Plastic People of the Universe

An excerpt from Jonathon Bolton in Worlds of Dissent: Charter 77, The Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism 

 

“The standard account goes like this: In September 1976, the trial in Prague of a nonconformist psychedelic rock band, The Plastic People of the Universe became one of the catalysts for the drafting of Charter 77. The bans was accused of ‘disturbing the peace’ and portrayed by the Communist regime as a group of long-haired, foul-mouthed, drug-using delinquents; but many Czech intellectuals, foremost among them Václav Havel, correctly perceived the trial as an attack on freedom of thought and creativity. The band, after all, had no interest in politics and just wanted to be left alone to play their music in their own way… Havel helped mobilize writers, artists, philosophers, and other opposition intellectuals into a strong show of support for the band, and by December 1976, their meetings to protest the trial evolved into something larger: the drafting of Charter 77, a document calling on Czechoslovakia to recognize the basic human rights it had solemnly (and, of course, hypocritically) agreed to uphold when it signed the Helsinki Accords in 1975. The trial of the Plastic People had galvanized the opposition, convincing everyone of the ‘indivisibility of freedom’ and making it clear that no compromise with the Communist regime was possible.”[1]

Listen to their debut album, Egon Bondy’s Happy Hearts Club Banned (1974)

 

Charter 77

Excerpts from Vladimir V. Kusin in From Dubček to Charter 77: A study of ‘normalization’ in Czechoslovakia 1968-1978

 

“The Charter is a combination of a statement, a petition and a declaration of intent. It was to be delivered to the government, the Federal Assembly and the Czechoslovak Press Agency but the police arrested those carrying the appropriate copies to their destination…

 

“The Charter was signed by 243 persons, one of whom withdrew his signature on 25 January. It was intended for publication, as witnessed by the fact that one of the prime copies was addressed to the Czechoslovak Press Agency. The Western Press reported the Charter on 7 January…

 

“The document begins by referring to the two United Nations covenants and the Helsinki Final Act… And it welcomes Czechoslovakia’s accession to the agreements. Regrettably, many basic human rights exist in Czechoslovakia on paper alone.

 

“Then comes the longest section of the Charter in which the various instances of infractions of human rights in Czechoslovakia are described and referenced to the appropriate articles of the two covenants and to the way they are expressed in Czechoslovak legislation. The covenants are the basic term of reference…

 

“The Charter is defined, with an eye on the restrictive rules governing the association of citizens in organisations, as ‘a loose, informal and open community of people of various shades of opinion, faiths and professions, united by the will to strive individually and collectively for the respecting of civil and human rights in our own country and throughout the world’. Everyone who agrees with its ideas and participates in its work, belongs to it.”[2]

For more information, visit The National Security Archive on Charter 77

 

References

[1] Jonathon Bolton, Worlds of Dissent: Charter 77, The Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012), 115.

[2] Vladimir V. Kusin, From Dubček to Charter 77: A study of ‘normalization’ in Czechoslovakia 1968-1978 (New York City, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978), 305-307.