Dissent, its Persecutors, and the New Russia

The post-Soviet decades have brought about significant changes of the Russian social landscape. A countless number of civic initiatives engaged in charitable operation, legal assistance, education, environment, arts and culture, etc. have emerged across Russia. Self-help communities and effective crowd-funding for all kinds of purposes are evidence of public solidarity inconceivable in the Soviet state. The second half of the 2010s were marked by a rise in investigative reporting based on state-of-the-art data journalism and the rapid progress in social media. Apparently, the impressive rise in civil society has become a matter of growing concern for the Russian government, and in the past year, the Kremlin has stepped up persecutions of political activists and investigative media. This repressive surge is reminiscent of the events some four decades ago when the Soviet government undertook to radically eliminate the dissident movement. The activists of today may be different from the Soviet dissidents, but for now, they are just as defenseless vis-à-vis the state as the dissidents were.

The Sakharov-Medvedev Debate on Détente and Human Rights

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.

Problem of Social Leadership and Social Conflict in USSR in Works of Scientists of Russian Emigre of 1950s and 1970s

The issue of understanding by scientists and public figures of the Russian Emigre of social relations in the USSR of the 1950-1970s is considered in the article. The novelty of the work lies in the choice of sources of research - articles and books of figures of Russian Emigre. The author emphasizes that the main part of the ideas of the considered authors is not sufficiently represented in the scientific community. It is noted that the founders of the research of Soviet society were scientists from the Munich Institute for the Study of History and Culture of the USSR, which in 1957 held a major international conference “Modern Soviet Society”. It is concluded that the conference reports on the multiplicity of Soviet society, the presence of serious legal and economic differentiation, the emergence of new progressive classes (engineering and technical intelligentsia) laid the foundation for promoting research on Russian society. According to the author, in the late 1960s, this direction was actively cultivated by Soviet dissidents who emigrated to the West, and close associates who remained in the USSR (A. A. Amalrik, K. Bourzhuademov, S. S. Malevsky-Malevich, V. Belotserkovsky). A review of the historiography of the Russian Emigre allows us to create a platform for reflection on the social forces of Soviet society, the driving motives of their activity and the struggle for a place in the class hierarchy.

ХАРАКТЕРЫ СОВЕТСКИХ ДИССИДЕНТОВ В ЭМИГРАНТСКИХ ЗАПИСКАХ АДВОКАТА ДИНЫ КАМИНСКОЙ

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.

Forming a Transnational Moral Community between Soviet Dissidents and Ex-Communist Western Supporters: The Case of Pavel Litvinov, Karel van het Reve and Stephen Spender

The Soviet dissident and human rights movement, emerging publicly in the mid-1960s, became known globally through various supportive actions of Moscow foreign correspondents and Western intellectuals. For instance, Pavel Litvinov, a well-known dissident, had close relationships with foreigners, especially Karel van het Reve, a Dutch correspondent in Moscow, and Stephen Spender, a British poet, both formerly communists. This article attempts to elucidate aspects of the personal and ethical interactions among these three figures, focusing on van het Reve's and Spender's support activities and projects, particularly the Alexander Herzen Foundation and Writers and Scholars International, founded in 1969 and 1971, respectively, to understand how a transnational moral community was formed.