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this point. Namely, let's ask the practical question of what we in
the West can, in fact, do. What are the practical implications of all
this for us, according- to you?
Kavan:
First of all, one has to start from the premise that there is
very little information available in the West about the actual
situation in the East, and, therefore, the first thing to do is to put
pressure on your mass media to publish articles, opposition docu–
ments, and factual information coming from Eastern Europe in
order to politicize people in the West. We must explain why
what's happening in the East is relevant to them.
Howard:
This is one of the functions of Palach Press, which you run.
Kavan:
Yes, this is one of the many functions of Palach Press. We
orient our work toward the bourgeois mass media, to whom we
offer any kind of information they want without any kind of
political reservation. At the same time, we are in touch with
practically all opposition groups throughout the entire ideological
spectrum, and we supply information from them to the mass
media.
The other thing one can do is to draw conclusions from the
information one receives and to express public solidarity with the
movements in Eastern Europe. One can also translate that soli–
darity into practical help. One should fight the myth that exists
among some groups on the Left that Eastern opposition groups do
not have a political impact, that they don't serve as a first step
towards a new society because many of the demands raised in
Eastern Europe are couched in legalistic terms, in the classical
terms of human rights.
Ideology is so divorced from the reality of Eastern Europe
that it becomes itself a reality of a special kind with a great impact
on the power structure. The legal code works the same way, so
that if the
Charter
'77 people use the legal code to show that the
government is fulfilling its own laws by respecting their demands,
it can have the same impact as the Polish trade union's direct
attack on the Party's ideological claim to represent the working
class. Therefore, even those leftist groups that believe that help
should be given only to revolutionary forces should give help to
Eastern human rights activists.
Help can come at two different levels. First of all, repressive
actions should be publicized. For example, one of the
Charter '77
spokesmen is in prison and soon will be facing exile or a prison
sentence of four to five years. You should expose the condi tions
