DISSIDENTS OF THE 1970’s

In Brezhnev’s time, just as generally in Soviet years, in the absence of today’s liberal freedoms, people grew used to reading ‘between the lines’. It was the time of a formation in the country of a dissident movement. Vladimir Vysotsky, the celebrated Soviet cinema and theatre actor and singing poet was perhaps, one of the most famous dissidents. In his song “My Finicky Horses” our people discerned images of a man stifled by lack of freedom…

By the cliff, along the precipice,
Right over deadly ground,
With the rod, I strike my horses,
Strike them more to urge them forward.
There is no air to breathe – I gulp
The haze – I drink the rough wind.
With a fatal rapture, sensing: I am
Ruined, I am ruined!
Slow down a bit, my horses,
Slow down, please!
Don’t you listen to that stinging thong!
But what the horses I run into, so fastidious!
Neither lived I so long, nor I’ll finish the song…
I’ll let the horses drink, I’ll complete this refrain,
Just a little bit more I will stay on the brink…

The dissident movement, although small in number, was extremely motley. It embraced nationalists and Russophobes, monarchists and anarchists, and many other groups of people, displeased with the existing order. The hailed freedom that all the dissident movement dream of, different groups sought for different purposes. We shall attempt to give you a certain idea of what the dissident movement was all about.

To begin with, let’s determine the concept of ‘dissident’. Here is how it’s deciphered by the International Historical-Enlightenment Charity society for human right protection “Memorial”:

“By Dissidents we presuppose an aggregate of movements, groups, texts, individual actions, motley and pursuing diverse aims and tasks, yet sharing a proximity in basic principled positions.”

These ‘principled positions’ of the dissidents are thus formulated by the society “Memorial”:

“Nonviolence, glasnost, implementation of basic rights and freedoms ‘without licensing or registration’, demands for a strict observation of the law”.

The public activity of the dissidents took the form of “creation of uncensored texts; formation of independent public societies, the organization (infrequently!) of public protest actions, such as rallies, hunger strikes, and distribution of leaflets.”

The “Memorial” society mentions the instruments and means resorted to by the dissidents:

“Dissemination of literary, scientific, informational, legal and other texts … and through the western mass media. These are petitions, addressed to soviet officialdom, and ‘open letters’ published in the mass media and soliciting the attention of public opinion.”

According to historians Sokolov and Tyazhelnikov, “a common point for the dissidents was an active opposition to the situation in the country, chiefly in the sphere of individual rights and freedoms. Alterations introduced into the soviet system, its purging of layers acquired during the period of “Stalin’s personality cult’, were not enough for them. Their ideological landmarks were western democratic values. So the natural pivotal point that all the dissident movement hinged on was the movement for protection of people’s rights. The ombudsmen created their own common information field.

Their first open public action was a demonstration on Constitution Day, December 5th 1965, on Pushkin Square in the heart of Moscow. It was sparked by demands of an open trial for writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Danniel. In the course of a number of years they secretly published their works of fiction in the West under the pseudonyms “Abram Tertz” and “Nikolay Arzhak”, for which they were arrested and tried. 

Dissidents likewise openly protested the introduction of soviet troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968.”

Let me remind you that at the time the CIA, with support from the pro-western clandestine movement in Czechoslovakia, conducted an active operation with the aim of forming an armed opposition inside the country, which could bring to power the pro-western forces, thus tearing Czechoslovakia away from the USSR and the Warsaw Pact states. This forced the USSR and several other countries of the Eastern block to speedily interfere in Czechoslovak affairs.

According to historians Sokolov and Tyazhelnikov, “the authorities responded to these actions of the dissidents, as could be expected, with various reprisals, such as criminal proceedings, confinement to psychiatric wards and others.”

The ensuing developments someone once aptly characterized as a ‘chain reaction’: reprisals against those who protested most actively, protests against these reprisals, fresh reprisals, and, accordingly, new protests… As a result, the existence of political persecution was accepted by public consciousness as an established fact in the country. At the same time the individual groups, circles and campaigns, for whom nonconformity had become a mode of existence, were becoming closer acquainted and forging ties and alliances. In the words of historians Sokolov and Tyazhelnikov, “human rights campaigners demanded not only compliance with soviet legislation, but the latter’s heightened proximity to west European standards. They were struggled to ensure that defense of human rights be ensured by legal means and within the framework of existing legislation, and so that one could appeal to international public opinion.

The dissident movement made the informational bulletin “Chronicle of current events” its acknowledged press body. It came out anonymously since the spring of 1968 until 1983. The bulletin shed light on all cases of human rights abuse and violation in the USSR. In 1970 a Human Rights committee was established in the USSR, which comprised physician, Academician Andrei Sakharov, mathematician of international acclaim and publicist Igor Shafarevich, writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, poet Alexander Galich. The committee enjoyed membership of the International Human Rights League – a fact that provided its members with certain guarantees from political persecution. In 1973 a Russian branch of the afore-mentioned League emerged, under the name of “Amnesty International”.

In 1972-1973 a wave of arrests engulfed the human rights organizations. A campaign was unleashed against Andrei Sakharov, who regularly annoyed the powers-that-be by speaking out in defense of political prisoners. In 1974 Sakharov was conferred the Nobel Peace Prize, however the authorities denied him permission to go to Sweden to receive the award. The reason for the denial, according to the authorities, was the fact the Academician had access to secret scientific information. To avoid unseemly international resonance in connection with human rights violations in the USSR, the authorities allowed the more active dissidents to leave the country. That was when writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, poet Iosif Brodsky, and others, exercised their right to emigrate to the West.

After the USSR signed in 1975 the Final Act on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the situation regarding observation of human rights and political freedoms became transformed from an internal one into an international one.

After this, soviet human rights organizations found themselves under the protection of international norms. Of course, this couldn’t but irritate the Brezhnev authorities. In 1976 the dissidents set up in Moscow a public society for compliance with the Helsinki Final Act. The society reported all incidents of human rights violations in the USSR and forwarded them to governments of member-countries, signatories to the Helsinki Final Act, as well as to soviet state bodies. Similar Helsinki groups started to emerge in other cities, too. This resulted in increased instances of people being divested of citizenship, exiled abroad… In the second half of the 1970’s the Soviet Union regularly had to contend with official, internationally-lodged complaints of human rights abuse. The authorities responded by heightened reprisals against the Helsinki groups.

An important component of the dissident movement was the so-called ‘samizdat’, or ‘underground press’. In the words of journalist Ksenia Mitrohina, the Russian word ‘samizdat’ was coined by Russian poet Nikolai Glazkov back in the 1940’s. Constantly coming up against the unwillingness of the publishers to print his literary opuses, he began marking the title page of his typewritten works with the ironic abbreviation ‘samizdat’ in the place where the publisher’s name out to have been. Overtime, this new word took rot in the dissident environment. It even found its way into the international dictionary in the form of a transcription, since there is no direct translation for it. 

“The Soviet samizdat,” testifies journalist Ksenia Mitrohina, “is a very broad notion. In the 1960’s – 1980’s not only political, but fiction literature too, which didn’t conform to the rigid bounds set by the censors, circulated in typewritten and otherwise unprinted copies… These were works by home and foreign authors, who had been banned by the soviet regime: Mikhail Bulgakov, Daniil Andreyev, Osip Mandelstam, Rudyard Kipling, Lewis Carroll… There’s no enumerating them all. In the 1970’s and 1980’s any person who had the least bit of curiosity was bound to come into contact with ‘samizdat’ literature.

Some of this ‘underground press’ found its way abroad and was published there.

Historians Sokolov and Tyazhelnikov refer to the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s works abroad as truly epoch-making: 

“In the years 1967-1968 the writer was actively advocating against censorship limitations. He frequently appealed to international public opinion. Such ‘antisocial’ behavior in the eyes of the powers-that-be was grounds enough for expelling Solzhenitsyn from the Soviet Writers’ Union in 1969. After this the authorities on numerous occasions denied him the publication of his now world-acclaimed novels as “Cancer Ward”, “August 1914”. The situation grew increasingly alarming after the writer was awarded the Nobel peace prize on October 8th 1970. From then on the KGB followed his every step, shadowed his family and close friends… At the Politburo of the Party Central Committee they debated the question of whether it was expedient to isolate Solzhenitsyn inside the country or to exile him abroad. In early September 1973 Solzhenitsyn sent Leonid Brezhnev a pamphlet entitled “A Letter to the Leaders of the Soviet Union”, where he made an attempt to generalize the historical route traversed by Russia and the USSR, and map out prospects of our state’s development in the context of world civilization. Solzhenitsyn wrote of the independent historical mission of this country, which predominantly leaned on its own traditions and embraced the western values only to a slight degree…

This view espoused by Alexander Solzhenitsyn regarding Russia’s historical mission was what set him apart from a major part of the dissidents.

After his novels “The Gulag Archipelago” and “In the First Circle” he was subjected to a fresh wave of persecutions. And in January 1974 the authorities took a decision to instigate criminal proceedings against the writer for ‘malignant anti-Soviet propaganda’. Soon afterwards he was stripped of soviet citizenship and expelled from the country.

“The Gulag Archipelago” had the effect of a bomb on international public opinion. Solzhenitsyn’s reflections on the essence of Soviet socialism had tremendous impact on Western sovietology and public opinion.”

Authoritative Russian scientist and publicist Sergei Kara-Murza shares some interesting reflections on the dissident movement in general and its history in the Soviet Union. He refers to the dissidents as ‘an important phenomenon in public life’ of the USSR in the 1960’s – 1970’s, and writes:

“These were semi-formal organizations of fervent anti-Soviet activists. Overtime, their organizations acquired a more formal structure. Ties were forged between them, their financing and publishing base increasingly streamlined.

Since all this motley movement had close links with both the KGB in the USSR and the special services in the West, little is known of the organizational side of the dissident movement. However, in printed matter we can find enough brief but eloquent testimonies and references. The day will come when historians will be able to piece it all together to present a detailed picture of the way it all was. What is most important is the influence the dissidents had on society, irrespective of what was actually taking place ‘in the wings’ of this movement.

The dissidents were but a puny few and could hardly make any real impact on the mass consciousness. But they played their role of ‘ferment’ most admirably.

The Dissident movement put down roots in the intellectual sphere, and never really came into contact with the workers or peasants. However, since the latter in one way or another intercommunicated with representatives of the intellectual stratum, the ideas advocated by the dissidents reached them, too. This is one of the first prime points that Sergei Kara-Murza makes, adding: “The second important circumstance is that the dissidents worked in close collaboration with the propaganda machine of the west. And the latter was in effect a remarkably potent weapon of psychological warfare. Without the participation of dissidents, active within Soviet society, Western propaganda would stand to lose most of its force and impact. Dissidents together with the Voice of America made up a system of omnipotent corporative effect. In such a system it is pointless to attempt to evaluate strength via quantity of separate components.

According to Sergei Kara-Murza, one of the reasons for the highly proficient activity of the dissidents was the fact they were a part of the all-embracing and efficient Soviet system of public discussion of civic and public problems.

“The paradox is that it was the Soviet system that obliged every citizen to partake in the general discussion of public issues through meetings, a system of ‘political enlightenment’, the mass media, etc. The official, open aspect of this system in many respects no longer met the requirements of new generations of soviet people. Or to be more exact, had become distasteful to them. The dissidents had become the ‘shadow’ part of the official system. Using the infrastructure of the official system, they, ‘as an artistic minority’ worked on contrasts and in new genres.

Thus, popular satirical writer Mikhail Zhvanetski appeared with his anti-Soviet humour at gatherings of workers, organized either by trade unions or party committees in the framework of cultural-enlightenment events. Dissidents could appear in the capacity of lecturers at official political study hours for the workers.

The dissidents were like viruses, parasites that sponge off the huge apparatus of the cell. No cell – no virus.

This is particularly clear today, when the Soviet system has been destroyed. The present opposition to market reforms, leaning on the majority of the Russian population, cannot even come near in efficiency to the dissidents, who fed on the soviet system of political enlightenment.”
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