Soviet dissidents

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Soviet dissident
)

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

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,

Soviet dissidents who criticized the state in most cases faced legal sanctions under the Soviet Criminal Code

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]

1950s–1960s

In the 1950s, Soviet dissidents started leaking criticism to the West by sending documents and statements to foreign diplomatic missions in

Initiating Group for Defense of Civil Rights in the USSR appealed to the United Nations Committee on Human Rights to defend the human rights being trampled on by Soviet authorities in a number of trials.[15]

Some of the major milestones of the dissident movement of the 1960s included:

1970s

Moscow Helsinki Group members Yuliya Vishnevskya, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Dina Kaminskaya, Kronid Lyubarsky in Munich, 1978

Our history shows that most of the people can be fooled for a very long time. But now all this idiocy is coming into clear contradiction with the fact that we have some level of openness. (Vladimir Voinovich)[16]

The heyday of the dissenters as a presence in the Western public life was the 1970s.[17] The Helsinki Accords inspired dissidents in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland to openly protest human rights failures by their own governments.[18] The Soviet dissidents demanded that the Soviet authorities implement their own commitments proceeding from the Helsinki Agreement with the same zeal and in the same way as formerly the outspoken legalists expected the Soviet authorities to adhere strictly to the letter of their constitution.[19] Dissident Russian and East European intellectuals who urged compliance with the Helsinki accords have been subjected to official repression.[20] According to Soviet dissident Leonid Plyushch, Moscow has taken advantage of the Helsinki security pact to improve its economy while increasing the suppression of political dissenters.[21] 50 members of Soviet Helsinki Groups were imprisoned.[22] Cases of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union were divulged by Amnesty International in 1975[23] and by The Committee for the Defense of Soviet Political Prisoners in 1975[24] and 1976.[25][26]

US President

Anatoly Shcharansky, and others:[32]

If we accept human rights violations as just "their way" of doing things, then we are all guilty. (Andrei Sakharov)[33]

A Chronicle of Current Events No 11,
31 December 1968 (front cover)

Voluntary and involuntary emigration allowed the authorities to rid themselves of many political active intellectuals including writers

A Chronicle of Current Events covered 424 political trials, in which 753 people were convicted, and no one of the accused was acquitted; in addition, 164 people were declared insane and sent to compulsory treatment in a psychiatric hospital.[36]

According to Soviet dissidents and Western critics, the KGB had routinely sent dissenters to psychiatrists for diagnosing to avoid embarrassing public trials and to discredit dissidence as the product of ill minds.

Semyon Gluzman) A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissidents published in Russian,[48] English,[49] French,[50] Italian,[51] German,[52] Danish.[53]

Repression of the Helsinki Watch Groups

In 1977–1979 and again in 1980–1982, the KGB reacted to the Helsinki Watch Groups in Moscow, Kiev, Vilnius, Tbilisi, and Erevan by launching large-scale arrests and sentencing its members to in prison, labor camp, internal exile and psychiatric imprisonment.

From the members of the

Pyotr Grigorenko was stripped of his Soviet citizenship while seeking medical treatment abroad.[55]

The

Vyacheslav Chornovil, Olha Heyko, Vasyl Stus, Oksana Meshko, Ivan Sokulsky, Ivan Kandyba, Petro Rozumny, Vasyl Striltsiv, Yaroslav Lesiv, Vasyl Sichko, Yuri Lytvyn, Petro Sichko.[54]: 250–251  By 1983 the Ukrainian Helsinki Group had 37 members, of whom 22 were in prison camps, 5 were in exile, 6 emigrated to the West, 3 were released and were living in Ukraine, 1 (Mykhailo Melnyk) committed suicide.[56]

The Lithuanian Helsinki Group saw its members subjected to two waves of imprisonment for anti-Soviet activities and "organization of religious processions": Viktoras Petkus was sentenced in 1978; others followed in 1980–1981: Algirdas Statkevičius, Vytautas Skuodys, Mečislovas Jurevičius, and Vytautas Vaičiūnas.[54]: 251–252 

Currents of dissidence

Civil and human rights movement

Yelena Bonner and Andrei Sakharov after their arrival for the conferment of the honorary doctorate in law from the University of Groningen, 15 June 1989

Starting in the 1960s, the early years of the Brezhnev stagnation, dissidents in the Soviet Union increasingly turned their attention towards civil and eventually human rights concerns. The fight for civil and human rights focused on issues of freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, freedom to emigrate, punitive psychiatry, and the plight of political prisoners. It was characterized by a new openness of dissent, a concern for legality, the rejection of any 'underground' and violent struggle.[57]

Throughout the 1960s-1980s, those active in the civil and human rights movement engaged in a variety of activities: The documentation of political repression and rights violations in samizdat (unsanctioned press); individual and collective protest letters and petitions; unsanctioned demonstrations; mutual aid for prisoners of conscience; and, most prominently, civic watch groups appealing to the international community. Repercussions for these activities ranged from dismissal from work and studies to many years of imprisonment in labor camps and being subjected to punitive psychiatry.

Dissidents active in the movement in the 1960s introduced a "legalist" approach of avoiding moral and political commentary in favor of close attention to legal and procedural issues. Following several landmark political trials, coverage of arrests and trials in samizdat became more common. This activity eventually led to the founding of the Chronicle of Current Events in April 1968. The unofficial newsletter reported violations of civil rights and judicial procedure by the Soviet government and responses to those violations by citizens across the USSR.[58]

During the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, the rights-based strategy of dissent incorporated human rights ideas and rhetoric. The movement included figures such as

Helsinki Watch Groups in Moscow (Moscow Helsinki Group), Kiev (Ukrainian Helsinki Group), Vilnius (Lithuanian Helsinki Group), Tbilisi, and Erevan (1976–77).[59]
: 159–194 

The civil and human rights initiatives played a significant role in providing a common language for Soviet dissidents with varying concerns, and became a common cause for social groups in the dissident milieu ranging from activists in the youth subculture to academics such as Andrei Sakharov. Due to the contacts with Western journalists as well as the political focus during détente (Helsinki Accords), those active in the human rights movement were among those most visible in the West (next to refuseniks).

Movements of deported nations

In 1944 THE WHOLE OF OUR PEOPLE was slanderously accused of betraying the Soviet Мotherland and was forcibly deported from the Crimea. [...] [O]n 5 September 1967, there appeared a Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet which cleared us of the charge of treason but described us not as Crimean Tatars but as "citizens of Tatar nationality formerly resident in the Crimea", thus legitimizing our banishment from our home country and liquidating us as a nation.

We did not grasp the significance of the decree immediately. After it was published, several thousand people traveled to the Crimea but were once again forcibly expelled. The protest which our people sent to the party Central Committee was left unanswered, as were also the protests of representatives of the Soviet public who supported us. The authorities replied to us only with persecution and court cases.

Since 1959 more than two hundred of the most active and courageous representatives have been sentenced to terms of up to seven years although they had always acted within the limits of the Soviet Constitution.

– Appeal by Crimean Tatars to World Public Opinion, Chronicle of Current Events Issue No 2 (30 June 1968)[60]