Author Archives: Michal Kopeček

About Michal Kopeček

Michal Kopeček is a historian and senior researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences, in Prague. His research focuses on comparative modern intellectual history in East-Central Europe, nationalism, the history of human rights and dissent, and the democratic and liberal transformations after 1989, including the recent illiberal backlash.

Charter 77 Transnational: A Local Dissident Movement in International Human Rights Networks

From its inception, Charter 77 was part of a broader transnational human rights constellation. While its history has often been interpreted through the prism of the Helsinki process, this paper argues that the Charter’s transnational entanglements extended far beyond the CSCE framework. Drawing on original archival research in multiple countries, the study situates Charter 77 within three interrelated layers of postwar international human rights politics: the institutional human rights internationalism of the United Nations system (with a focus on the International Labour Organization), the intergovernmental Continue reading → Continue reading →