that editorial, That'slav Harville was charged with subversive activities, seven others were also arrested. In the weeks that followed, many of those who'd signed had their houses searched and their telephone disconnected. Martin's brother was attacked on the street as he left their parents home. You had to get used to that situation that you live in a kind of jungle that you never know what was going to happen.
They tried to punish you in all sorts of ways. I first lost my driver's license, then I got it back. I was passport. As I said, I didn't have telephones, very frequent interrogations, then from time to time, detention and arrests.
Life was not predictable, but after a while we all got used to it. Martin's wife was detained for several days and his mentor, the great Czech philosopher Jan Patochka, died in March of a heart attack after being released, following a ten-hour-long interrogation. Martin lost his job, as had many others, like this woman, who was secretly recorded at the time. The first two weeks after I signed the charter, nothing happened.
In the middle of January, the director called me and informed me that he found out that I'd signed the charter, and that was that. A week later he called me again and I was dismissed without notice. She'd been interviewed by two BBC journalists who'd entered Czechoslovakia illegally shortly after Charter 77 was published. They managed to meet other dissidents too.
Among the people who signed the charter was one Czech war hero, General William Sake, a highly decorated soldier, who now lives in a tiny flat in the middle of Prague. General, are you coming in? Yes, I am. Yes, you signed a charter which the Communist government here just likes so much.
I am a communist and I think I am sure that all our nation is for socialism, but for socialism it is the right human rights. Socialism is human rights. Do you believe that socialism with human rights can exist? Yes, I am sure that.
Where does it exist? No, it's not, yes, it is there. But in 1968, it is there, and there is a goal to socialism, to the human rights. The government says that what the aim of the people who signed the charter is, is to restore to this country the privileges of the bourgeoisie of the middle class.
Does not lose. If anybody said that it is a liar, the charter 77 prevents the truth. General Sake was later stripped of his title for signing charter 77, but its influence grew, helped by support from outside the country. The opposition movement is spawned, led to the velvet revolution of 1989, which overthrew the communist government.
And to Vatslef Havel becoming Czechoslovakia's president. Martin Paddush became a spokesman for charter 77, and in 2001 was appointed the Czech Republic's ambassador to the United States. He is currently his country's representative at the UN. Louise Hidalgo.
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