To the success of our hopeless cause : the many lives of the Soviet dissident movement

To the success of our hopeless cause The many lives of the Soviet dissident movement

Benjamin Nathans

Book - 2024

"A gripping history of the Soviet dissident movement, which hastened the end of the USSR-and still provides a model of opposition in Putin's RussiaBeginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was unexpectedly confronted by a dissident movement that captured the world's imagination. Demanding that the Kremlin obey its own laws, an improbable band of Soviet citizens held unauthorized public gatherings, petitioned in support of arrested intellectuals, and circulated banned samizdat texts. Soviet authorities arrested dissidents, subjected them to bogus trials and vicious press campaigns, sentenced them to psychiatric hospitals and labor camps, sent them into exile-and transformed them into martyred heroes. Against all odds, the dissi...dent movement undermined the Soviet system and unexpectedly hastened its collapse. Taking its title from a toast made at dissident gatherings, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause is a definitive history of a remarkable group of people who helped change the twentieth century. Benjamin Nathans's vivid narrative tells the dramatic story of the men and women who became dissidents-from Nobel laureates Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn to many others who are virtually unknown today. Drawing on diaries, memoirs, personal letters, interviews, and KGB interrogation records, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause reveals how dissidents decided to use Soviet law to contain the power of the Soviet state. This strategy, as one of them put it, was "simple to the point of genius: in an unfree country, they began to conduct themselves like free people. "An extraordinary account of the Soviet dissident movement, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause shows how dissidents spearheaded the struggle to break free of the USSR's totalitarian past, a struggle that continues in Putin's Russia-and that illuminates other struggles between hopelessness and perseverance today"--

Saved in:
Place a Hold Save to List Email this
1 copy ordered
Subjects
Dissenters > Soviet Union > History.
Social movements > Soviet Union.
Dissidents > URSS > Histoire.
Mouvements sociaux > URSS.
HISTORY / Russia / General.
POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism.
Soviet Union > Politics and government > 1945-1991.
URSS > Politique et gouvernement > 1945-1991.
Published
Princeton : Princeton University Press [2024]
Language
English
Main Author
Benjamin Nathans (Author)
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9780691117034
  • List of Illustrations
  • Prologue: To Live like Free People
  • Part I. Stumbling Blocks
  • 1. Don Quixote in the Land of Soviets
  • 2. Involuntary Protagonists
  • 3. Transparency Meeting
  • 4. The Court is in Session
  • Part II. Movement of a New Type
  • 5. Rights Talk
  • 6. Chain Reaction
  • 7. The Dissident Repertoire
  • 8. From Circle to Square
  • Part III. In Search of Form
  • 9. Leave the Politics to Us
  • 10. Will the Dissident Movement Survive?
  • 11. Recrimination and Reassessment
  • 12. Taking the Initiative
  • 13. The Inner Sanctum of Volpinism
  • Part IV. Disturbers of the Peace
  • 14. The Fifth Directorate
  • 15. Fallen Idols
  • 16. How to Conduct Yourself
  • 17. Allies, Bystanders, Adversaries
  • 18. Rights-Defenders among the Nations
  • 19. Dissident Fictions
  • Part V. From the Other Shore
  • 20. The Kindness of Strangers
  • 21. Adoptees at the Gate
  • 22. Final Act
  • Epilogue: Breaking the Fourth Wall
  • Chronology of the Soviet Dissident Movement
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Illustration Credits
  • Index
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A probing history of dissidence in the post-Stalin Soviet Union. When Stalin lived, his government paid little attention to the nation's guarantees of constitutional rights and used terror, imprisonment, and torture to curb dissent. When Stalin died in 1953, the regime was less inclined to kill its opponents. In this deeply researched history, Nathans, author of Beyond the Pale, introduces bohemian intellectual Alexander Volpin, son of the poet Sergei Esenin, who, inspired by Rosa Parks and other civil rights activists, "sought to apply modal logic to two humanistic fields he considered most susceptible to 'exact methods': jurisprudence and ethics." In doing so, he demanded that Soviet officials obey the constitution and not Communist Party dictates. He was also an exasperating opponent: When one interrogator grilled him in the early 1960s about a supposedly secret organization--secret because it was unknown to the KGB--Volpin replied that he had not been aware of the KGB officer's existence, either, "but that has not led me to conclude that you exist secretly." Other dissidents resisted the Soviet regime on legalistic grounds. Some were committed Leninists; many, such as Brodsky and Solzhenitsyn, argued for freedom of conscience and expression. While the dissidents never coalesced into a movement, many published samizdat literature, books and manifestos painstakingly typed out and circulated secretly, including practical manuals on how to hold up to police interrogation. (One brave dissident, Sergei Kovalev, replied to each of his interrogator's dozens of questions, "I refuse to answer.") Nathans closes his authoritative study by suggesting that the post-Stalin Soviet Union was a paradise of free expression compared to Putin's present-day "feral state, where political opponents and those branded as traitors are as likely to be poisoned or assassinated as tried in a court of law." An essential addition to the cultural history of the late Soviet era. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Similar Items