Worlds of Dissent - Charter 77, The Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism

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'Worlds of Dissent' analyzes the myths of Central European resistance popularized by Western journalists and historians, and replaces them with a picture of the struggle against state repression as the dissidents themselves understood, debated, and lived it. In the late 1970s, when Czech intellectuals, writers, and artists drafted Charter 77 and called on their government to respect human rights, they hesitated to name themselves 'dissidents'. Their personal and political experiences, diverse, uncertain, nameless, have been obscured by victory narratives that portray them as larger-than-life heroes who defeated Communism in Czechoslovakia