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DISENT A ĽUDSKÉ PRÁVA

100%

Kmeť N.

Studia Politica Slovaca: časopis pre politické vedy, najnovšie politické dejiny a medzinárodné vzťahy

2008

vol. 1

issue 1

5 – 20

The study analyses the attitude of the Communist regime towards dissent and towards human rights. It outlines the origin, development and outcomes of the human rights movement and in this framework it evaluates the role of the members of dissent. The author points out that during the Communist Party’s rule, human rights were not observed, they were interpreted from the perspective of social classes and were subject to the power interests of the regime. The author then describes the difference in understanding of the concept of human rights between the East and the West, where the attitudes of either block have been infl uenced by the motivation to release international tension and economic cooperation. In the next part, the author clarifies the double-faced attitude of the Czechoslovak political leadership towards the country’s obligations resulting from their signing of the Helsinki Final Act. In conflict with this agreement, the European socialist states exercised various forms of prosecution of those individuals who advocated respect for human rights. The study emphasizes that operations aimed against Charta 77 presented a double-edged sword for the political leadership. Both in the intellectual setting and in the official structures there was uproar about keeping the wording of Charta 77 secret from public in backstage communication. When Anti-Charta, orchestrated by the regime, was signed, groups of workmen and collective farmers showed discontent over the fact that the wording of Charta had not been publicized, as a result of which the general public did not know what they actually disapproved of. In the period of harsh repression by the regime people associated in groups, which began to clearly and openly show their discontent with the current social order. Communist reformers were replaced by dissidents. With regard to their activities, the author considers important the fact that advocacy and respect for human rights became a matter of a group of people or of individuals without any institutionalization. The dissidents offered political leadership dialogue about human rights formally anchored in the Czechoslovak legislation. The closing part of the study offers a picture of growing initiatives of the population in the period following the coming of Mikhail Gorbatchev into power, and considers these initiatives the beginnings of a civic society. The author views the Helsinki process enhanced by the influence of Charta 77 and other independent activities based on the public’s participation as a movement that resulted in the transformation of the social and political order in Czechoslovakia in 1989.

INTELEKTUÁLI V SLOVENSKEJ POLITIKE PRED A PO ROKU 1989

84%

Kusý M.

Studia Politica Slovaca: časopis pre politické vedy, najnovšie politické dejiny a medzinárodné vzťahy

2008

vol. 1

issue 1

54 – 73

Without intelligentsia, particularly without intellectuals, there would be neither Communist ideology, nor Communist movement. Intellectual personalities (actors, writers, social scientists and also teachers) gradually, more or less conspicuously, left the Communist ranks. Their active participation grew into anti-Communist dissent. In Slovakia, this process was inconsistent and stopped somewhere halfway through as there was no compact or powerful intellectual dissent such as Charta 77 or the Polish KOR. When speaking about the Czechoslovak dissent launched by Charta 77, concentrated in the Chartist movement, which during the „Velvet Revolution of 1989” transformed itself into the „Civic Forum” (Občanské fórum), we mostly speak about the Prague events. Unlike their Czech partners, the Slovak intellectuals, who stood at the roots of the opposition movement „The Public against Violence (Verejnosť proti násiliu)”, were mostly members of the Communist establishment. The transformation process of the Czech Civic Forum and the Slovak Public against Violence produced new winners of the parliamentary elections of 1992, who were clearly and unambiguously separate both from the Czech intellectual dissent and from the Slovak intellectual elite and who divided Czechoslovakia into two independent states: the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. The new situation in the post-Communist Slovak Republic very strongly suggested certain analogies with the intellectual attitude to politics during the Communist era. The victorious Movement for Democratic Slovakia (Hnutie za demokratické Slovensko) came into power, supported by part of the Slovak intellectual representation in a similar manner as did the Communist Party following the events of 1948. Vladimír Mečiar, President of the Movement for Democratic Slovakia, unwittingly managed to gather the Slovak intellectual elite under an umbrella of intellectual dissent. At that time, the main priority was getting rid of Mečiar and mečiarism, i.e., of his principle of one-leader management, which is inappropriate in the context of democracy and which is bred by pre-democratic and anti-democratic societies. The situation, by which the Slovak society became visible before the fall of mečiarism in 1997, could, from a certain perspective, be described as a crisis of political elite.

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2 Studia Politica Slovaca: časopis pre politické vedy, najnovšie politické dejiny a medzinárodné vzťahy

1 Kmeť N.

1 Kusý M.

2 2008

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DISENT A ĽUDSKÉ PRÁVA

INTELEKTUÁLI V SLOVENSKEJ POLITIKE PRED A PO ROKU 1989