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| Dissident movement in the Soviet Union | |
|---|---|
| Name | Dissident movement in the Soviet Union |
| Start | 1917 |
| End | 1991 |
Dissident movement in the Soviet Union was a broad constellation of political, intellectual, national, religious, and cultural opposition to policies of the Soviet Union ranging from the Russian Revolution aftermath to the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself. It encompassed writers, scientists, activists, clergy, and nationalists whose activities intersected with institutions such as the KGB, Politburo, and Supreme Soviet, and who interacted with transnational actors including the United Nations, Amnesty International, and Western media like the BBC and The New York Times.
Early opposition traces to figures and movements resisting Bolshevik control after the October Revolution and during the Russian Civil War, involving groups linked to the White movement, the Constitutional Democratic Party, and exiled intellectuals around Alexander Kerensky and Ivan Bunin. Under the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and later the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, legal and clandestine critiques arose among writers such as Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova, scientists like Nikolai Vavilov, and religious leaders tied to the Russian Orthodox Church and dissident Jewish communities associated with figures such as Simon Dubnow. The Great Purge and show trials involving the Moscow Trials and the fate of Leon Trotsky's supporters set precedents for political repression carried out by organs including the NKVD and later the MGB.
After Joseph Stalin's death and the Khrushchev Thaw, the publication of Nikita Khrushchev's On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences and debates in institutions like the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Supreme Soviet enabled partial rehabilitations of figures such as Nikolai Bukharin and renewed activism by writers connected to the Union of Soviet Writers and journals such as Novy Mir. Publicized dissent included the actions of intellectuals like Andrei Sakharov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and scientists linked to the Moscow State University community, while student protests resonated with movements in Prague Spring and among Eastern Bloc dissidents including Václav Havel and Lech Wałęsa.
The late 1960s and 1970s saw the consolidation of a human rights current inspired by the Helsinki Accords and embodied by groups such as Committee on Human Rights in the USSR and the Moscow Helsinki Group, with prominent activists including Yuri Orlov, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Natan Sharansky, and Andrei Sakharov. Underground publishing networks of samizdat circulated works by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, Osip Mandelstam, and essays by Roy Medvedev and Andrei Amalrik, while periodicals and bulletins connected to émigré outlets like Novyi Mir abroad, the Radio Liberty, and Voice of America relayed information to international bodies such as the United Nations Human Rights Committee and NGOs like Human Rights Watch. The culture of samizdat intersected with scientific dissent among biologists referencing the case of Trofim Lysenko and physicists from the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
National movements in the Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania—and in the Caucasus—Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan—as well as among Ukrainians, Belarus, Central Asia republics, and Jews seeking exit rights, gave rise to organized dissidence involving groups such as the Popular Front of Estonia and cultural activists linked to figures like Vytautas Landsbergis and Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Religious dissent involved leaders and congregations of the Russian Orthodox Church, Catholic Church in Lithuania, Protestant communities, Muslim activists in Tatarstan and Chechnya, and Jewish refuseniks exemplified by activists such as Yuli Edelstein and Anatoly Shcharansky.
State responses included criminal prosecutions under articles of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR and administrative measures like internal exile to facilities such as the Gulag system and camps on Vorkuta and in Kolyma, as well as trials staged at venues associated with the Moscow City Court and the Supreme Court of the USSR. The KGB and psychiatric institutions collaborated in the practice of punitive psychiatry used against dissidents including Vladimir Bukovsky, Vladimir Slepak, and Natalia Gorbanevskaya, invoking diagnoses established in Soviet psychiatric practice enforced by entities such as the All-Union Society of Psychiatrists and Neuropathologists.
High-profile émigrés and refuseniks engaged with organizations like Amnesty International, International PEN, and the United States Congress, while prisoners of conscience were advocated for by diplomats from the United Kingdom, United States, France, and by the European Parliament. Exile networks routed through cities like Vienna, Jerusalem, and New York City connected intellectuals and former prisoners collaborating with publishers such as Faber and Faber and periodicals like The New York Review of Books, and involved figures including Solzhenitsyn in dialogue with Western politicians like Henry Kissinger and activists like Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Reforms under Mikhail Gorbachev—notably Perestroika and Glasnost—altered the legal and political landscape, enabling rehabilitations by the Supreme Soviet and public returns of exiles including Andrei Sakharov and publishing of previously banned works by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and archival revelations regarding the NKVD and Great Purge. The interaction of dissident networks with mass movements such as the Singing Revolution in the Baltics, the rise of independence leaders like Lech Wałęsa in Poland, and the political developments culminating in the August Coup and the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union shaped post‑Soviet politics and human rights practice in successor states including the Russian Federation and Ukraine.
Category:Political movements in the Soviet Union