CZECH DISSIDENCE
123
degree . Of the 242 signatures only 17 were workers. The
government immediately launched a media campaign against the
Charter. Within twenty-four hours every worker in every factory,
every person in every village, knew that there was something very
dangerous called
Charter
'77.
The Minister of the Interior forbade
publication of even an extract of the document, arguing that it
was formulated with such sophistication that people, if they read
it, would not realize how dangerous the document was . About two
million people, he said, would sign it immediately. Therefore ,
there was a fantastic arousal of interest in the document and
people tended to project their expectations into it. They became
enthusiastic supporters of the Charter even before they actually
read it. Though there was a certain disappointment when they
actually read the document, it was not strong enough to break the
movement. At the end of 1978, the movement had a large number
of workers, blue and white collar, as well as people from outside
Prague (though it had begun only in the capital), and it had a
large influx of younger people who really began to think politically
only as a result of the fear created in the country by the Charter
movement. That was, I think , the greatest change that the
Charter achieved.
It
politicized a great number of people.
John Mason:
One of our problems in the West seems to be that the
existing institutions have succeeded in co-opting radical move–
ments and have , to a certain extent, used the legal system or the
cultural character of our protests to depoliticize the movements
behind them.
Kavan:
The capitalist-democratic system as it exists today is defi–
nitely capable of living with an alternative movement of the sort
we are talking about.
It
can absorb it and tolerate it. The impact is
different in Eastern countries because the bureaucratic style of
dictatorship cannot tolerate any type of independent action .
It
can
only function if it is totally universal, if it controls every type of
independent action . Any type of independent activity challenges
not just the particular aspect , but the whole system. Even com–
munities that say, "We want to live with the regime without
conflict, parallel to it, without challenging it," are a threat to the
legitimacy of the system as such. The system, for its own survival,
has to suppress them . By the act of suppression, by continuous
political crushings, a situation is created where any attempt to
think independently, let alone to act independently, means a
permanent struggle with the power center. This results in the
politicization of people.
