Anatomie jedné další zdrženlivosti
The Anatomy of Another Reticence

Charter 77 Documents on the Third World

Summary/Abstract: Although Charter 77, as the most important Czechoslovak human rights initiative of the second half of the twentieth century, focused mainly on upholding human rights in Czechoslovakia, in its universalistic conception of human rights issues, the initiative was also interested in human rights abroad. The article examines the hitherto unexplored relationship of Charter 77 with the countries of the “Third World”, thus pointing to its global dimension. It asks why Charter 77 expressed itself rather sporadically and reticently about events in these countries and why a number of contemporary international political events did not resonate at all within the Charter community. Specifically, it analyses the motivations and factors that led the Charter, or rather specific signatories of Charter 77, to comment on events in Nicaragua, South Africa and selected other countries. The article shows that the interest in international events and, specifically, the Global South was not the result of a coherent strategy. On the contrary, it stemmed rather from the unsystematic personal interests of a narrow group of people who brought international issues into the Charter community. The Chartists’ interest in the “Third World” was motivated by a mixture of factors, including an authentic need to stand up against human rights abuses worldwide. But opinions on the given issues were formed on the basis of limited access to information, or instrumental attempts to relate the foreign situation to specific problems of domestic dissent.

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