The Birth of the Dissident Figure, 1976–1977

Following the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago in 1974 and the signing of the Helsinki Accords in 1975, the transnational political conditions became increasingly favorable for political opposition behind the Iron Curtain. Two Central European initiatives became pivotal in establishing dissidence as a new object of Western attention: the Polish Workers Defense Committee (KOR) and the Czechoslovak Charter 77. Though differing in their goals, they shared their openness, emphasis on legality, and invocations of international human rights norms. The chapter describes international and domestic reactions to these two initiatives in the West and in the Eastern Bloc, and the visible fashion for the “dissidents” which by 1977 was undeniable.