In cases of prosecution on political grounds the investigative and judicial organs violate the rights of those charged and those defending them, as guaranteed by Article 14 of the first covenant and indeed by Czechoslovak law. The prison treatment of those sentenced in such cases is an affront to their human dignity and a menace to their health, aimed at breaking their morale.
Finally, the text pointed out that Charter 77 was not an organization; it did not have any statutes. It sought only to serve the general good. It did not pretend to be a political organization but wanted only to introduce a constructive dialogue with the ruling power. It was represented by three spokesmen: Professor Jan Patočka, Václav Havel, and Professor Jiří Hájek.
I said they couldn’t possibly expect our government to conduct a dialogue on these sensitive issues.
What could they do? Jiří wanted to know my opinion.
They’ll raise hell.
But then they’d just be proving us right! He said the petition had already been signed by a lot of people and almost all of our friends.
But no one will ever know about it, I objected. You say right here that they monitor every means of communication.
I saw he was waiting to see if I would sign, but I said I would have to think it over. Even though I had no doubt, I added, that the proclamation was correct about everything, this was precisely what would infuriate the government the most.
Certainly I was doing some shuffling because I kept hoping that Nanda might be accepted at art school and, unlike my friend and courier, I was certain that my signature would be carefully noted, and they would then consider an appropriate punishment.
The police confiscated the final petition even before the three couriers managed to deliver it to the National Assembly, the government, and the Czechoslovak Press Agency. The charter had 242 signatories: writers, philosophers, journalists, priests, and scholars (some asked that their names not be revealed). Later, the number of signatories increased by almost a thousand (Helena was among them).
State Security reacted more furiously than my friends had anticipated. Over the following hours, they began searching the flats of everyone who had signed the charter. They confiscated crates of printed matter and manuscripts and brought in signatories for interrogation; some of the signers subsequently lost their jobs.
For a few days nothing happened. Finally, Rudé právo came out with an article titled “Castaways and Usurpers.” Although I expected the official reaction to be harsh, this piece by the representatives of the journalist cesspool exceeded all expectations. The article was lengthier than the charter itself and cited not a word of the text. It noted among other things:
The international forces of reaction will employ all means and seek out all allies. They corrupt anyone who can be corrupted, they bribe whomever they can bribe, they count on apostates and deserters from the enemy’s camp. They enlist emigrants but also castaways living in socialist countries, those who, for whatever reason — their class origin, their reactionary interests, their vanity, megalomania, apostasy, or notorious spinelessness — are willing to lend their names even to the devil. In their obdurate battle against progress, the international forces of reaction. . often seek the impossible — to revive even political corpses, both from the ranks of emigrants from Socialist countries and from the ranks of class enemies, renegades, and even criminal elements. One of the forms of this pathetic cooperation is the fabrication of all manner of pamphlets, letters, protests, and other trivial calumny, passed off as the voice of “oppositional” individuals or groups, which are then, with great fanfare, disseminated throughout the world.
Among these is the newest pamphlet, the so-called Charter 77, given to certain Western agencies by a group composed of individuals from the ranks of the bankrupt, reactionary Czechoslovak bourgeoisie as well as the bankrupt organizers of the 1968 counterrevolution upon the orders of anticommunist and Zionist head offices. It is an antistate, antisocialist, antipeople, and demagogic piece of libel that crudely and mendaciously slanders the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It is a colorful mix of human and political castaways. Among them are V. Havel, a man from a millionaire’s family; the obdurate antisocialist P. Kohout, the loyal servant of imperialism and his well-established agent, J. Hájek; the bankrupt politician who, under the slogan of neutrality, wanted to detach us from the society of socialist countries; and L. Vaculík, the author of the counterrevolutionary pamphlet “Two Thousand Words.”
The only thing missing was a demand that the aforementioned be summarily imprisoned and put to death as quickly as possible.
At least a few of the names mentioned must have suggested to some readers that the charter was, in all likelihood, thoroughly different from the way it was being presented. Nevertheless, the party functionaries pulled out all the stops, and Rudé právo began printing indignant letters from working-class citizens who railed against the charter, ignorant of its contents.
A couple of days after this furious campaign began, a group of three coal men were delivering some coke to my apartment. I was standing at the entrance to the basement counting the buckets. One of them — he must have heard something about me — leaned over and asked if I happened to have a copy of “that charter.”
I brought them the text. Even today, I can see the three men with tubs on their backs (they had climbed up to the landing). They were carefully holding the onionskin paper in their hands as if it were an ancient parchment and reading the text with rapt and unfeigned interest. They returned it to me and asked if I could get them a copy; they wouldn’t reveal it to anyone, they assured me. I gave them one, and they apparently didn’t snitch.
*
Nanda’s teacher called us in again and delightedly informed us that they had changed their opinion and decided to recommend her for art school. I thanked her, even though it was obvious that the school had simply been given new instructions. I was astounded that the State Security had so quickly made it clear to me that they had taken into consideration the absence of my signature on Charter 77.
The charter was signed by Christians and atheists, opponents of communism, and those who had been expelled from the Communist Party but had remained adherents of socialism. The fact that I did not sign perhaps surprised some of my friends, but no one ever asked me why and no one ever considered me a traitor. Of course, everyone has the right to act according to his own convictions and resolve, and everyone knew I was reluctant to lend my signature to material I had not written myself or at least collaborated on.
Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were repeatedly broadcasting the text of Charter 77 and reporting on how it was being circulated and copied. Now it was up to the government to demonstrate that the petition was actually the work of only a few bankrupt usurpers and castaways. Whenever someone calls its legitimacy into doubt, every totalitarian and occupying power requires that the public conspicuously (it says: “by acclamation”) support it, in order that the greatest number of people abase and immerse themselves in collaborationist mire.
After the assassination of the Nazi Reich protector and mass murderer Reinhard Heydrich, the protectorate government summoned a gathering of more than a thousand citizens on Wenceslaus Square to swear allegiance to Hitler. They brought singers from the National Theater and forced them to sing the national anthem while everyone raised his right arm in the Nazi salute. (In their defense, any manifestation of resistance by those participating in this absurd performance would have resulted in execution.)
Thirty-five years later, during the Soviet occupation, the government, installed by the occupiers, called the foremost artists, primarily actors, to the National Theater. In this building, which from its inception has symbolized national pride, those summoned were supposed to sign a protest against Charter 77.