40 years since Charter 77

Neither the presence of troops from the then Soviet Union nor the restrictive policies introduced after the events of 1968 silenced civil society's opposition to the totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia. Probably the strongest voice came from a group of people associated under the name Charter 77. It is now 40 years since this group issued their manifesto called the Declaration of Charter 77 on January 1, 1977 with the signatures of 239 Czechoslovak citizens. The declaration accused the state power of not respecting human and civil rights, despite claiming otherwise. The authors of the declaration as well as its first signatories were the political dissidents gathered around the Czech writer Václav Havel, who would eventually become president of Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic. People who signed the charter faced harsh reprisals in the form of interrogations, arrests and police harassment. The government launched a major propaganda operation against the charter climaxing on January 28, 1977, when the authorities organized a meeting of personalities from social and cultural life at the National Theatre in Prague. Many of these personalities signed the so-called Anti-Charter, in which they distanced themselves from the views of original signatories. Despite, or perhaps because of, this repressive campaign, the number of signatories of Charter 77 increased over years 1977-1989 to nearly 1900.