Reading fiction to understand the Soviet Union: Soviet dissidents on orwell's1984

1997 ◽  
Vol 23 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 173-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Bergman
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 138-174
Author(s):  
Barbara Martin

Abstract This article examines the debate between Soviet dissidents Andrei Sakharov and Roy Medvedev in the 1970s concerning the Jackson-Vanik Amendment and détente. Although both dissidents stood for East-West détente and democratization of the Soviet system and believed in the possibility of a dialogue with Soviet leaders until 1970, they later diverged in their views about methods of action. As Sakharov lost faith in the possibility of influencing the Soviet regime headed by Leonid Brezhnev, he shifted to a more radical position, adopting the language of human rights and turning to Western politicians and public opinion as an audience for his calls. Sakharov's public embrace of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment was in line with his advocacy of freedom of emigration and his belief that the West should extract concessions in the field of human rights before granting trade benefits to the Soviet Union. Medvedev, by contrast, argued that the amendment was counterproductive insofar as it risked alienating Soviet leaders and triggering adverse results. He considered that détente should be encouraged for its own sake, with the hope that over time it would spur democratization in the country. Medvedev's argument had much in common with the West German leader Willy Brandt's notion of “change through rapprochement,” a concept invoked as a rationale for Brandt's Ostpolitik. Although Sakharov's position earned him the Nobel Peace Prize, the Helsinki Accords showed how détente could serve the cause of human rights even with the Cold War under way.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (XX) ◽  
pp. 29-39
Author(s):  
Юлия Анатольевна Русина

Dina Kaminskaya was a defense lawyer of Soviet dissidents and participated in the most famous political trials of the 1960s. She acted as a defense lawyer for the members of the human rights movement in the Soviet Union, the creators and disseminators of samizdat, those who organized protests and demonstrations, including the one on the Red Square in Moscow in August 1968. Leaving the USSR under the threat of arrest in 1977, in exile, she wrote a memoir, Attorney’s notes, which was published in New York by the Chronicle-Press publishing house in 1984. Not only is the Soviet political judicial system with its ideological tricks vividly represented in this book, but also the portraits of those dissidents whom she knew personally and worked for as a lawyer.


2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Thomas

This article analyzes the role of human-rights ideas in the collapse of Communism. The demise of Communist rule in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was significantly influenced by the transnational diffusion of humanrights ideas. The analysis focuses on how human-rights norms were transmitted to Soviet dissidents and policymakers. The article also considers precisely how, and how much, these norms affected policy. The two primary causal mechanisms were the transmission of these ideas by a transnational Eastern European social movement for human rights, which expanded the roster of available political concepts and the terms of political legitimacy, and the mechanism of “rhetorical entrapment” whereby Soviet leaders became “trapped” or constrained to uphold their rhetorical commitment to the Helsinki Accords by the expanding discourse of human rights. Subsequently, Soviet leaders accepted human rights ideas for both substantive and instrumental reasons. Western power played some role, but the ideas themselves were salient, legitimate, and resonant for Soviet leaders seeking a new identity and destiny for the Soviet Union.


1969 ◽  
Vol 14 (9) ◽  
pp. 516-516
Author(s):  
Morton Deutsch

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