Poland's solidarity movement and the global politics of human rights / Robert Brier.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brier, Robert (Historian), author.

Series:

Human rights in history.

Human rights in history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

NSZZ "Solidarność" (Labor organization).

Human rights--History--20th century.

Human rights.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvi, 269 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Summary:

In the historiography of human rights, the 1980s feature as little more than an afterthought to the human rights breakthrough of the previous decade. Through an examination of one of the major actors of recent human rights history - Poland's Solidarity movement - Robert Brier challenges this view. Suppressed in 1981, Poland's Solidarity movement was supported by a surprisingly diverse array of international groups: US Cold Warriors, French left-wing intellectuals, trade unionists, Amnesty International, even Chilean opponents of the Pinochet regime. By unpacking the politics and transnational discourses of these groups, Brier demonstrates how precarious the position of human rights in international politics remained well into the 1980s. More importantly, he shows that human rights were a profoundly political and highly contested language, which actors in East and West adopted to redefine their social and political identities in times of momentous cultural and intellectual change.

Contents:

The rise of dissent in Poland

Dissent and the politics of human rights

"The principle of non-interference as laid down in the Helsinki Final Act" : the Polish crisis, the Cold War and human rights

The end of the ideological age : human rights and Ostpolitik

Solidarity, human rights, and anti-totalitarianism in France

The "bedrock of human rights" : US labor, neconservatism, and human rights

Letters from prison : the prisoner of conscience and the symbolic politics of human rights

Lech Wałęsa, the symbolism of the Nobel Peace Prize, and global human rights culture

General Pinochecki : Poland, Chile, and the global politics of human rights culture

Human rights and the end of the Cold War

Epilogue.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 28 May 2021).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-108-66549-7

1-108-56852-1

1-108-56523-9

OCLC:

1230254841