{"id":252,"date":"2018-01-10T13:13:15","date_gmt":"2018-01-10T17:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/world-politics-2018\/?page_id=252"},"modified":"2018-01-10T13:13:15","modified_gmt":"2018-01-10T17:13:15","slug":"background-on-charter-77","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/world-politics-2018\/background-on-charter-77\/","title":{"rendered":"Background on Charter 77"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"style2\">While you are reading Havel, keep the following background in mind. In 1975, the major western European States, along with the United States, met in Helsinki, Finland for an extended series of talks with the Soviet Union and the rest of the European communist bloc. At this meeting, which led to the signing of the Helsinki Accords on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the participants agreed on three major principles, known as \u201cbaskets.\u201d\u00a0 Basket I was about recognizing the inviolability of international borders and the sovereignty of each state\u2019s government.\u00a0 This was of major interest to the Soviet Union because its bloc contained a number of states, including East Germany, whose sovereignty was questioned by the West.\u00a0 Basket II was about cooperation between states, regardless of their ideological dispositions.\u00a0 Again, this was valuable for the Soviet Union and its allies they were interested in expanded economic ties with the West.\u00a0 As a concession to the West, the Soviet bloc accepted Basket III, which emphasized the importance of human rights and the right of all peoples to self-determination.\u00a0 At the time, no one in the West expected that the communist states would suddenly be transformed into liberal democracies. They merely hoped for a gradual improvement in the human rights situation in the East.\u00a0 However, eastern European dissidents like Vaclav Havel saw an opportunity\u2013a wedge, one might call it\u2013to use this part of the accords to demand that their ernments live up to rights guarantees in their own constitutions.\u00a0 In 1977, Havel and other critics of the regime formulated a document, loosely known as\u00a0 \u201cCharter 77,\u201d which galvanized the Czechoslovak dissident community around the idea of communist reform.\u00a0 Havel wrote \u201cThe Power of the Powerless\u201d in 1979, after he and others were convicted of subversive activities.\u00a0 On Charter 77, see\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charter_77\">http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charter_77<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>For some of Havel\u2019s reflections on Charter 77, see\u00a0<em>Open Letters<\/em>, pp. 323-327.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While you are reading Havel, keep the following background in mind. In 1975, the major western European States, along with the United States, met in Helsinki, Finland for an extended series of talks with the Soviet Union and the rest of the European communist bloc. At this meeting, which led to the signing of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-252","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/world-politics-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/world-politics-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/world-politics-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/world-politics-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/world-politics-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/world-politics-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/world-politics-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/252\/revisions\/253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/world-politics-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}