Charta 77 was formed in December 1976, with its "official birthday" on January 1st 1977. Founding members and architects were Václav Havel, Zdenek Mlynar, Jiri Hajek, and Pavel Kohout. In the group's first statement, Charta 77 characterised itself as "free, informal and open community of people with different backgrounds, religion and beliefs who are united by the common will to use themselves for the respect of humility (?) in our country and the rest of the world." They wanted to have a constructive conversation with the state's leadership in order to alert them of the breach of basic civil and human rights. There arose few main subgroup: VONS (the committee for the defense of those unjustfuly presecuted) and Obroda (the circle around the former 1968-ers and latter founders of social democrats = Czech Labour Party). The Signatories of the Charta 77, 1977: 241, 1980: 1,100, 1989: 1,300, 17th November 1989: 1,886. With many ties to the West, they soon reached a higher prominence in the west than they did in the CSSR, one factor that aided this development was the expelling of 300 signatories into the west, most of which were rhetorically able. Funding and propaganda support poured in from the west, for example propaganda radio programs by Radio Free Europe (RFE), the BBC or the Voice of America.
