In this interview with documentary filmmaker Apolena Rychlíková, Anna Šabatová, one of the most remarkable figures of modern Czechoslovak history, considers not only the intellectual foundations of Charter 77 and the dissident movement, but also what shaped Šabatová’s personal background. The interview introduces an often-overlooked continuity between dissent and critical approaches to the post-communist era. This continuity is present in the humanistic, left-wing thought of Anna Šabatová, stemming from the tradition of the Czechoslovak democratic left, which permeates her whole life, not only philosophically and intellectually, but above all practically. Anna Šabatová’s lifelong efforts for a more just society have never stopped, connecting the period before 1989 with the period that followed.
Th e essay follows a certain symmetry that is between the dissident organization Charter 77 (founded in Czechoslovakia in 1977) and the current Czech radical left. Th e essay works from the assumption that the defi nition of “systems” is more important than the nature of these “systems.” One way to understand the issue is to look at the relationship between Charter 77 and the Western radical left of its day, which provides the ideological antecedent of today’s Czech left. But in the contemporary political context, paradoxically, the position of the radical left is structurally moving away from that of the left that was a part of Charter 77 and is coming closer to that of the anti-communist constituents of Charter 77 and to the cultural underground that remained outside Charter 77. Evidence of the continuity between those tendencies can be seen in the police repression of recent years, which points to similarities in how the police view representatives of these diff erent “antisystemic” movements. But perhaps the most striking point of comparison between the dissidents and today’s left can be seen in their separation from majority society and in their ambition to forge something like that society’s moral conscience. Th is leads to a situation known in the Czechoslovak dissent of the 1970s and 1980s as the “dissident ghetto.” Th e notion of the self as a holder of knowledge of the true nature of things, which enables the self to preserve its moral integrity in relation to the “system,” appears to be of no less signifi cance to the present radical left than it was to Charter 77.
With respect to the history of sciences under communism, we understand the gray zone to mean academic practices originating from the negotiated autonomy of academia and the need to respect scientific values such as objectivity and a critical approach to reality. Our research explores the links between academic communities that were not directly involved in dissident activities but actively supported dissent initiatives (very often for a limited period of time) and were linked to transnational scientific networks or social movements. Specifically, we analyze the involvement of socially engaged scientists employed by the official research institutions in dissident activities related to the environmental sciences.