Failures, Limits and Competition: Campaigns on Behalf of Eastern European Dissidents in Cold War Belgium, 1956–1989

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which campaigns supportive of dissidents and human rights in Eastern Europe developed in Belgium during the Cold War. The Belgian case study reveals the critical role of internationally oriented Catholic organizations and social movements in these campaigns. This Catholic activism has often been neglected in mainstream accounts focusing on left-wing or liberal support for Eastern European dissidents or human rights, but it is key to understanding the development of campaigns and their relationships, both real and imagined, with other causes, especially movements with a North – South orientation. Catholic ngo s and social movements constituted a site where activism on behalf of dissidents and human rights in Eastern Europe encountered and entangled with solidarity movements oriented toward the “Third World”. Revealing crossovers and connections, this article argues that the engagement with and images of Eastern European dissidents cannot be understood apart from the development of North – South movements. It also reveals tensions and limitations that have remained neglected in universalizing human rights narratives stressing connections and flows.