People who disagreed with certain features in the Marxist–Leninist state ideology
Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn in 1974; a Russian writer, Soviet dissident and author of the acclaimed series The Gulag Archipelago, which documents forced penal labour in the Gulag prison system and political repression in the Soviet Union.
Soviet dissidents were people who disagreed with certain features of Soviet ideology or with its entirety and who were willing to speak out against them.[1] The term dissident was used in the Soviet Union (USSR) in the period from the mid-1960s until the Fall of Communism.[2] It was used to refer to small groups of marginalized intellectuals whose challenges, from modest to radical to the Soviet regime, met protection and encouragement from correspondents,[3] and typically criminal prosecution or other forms of silencing by the authorities. Following the etymology of the term, a dissident is considered to "sit apart" from the regime.[4] As dissenters began self-identifying as dissidents, the term came to refer to an individual whose non-conformism was perceived to be for the good of a society.[5][6][7] The most influential subset of the dissidents is known as the Soviet human rights movement.
Political opposition in the USSR was barely visible, and apart rare exceptions, it had little consequence,[8] primarily because it was instantly crushed with brute force. Instead, an important element of dissident activity in the Soviet Union was informing society (both inside the USSR and in foreign countries) about violation of laws and human rights and organizing in defense of those rights. Over time, the dissident movement created vivid awareness of Soviet Communist abuses.[9]
Soviet dissidents who criticized the state in most cases faced legal sanctions under the Soviet Criminal Code[10] and the choice between exile abroad (with revocation of their Soviet citizenship), the mental hospital, or the labor camp.[11] Anti-Soviet political behavior, in particular, being outspoken in opposition to the authorities, demonstrating for reform, writing books critical of the USSR were defined in some persons as being simultaneously a criminal act (e.g. violation of Articles 70 or 190-1), a symptom (e.g. "delusion of reformism"), and a diagnosis (e.g. "sluggish schizophrenia").[12]
^Carlisle, Rodney; Golson, Geoffrey (2008). The Reagan era from the Iran crisis to Kosovo. ABC-CLIO. p. 88. ISBN 978-1-85109-885-9.
^Chronicle of Current Events (samizdat) Archived 2011-03-16 at the Wayback Machine (in Russian)
^Smith, Stephen (2014). The Oxford handbook of the history of communism. OUP Oxford. p. 379. ISBN 978-0-19-960205-6.
^Taras, Raymond, ed. (2015) [1992]. The road to disillusion: from critical Marxism to post-communism in Eastern Europe (2 ed.). Routledge. p. 62. ISBN 978-1-317-45479-3.
^Universal Declaration of Human Rights General Assembly resolution 217 A (III), United Nations, 10 December 1948
^Proclamation of Tehran, Final Act of the International Conference on Human Rights, Teheran, 22 April to 13 May 1968, U.N. Doc. A/CONF. 32/41 at 3 (1968), United Nations, May 1968
^CONFERENCE ON SECURITY AND CO-OPERATION IN EUROPE FINAL ACT. Helsinki, 1 aug. 1975 Archived 2011-05-31 at the Wayback Machine
^Barber, John (October 1997). "Opposition in Russia". Government and Opposition. 32 (4): 598–613. doi:10.1111/j.1477-7053.1997.tb00448.x. S2CID 145793949.
^Rosenthal, Abe (2 June 1989). "Soviet dissenters used to die for speaking out". The Dispatch. p. 5.
^Stone, Alan (1985). Law, psychiatry, and morality: essays and analysis. American Psychiatric Pub. pp. 5. ISBN 978-0-88048-209-7.
^Singer, Daniel (2 January 1998). "Socialism and the Soviet Bloc". The Nation. Archived from the original on 27 September 2018. Retrieved 26 November 2015.
^"Report of the U.S. Delegation to Assess Recent Changes in Soviet Psychiatry". Schizophrenia Bulletin. 15 (4 Suppl): 1–219. 1989. doi:10.1093/schbul/15.suppl_1.1. PMID 2638045.
Sovietdissidents were people who disagreed with certain features of Soviet ideology or with its entirety and who were willing to speak out against them...
have considered themselves dissidents, such as the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. In totalitarian countries, dissidents are often incarcerated or executed...
in cases of dissidents. Sluggish schizophrenia as one of the new diagnostic categories was created to facilitate the stifling of dissidents and was a root...
rejection of any 'underground' and violent struggle. Like other dissidents in the post-Stalin Soviet Union, human rights activists were subjected to a broad range...
Russian writer and prominent Sovietdissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag prison...
during the "Khrushchev Thaw", followed by increased persecution of Sovietdissidents during the Brezhnev era, and it did not cease to exist until late...
the same time, he began to resent the KGB-sanctioned repression of Sovietdissidents and other intellectuals who dissented from Moscow's policies and he...
exchange increased public awareness in the West about Sovietdissidents.: 175 A fellow dissident, Vadim Delaunay wrote an epigram on the occasion: They...
member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. According to his Soviet court indictment, Volodymyr Medvedchuk had "joined the counter-revolutionary...
socialist dissident", Friedrich Ebert Foundation Archives, L. A. Times (1986-12-19). "Sakharov Exile Ends; He'll Return to Post in Moscow : Soviets Also Give...
civil liberties and reforms in the Soviet Union, for which he was deemed a dissident and faced persecution from the Soviet establishment. In his memory, the...
Turkmen dissidents and oppositionists, but following the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Turkmen SSR in January 1990, several dissidents were able...
future career prospects, always uncertain for Soviet Jews, could be impaired. As a rule, Sovietdissidents and refuseniks were fired from their workplaces...
undermining, restricting and containing the event organised by former Sovietdissidents. The reaction to a similar proposal seven months later was much the...
later known as Lana Peters, was the youngest child and only daughter of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his second wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva. In 1967, she...
between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Sovietdissident. It was first published in 1973 by the Parisian publisher YMCA-Press...
there were between 10 and 11 million Soviet men returning to help rebuild along with 2 million Sovietdissidents held prisoner in Stalin's Gulags. Then...
Dobrovolsky underwent psychiatric treatment for a year. At the hospital, he met dissidents Vladimir Bukovsky and General Petro Grigorenko. On August 25, 1965, he...
frequently used for Sovietdissidents. Sluggish schizophrenia as a diagnostic category was created to facilitate the stifling of dissidents and was a root...
unreleased. Hidden copies were eventually smuggled out of the Soviet Union by a network of dissidents, including Andrei Sakharov and Vladimir Voinovich, and...
February 1987) was a high-ranking Soviet Army commander of Ukrainian descent, who in his fifties became a dissident and a writer, one of the founders...
The history of the Jews in the Soviet Union is inextricably linked to much earlier expansionist policies of the Russian Empire conquering and ruling the...
March 1999) was a Ukrainian politician and Sovietdissident. As a prominent Ukrainian dissident in the Soviet Union, he was arrested multiple times in the...
incorruptible and uncompromising courage," is now considered one of the first Sovietdissidents. He is most famous for his highly influential and widely imitated...
physicist, human rights activist, Sovietdissident, founder of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a founding member of the Soviet Amnesty International group,. He...
the Soviet Union an elaborate plan to create a network of psychiatric hospitals to defend the "Soviet Government and socialist order" from dissidents.: 177 ...
Global Information