Charter 77

Charter 77 ("Charta 77" in Czech and in Slovak) was an informal civic initiative in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic from 1976 to 1992. It is named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. 
The founding members and architects were Jiří Němec, Václav Benda, Ladislav Hejdánek, Václav Havel, Jan Patočka, Zdeněk Mlynář, Jiří Hájek, Martin Palouš, Pavel Kohout and Ladislav Lis. The charter was seen as a political crime by the communist regime. 
After the 1989 Velvet Revolution, many of its members played important roles in Czech and Slovak politics.