“That Slanderous Pamphlet”

“They fear the old for their memories./They fear the young for their inexperience./They fear schoolchildren./They fear the dead.” So begins a song by the recently jailed Prague rock stars, Plastic People.

But what “they” fear most of all at the moment is Charter 77: a typewritten samizdat document which starts like a lawyer’s brief—“The Law #120, as published in the Czechoslovak Law Record of October 13, 1976,” etc.— and which, in the same sober, noninflammatory language, goes on to detail precisely which of the human rights guaranteed by the Helsinki accords are being violated in Czechoslovakia. The signers also pledged to work toward getting the state to adhere to those provisions.

BJ

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B. Jicinski

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“They fear the old for their memories./They fear the young for their inexperience./They fear schoolchildren./They fear the dead.” So begins a song by the recently jailed Prague rock stars, Plastic People.

But what “they” fear most of all at the moment is Charter 77: a typewritten samizdat document which starts like a lawyer’s brief—“The Law #120, as published in the Czechoslovak Law Record of October 13, 1976,” etc.— and which, in the same sober, noninflammatory language, goes on to detail precisely which of the human rights guaranteed by the Helsinki accords are being violated in Czechoslovakia. The signers also pledged to work toward getting the state to adhere to those provisions.