Human rights as the political Grundbegriff of today's world are open to all possible political interpretations. The peaceful revolutions of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe have been perceived, for good reason, as revolutions of human rights, which strengthened the legitimacy of Western-type liberal democracy and global neoliberal capitalism. Dissidents are often seen as central to this triumph of liberalism. The lecture challenges these assumptions. The liberal human rights discourse was only marginal in East Central European dissent before 1989. We need to understand the fundamental plurality of political and cultural languages (socialist, liberal, republican, Christian, nationalist) of human rights among dissidents as an essential factor shaping political developments and the post-dissident politics of rights in the region after 1989. Understanding the historical complexity helps to understand some central aspects of political dynamics in the region, which have recently become one of the significant sites of culture wars and the global struggle over the democratic imagination in the Western world.

Michal Kopeček is head of the Department of Ideas and Concepts at the Institute of Contemporary History in Prague. He specializes in the comparative modern intellectual history of East Central Europe, nationalism studies, and the history of communism and post-communism.

Supported by Stadt Wien

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