The concept of dissident movement is associated with the period. Dissident and human rights movement in the USSR. Chapter II. practice of the dissident movement

Since the mid-60s, the dissident movement “came to light” and became open and public. After this, many dissidents developed a strong prejudice towards the underground.

Dissidents is a term that, since the mid-70s, has been applied to individuals who openly argued with official doctrines in certain areas of social life of the USSR and came into clear conflict with the apparatus of power. The human rights movement has always been the core of the dissident movement, in other words, the field of intersection of the interests of all other movements - political, socio-cultural, national, religious, etc. Dissidents strived for: civil and moral resistance; providing assistance to people subjected to repression; the formation and preservation of certain social ideals.

The first years of Brezhnev's rule (1964-1967), associated with an intensified attack on small islands of freedom, marked the beginning of the formation of organized opposition to the regime in the form of the human rights movement. The main form of dissident activity was protests and appeals to the country's top political leadership and law enforcement agencies.

The date of birth of the dissident movement is December 5, 1965, when the first demonstration under human rights slogans took place on Pushkin Square in Moscow. In 1965, repressions against dissidents intensified.

In 1966, open confrontation between Stalinists and anti-Stalinists began in society. If at the official level there were more and more speeches praising Stalin, then educational institutions, universities, and houses of scientists invited writers and publicists who had proven themselves to be anti-Stalinists for conversations and lectures.

At the same time, there was a massive distribution of anti-Stalinist samizdat materials.

The next period in the development of the dissident and human rights movement - 1968-1975 - coincided with the strangulation of the Prague Spring, the suspension of any attempts to transform political institutions, and the immersion of political life in a state of stagnation.

In the spring and summer of 1968, the Czechoslovak crisis developed, caused by an attempt at radical democratic transformations of the socialist system and ending with the introduction of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia. The most famous demonstration in defense of Czechoslovakia was the demonstration on August 25, 1968 on Red Square in Moscow.

In 1968, the USSR tightened censorship in scientific publications, increased the threshold of secrecy for many types of published information, and began jamming Western radio stations.

The intensification of repression against human rights activists in 1968-1969 gave rise to a completely new phenomenon for Soviet political life - the creation of the first human rights association. It was created in 1969.

The experience of the legal work of the Islamic State convinced others that it was possible to act openly. In November 1970, the Human Rights Committee in the USSR was created in Moscow.

In the early 70s, trends emerged in dissidence that were quite different in ideals and political orientation.

Three main directions: Leninist-communist, liberal-democratic and religious-nationalist. All of them had activists, but, in the end, each of them found an exponent of their ideas in the person of one most prominent personality. In all three cases these were men of exceptional qualities and strong character. The three directions were represented, respectively, by Roy Medvedev, Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, they were forced to confront the power of the state. This was the only thing that united them.

During the 1970s, the three main trends and their supporters often argued with each other, their beliefs being incompatible. Neither could agree with the other two without abandoning what was the very basis of each's political activity.

The neo-communist movement flowed directly from the anti-Stalinist sentiments that periodically arose in Soviet history. His birth coincided with protests against the “rehabilitation” of Stalin. The main aspiration of the neo-communists was the combination of political democracy with socialism, less statist in nature and closer to the original ideas of Marx and Lenin. There was also a more radical direction in the neo-communist movement, more likely associated with the freedom-loving spirit of the Bolshevik revolution. This direction was primarily important because it gave dissidence the most active and irreconcilable activists. Their first underground organization was called the “Union of Struggle for the Revival of Leninism.”

The communist movement was called upon to put an end to its Stalinist degenerate vices. What is desirable in the West is the development of leftist forces capable of giving birth to intensive international cooperation, culminating in the creation of a “world government.” Thus, democracy in the USSR was seen as an integral part of a huge global project, a mandatory and indestructible part.

More radical tendencies also appeared in the democratic movement; groups appeared that preferred revolution to evolution. Many of them looked to the West as a model, an example to follow, believing that what the USSR needed was not convergence, but a simple and direct return to capitalism. The importance of the ideas of the democratic movement was not met by their inadequate impact not only on society as a whole, but also on the dissident circles themselves. Of course, these ideas were in circulation among the intelligentsia.

The third, much more significant component of the dissident movement - the nationalist movement - deserves separate discussion. All dissident movements acquired political significance only because, without being isolated, as it might seem, they found their continuation in the hidden beliefs and in the state of mind of various groups of society and even the apparatus of power itself. Of the dissidents, who numbered approximately half a million people, almost all, with the exception of two or three tens of thousands, were in one way or another part of this third current.

The nationalist dissident movement is important because, in line with this movement, nationalist problems were discussed openly, in the official environment. In the third dissident movement, various streams of nationalistic tradition - religious, Slavophile, cultural - or simply anti-communist overtones merged together. But the most fertile ground for nationalism was created by the crisis of official ideology.

Solzhenitsyn was the prophet of this movement. Solzhenitsyn gave dissidence the character of an uncompromising anti-communist struggle. In this way he wanted to differ from other dissident movements.

Since the beginning of the 70s. arrests of human rights defenders in the capital and major cities have increased significantly. Repressions and trials by the early 70s. demonstrated the power of the totalitarian machine of state power. Psychiatric repression intensified. Dissidents considered placement in special psychiatric hospitals more difficult than imprisonment in prisons and camps. Hundreds, thousands of dissidents turned out to be prisoners in St. Petersburg and ordinary mental hospitals. Since the summer of 1973, the nature of the repressions has changed. The practice of the authorities began to include expulsion from the country or deprivation of citizenship. The movement virtually ceased to exist. The survivors went deep underground. 1972-1974 - the most serious crisis of the human rights movement. The prospect of action was lost, almost all active human rights defenders ended up in prison, and the very ideological basis of the movement was called into question.

By 1974, conditions had developed for the resumption of activities of human rights groups and associations.

By October 1974, the group had finally recovered. On October 30, members of the initiative group held a press conference chaired by Sakharov.

In the 70s dissidence became more radical. Its main representatives hardened their positions. Everyone, even those who later denied this, began their activities with the idea of ​​starting a dialogue with representatives of the authorities: the experience of the Khrushchev era gave reason for such hope. It was, however, destroyed by new repressions and the authorities’ refusal to engage in dialogue. What was at first simply political criticism turns into categorical accusations. At first, dissidents cherished the hope of correcting and improving the existing system, continuing to consider it socialist. But, ultimately, they began to see in this system only signs of dying and advocated for its complete abandonment. The government's policies were unable to cope with dissidence and only radicalized it in all its components.

The human rights movement ceased to exist in the late 80s, when, due to a change in the government's course, the movement was no longer purely human rights in nature. It moved to a new level and took on other forms.

For almost thirty years, the human rights and dissident movement created the preconditions for a new social situation. Ideas of the rule of law, the self-worth of the individual; The predominance of universal human values ​​over class or national values ​​became the basis of the views of human rights activists long before perestroika.

“Dissidents” and “dissidents”, which have now become familiar terms, were only then acquiring citizenship rights. Among the intelligentsia, attitudes towards dissidence vary. Some believed that a nihilistic orientation prevailed in the movement; revealing pathos took precedence over positive ideas. The study of the history of the human rights and dissident movements is just beginning, but today it is clear: without studying the history of dissent, it is impossible to understand the evolution of our society from Stalinism to democracy.

In the Union, not the entire population was satisfied with the current government. Dissidents were people who did not support the political views of those around them, and they were also ardent opponents of communism and treated poorly everyone who was in any way concerned with this. In turn, the government could not ignore dissidents. Dissidents in the USSR openly declared their political point of view. Sometimes they united into entire underground organizations. In turn, the authorities prosecuted dissidents according to the law.

"Political dissident"

Dissidents in the USSR were under the strictest ban. Anyone who belonged to them could easily be sent into exile and often even shot. However, the dissident underground lasted only until the end of the 50s. From the 1960s until the 1980s, it had a significant preponderance on the public scene. The term "political dissident" caused a lot of trouble for the government. And this is not surprising, since they communicated their opinions to the public almost openly.

In the mid-1960s, almost every citizen, not only of the USSR, but also abroad, knew what a “dissident” was. Dissidents distributed leaflets, secret and open letters to many enterprises, newspapers and even government agencies. They also tried, whenever possible, to send leaflets and announce their existence to other countries in the world.

Government attitude towards dissidents

So, what is a “dissident” and where does this term come from? It was introduced in the early 60s to refer to anti-government movements. The term "political dissident" was also often used, but was originally used in other countries around the world. Over time, the dissidents themselves in the Soviet Union began to call themselves.

At times, the government portrayed dissidents as real bandits involved in terrorist attacks, such as the Moscow bombing in 1977. However, this was far from the case. Like any organization, dissidents had their own rules, one might say laws. The main ones can be identified: “Do not use violence”, “Transparency of actions”, “Protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms”, as well as “Compliance with laws”.

The main task of the dissident movement

The main task of the dissidents was to inform citizens that the communist system had become obsolete and should be replaced by standards from the Western world. They carried out their task in various forms, but often it was the publication of literature and leaflets. Dissidents sometimes gathered in groups and held demonstrations.

What a “dissident” was was already known almost throughout the world, and only in the Soviet Union were they equated with terrorists. They were often called not dissidents, but simply “anti-Soviet” or “anti-Soviet elements.” In fact, many dissidents called themselves exactly that and often renounced the definition of “dissident.”

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn

One of the most active participants in this movement was Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn. The dissident was born in 1918. Alexander Isaevich was in the community of dissidents for more than one decade. He was one of the most ardent opponents of the Soviet system and Soviet power. We can say that Solzhenitsyn was one of the instigators of the dissident movement.

Dissident's conclusion

During World War II, he went to the front and rose to the rank of captain. However, he began to disapprove of many of Stalin's actions. Even during the war, he corresponded with a friend, in which he harshly criticized Joseph Vissarionovich. In his documents, the dissident kept papers in which he compared the Stalinist regime with serfdom. Smersh employees became interested in these documents. After this, an investigation began, as a result of which Solzhenitsyn was arrested. He was stripped of his captain's rank, and at the end of 1945 he received a prison term.

Alexander Isaevich spent almost 8 years in prison. In 1953 he was released. However, even after imprisonment, he did not change his opinion and attitude towards Soviet power. Most likely, Solzhenitsyn was only convinced that dissidents had a hard time in the Soviet Union.

for legal publication

Alexander Isaevich published many articles and works on the topic of Soviet power. However, with Brezhnev coming to power, he was deprived of the right to legally publish his recordings. Later, KGB officers confiscated from Solzhenitsyn all his documents that contained anti-Soviet propaganda, but even after this Solzhenitsyn did not intend to stop his activities. He became actively involved in social movements and performances. Alexander Isaevich tried to convey to everyone what a “dissident” is. In connection with these events, the Soviet government began to perceive Solzhenitsyn as a serious enemy of the state.

After Alexander's books were published in the United States without his permission, he was expelled from the USSR Society of Writers. A real information war was unleashed against Solzhenitsyn in the Soviet Union. Anti-Soviet movements in the USSR were increasingly disliked by the authorities. Thus, in the mid-1970s, the question of Solzhenitsyn’s activities was brought to the council. At the end of the congress, it was decided to arrest him. After this, on February 12, 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and deprived of Soviet citizenship, and later he was expelled from the USSR to Germany. KGB officers personally delivered him by plane. Two days later, a decree was issued on the confiscation and destruction of all documents, articles and any anti-Soviet materials. All internal affairs of the USSR were now classified as “secret”.

Rise of the dissident movement (1976–1979)

In 1976, the Helsinki stage in the development of the dissident movement began. In connection with the signing of the 1975 Helsinki Agreement by European countries, the USA and Canada, which provided for the observance of human rights, dissidents created Helsinki groups that monitored its compliance by the USSR authorities. This created problems for Soviet diplomacy. Thus, the movement finally reoriented itself to the West. The first “Group for Assistance in the Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements in the USSR” was created in Moscow on May 12, 1976, and then in Ukraine and Georgia.

The group sent more than 80 materials about human rights violations in the USSR to the governments of the states that signed the Final Act. At an international meeting in Belgrade in October 1977, where respect for human rights was discussed, materials from Helsinki groups from the USSR were officially featured.

The KGB decided to launch a new counterattack, since the leaders of the Helsinki groups “are becoming more and more impudent, presenting an extremely negative and dangerous example for others.

At the same time, the proposed measures should show the ruling circles of Western countries the futility of pursuing a policy of blackmail and pressure towards the Soviet Union, and once again emphasize that, consistently pursuing a line towards easing international tension, we will resolutely suppress any attempts to interfere in our internal affairs and attempts to for the socialist gains of the working people."

On February 3, 1977, the manager of the Fund for Assistance to Political Prisoners, A. Ginzburg, was arrested. The leader of the Moscow Helsinki Group, Yu. Orlov, was summoned to the prosecutor's office, but did not appear, and on February 9 he held a press conference where he spoke about the beginning of the defeat of the group. On February 10, he was arrested. Helsinki residents were also arrested in Ukraine and Georgia. But only in Georgia the group was completely defeated. The authorities applied pressure, weakened the activity of the groups, but did not completely destroy the movement. Despite the noticeable intensification of the American administration's position on the issue of human rights, the dissident leaders associated the arrests with the inconsistency and instability of Carter's behavior. However, the KGB's actions were relatively cautious. They went for arrests in cases where they hoped to somehow justify their position abroad (by accusing dissidents of libel or even espionage), but for now they refused the most scandalous actions (the expulsion of Sakharov, which was already being prepared in 1977), and especially the defeat movements. The Helsinki campaign made it possible to consolidate the human rights and national movements and significantly expand the ranks of human rights activists in the province. This created a good basis for further expansion of dissent.

L. Alekseeva writes about the dissidents of the “call” of the late 70s: “the new people for the most part were not satisfied only with moral confrontation, the pathos of which was cultivated by the founders of the human rights movement. The new people wanted, if not immediate, but practical results from their struggle; they were looking for ways to achieve it.” And this led to the emergence of a new generation of left-wing dissenters.

On December 5, 1978, an unprecedented event occurred in Leningrad. Shortly after the arrest of activists of the Revolutionary Communist Youth League, a student demonstration took place in their defense. About 200 boys and girls from Leningrad State University, the Academy of Arts, the Art College named after. Serov, Polytechnic Institute, from various vocational schools and schools. About 20 people were detained, but they were later released. During the trial of the union leader A. Tsurkov on April 3–6, 1979, a crowd of students gathered in front of the building.

Another channel for the expansion of the dissident movement, which became especially noticeable in the late 70s. in connection with economic difficulties in the USSR - a movement of refuseniks - Jews who wanted to leave the Soviet Union, but were refused this by the Soviet authorities. The ban on leaving the country was associated with the fear of leaking military information and brain drain. The cheapness and relatively high quality of Soviet education coupled with a low (compared to developed Western countries) standard of living could lead to a real exodus of the intelligentsia (which happened a decade later). The consequences for the economy and military-strategic policy of the USSR could be the most disastrous. Unable to provide its intelligentsia with a standard of living higher than in the West (especially if judged by tourist impressions), the Soviet leadership limited the freedom to leave the country. At the same time, Western countries and Israel provided benefits to Jewish immigrants.

The refusenik movement cannot be clearly considered national. As a rule, Jewish origin was only a reason for leaving for the West. In 1979, only 34.2% of those leaving on Israeli visas came to Israel, in 1981 - 18.9%. The rest were heading to the USA and Europe.

The total number of refuseniks in 1981 reached 40 thousand. It was a mass group, the number of which exceeded the number of “pure” dissidents. State policy turned a “refusenik” into an oppositionist almost automatically (although the decision to leave the USSR was already dissident). L. Alekseeva wrote that “tens of thousands of people who applied to leave remained in the country. They found themselves in a tragic situation. The fact of filing an application not only deprived them of their previous social status, but transferred them to the category of “disloyal” from the point of view of the authorities. With the cessation of emigration, they were doomed to exile for an indefinitely long time, possibly for life.”

The attacks on refuseniks intensified in 1978, after the A. Sharansky case, when the authorities accused the dissidents of espionage, since by reporting information about the oppression of Jews who worked for the defense, he provided information of interest to intelligence. The “Sharansky case” even allowed the USSR to put pressure on the United States - Carter asked Soviet leaders not to publish materials about the connections of dissidents with American intelligence. The trial of Sharansky, who carried out the “link” between dissidents and “refuseniks,” allowed official propaganda to further discredit the refusenik movement, since the defendant himself could not serve as confirmation of the propaganda he was spreading about the “fascist anti-Semitic campaign” in the USSR - Sharansky received a higher education, worked for defense enterprise, was not fired from his job, but stopped attending it after submitting an application to leave abroad. All this, according to the official version, indicated that all information about state anti-Semitism was false.

In the early 80s. The Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public began to act against the “refuseniks”. At his press conferences, where Western journalists were also allowed, speakers included both Soviet Jews, who more or less successfully refuted information about official anti-Semitism, and Jews who returned from emigration back to the USSR and argued that “we were just idiots, not understanding “What are we going to do when leaving our only Motherland.”

Dissidents demonstrated their solidarity with people whose civil rights were violated, their rejection of the anti-Semitism inherent in a significant part of the ruling bureaucracy. Already during Sharansky’s trial, dissident protesters, regardless of their nationality, sang the Israeli anthem.

For the regime, the rapprochement between dissidents and refuseniks was of little importance - many dissident leaders were considered Zionists. But while sympathizing with Jews who wanted to leave the USSR, dissidents sometimes spoke out against the violation of the rights of Palestinians - opponents of Israel. So in September 1976, A. Sakharov and E. Bonner appealed to the UN about the tragic situation in the Tel Zaatar Palestinian camp. But such nuances could not change the opinion of the Politburo - within the USSR, dissidents acted on the side of the Zionists. E. Bonner was considered a conductor of Zionist influence on Sakharov. Expansion of the refusal movement in the late 70s. was seen as an extension of dissidence.

The religious opposition movement also continued to develop rapidly, refusing to recognize the strategy of the hierarchs of the Orthodox Church to ally with the atheistic government, which persecutes any preaching outside the church walls. Religious dissent was ecumenical. There was a Christian Committee, created to protect the rights of believers and uniting representatives of different faiths, including priests, more (V. Fonchenkov) or less (G. Yakunin) loyal to the Patriarchate. The educational Christian seminar organized by A. Ogorodnikov (ecumenical in orientation), which published the irregular magazine “Community,” and the circles of D. Dudko and A. Men (see Chapter III) continued their work.

The spiritual atmosphere of such circles had enormous attractive power. The circle subculture, closer in its mechanism to informal movements than to the dissident environment, attracted the unorthodox intelligentsia with its atmosphere. V. Aksyuchits talks about Dudko’s circle: “Many, many people in small rooms held conversations, discussions, debates for many hours, in a very friendly atmosphere, with prayer. First the service, then the feast, they thought: today we have seven tables or today we have six tables. That's six table changes before everyone dine. Everyone was fed. Then they gathered at the same table. The room was full and these endless discussions and conversations were taking place. Either someone was reading something, or a special topic was being discussed.”

To the horror of the authorities, D. Dudko began publishing a special leaflet for parishioners, “In the Light of the Transfiguration,” which, in particular, talked about cases of oppression of believers. In Leningrad there was a seminar “37”, which published a magazine of the same name. All of these organizations had a fairly fluid composition and refused to have a rigid work plan. As a result, hundreds of people passed through them, who in turn influenced thousands of acquaintances. At the same time, as L. Alekseeva writes, “for the most part, Orthodox parishioners and even the Orthodox intelligentsia do not take part in civil resistance to state pressure on freedom of conscience and even condemn such resistance as “un-Christian.”

In 1979–1980 Samizdat publishing expanded. “XTS” began to be republished in the USA, penetrating into the USSR in the form of “tamizdat”. In the 70s The volume of the Chronicle increased as the information flow increased, both its own network of information and the network of organizations associated with HTS expanded. But the efficiency of the CTS output began to decline. In 1974–1983 On average, 3–4 issues were published (before 1972 - 6). “Chronicle” turned into a “thick magazine”.

In the 1970s "Chronicle" was the central, but far from the only publication of dissidents (not to mention non-dissident samizdat). They published materials from the Moscow Helsinki Group, collections in defense of individual dissidents, materials from specialized groups (the Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes, the Free Intersectoral Association of Workers, etc.), the historical collection “Memory,” the free Moscow magazine “Poiski,” ideologically colored magazines “Left Turn” (“Socialism and the Future”), “Options”, “Perspectives”. Samizdat spread more and more widely among the intelligentsia.

In the mid-70s. samizdat began to be replaced by tamizdat - the magazines “Vestnik RKhD”, “Grani”, “Continent” and books published by the NTS publishing house “Posev”.

At the same time, the development of fundamentally new methods of struggle began, which, it seemed, could attract wide sections of the population to the dissidents. In 1978, attempts were made to create a legal independent trade union. In January, V. Klebanov, who had already “served time” in a mental hospital for trying to create a group to monitor working conditions, again tried to register the Association of Free Trade Union for the Protection of Workers, which was legal and loyal to the authorities. Klebanov was arrested, and the trade union, where about 200 relatively loyal citizens signed up, immediately collapsed. Then, on December 28, 1978, L. Agapova, L. Volokhonsky, V. Novodvorskaya, V. Skvirsky and others proclaimed the Free Interprofessional Association of Workers (SFOT).

SMOT, which became the first dissident “going to the people,” did not succeed in its activities, but was symptomatic for the authorities - dissent did not want to remain in the narrow niche allocated for it by the system. “The purpose of SMOT was to provide legal, moral and material assistance to its members. For this purpose, within SMOT they intended to create “cooperative” associations - mutual aid funds, associations for the purchase or rental of houses in the countryside for shared use, for the creation of kindergartens where there are none or in short supply, and even for the exchange of goods (say, sending from Moscow to other city ​​tea and condensed milk, available in Moscow, in exchange for pork stew, which is available in some areas of Eastern Siberia, but is not available in Moscow),” wrote L. Alekseeva. However, the intentions of some of the creators were much more radical, which predetermined the failure of the moderate part of the program. One of the publishers of the SMOT Information Bulletin - the only actually implemented project of the organization - V. Senderov, declared himself a member of the People's Labor Union. V. Novodvorskaya also took extremely radical positions. For such leaders, the “union” was only a tool for moving to more active action. Novodvorskaya herself recalls the logic that guided the radical part of the founders of the “trade union”: “Kosciuszko and Dombrowski woke up KOS-KOR, and KOS-KOR woke up Solidarity. In our country, the 20th Congress woke up Bulat Okudzhava and Yuri Lyubimov, they woke up the dissidents, but the dissidents could no longer disturb anyone: everyone was fast asleep. The ascent did not take place. Therefore, the idea that inspired Grandfather (V. Skvirsky - A.Sh.) of workers' trade unions, independent of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, was purely platonic. Our SMOT - Free Interprofessional Association of Workers - was a desperate attempt by the unfortunate intelligentsia, in accordance with Stakhanov’s initiative, to push harder and create a labor movement out of itself.”

Strictly speaking, the dissident movement was not purely intellectual. It was varied. Among those arrested were many workers.

Membership in SMOT was secret (which is not typical for dissidents), and when leaders left the organization (which happened often, and not only because of arrest), the groups were lost. The semi-underground nature of the organization and the radicalism of some of its organizers made repression inevitable. After the arrest of L. Volokhonsky in 1982, the SMOT bulletin went underground, and the real activities of the organization ceased.

In December 1980, apparently not without the influence of the Polish experience, the editors of samizdat magazines announced the creation of the “Free Cultural Trade Union”. But in general, the attempt to “give birth” to a workers’ movement, or at least a trade union movement, failed. Still, this was a symptom of the movement’s search for access to new segments of the population, which could not but worry the authorities.

The next important symptom of this kind was the performance of the group “Elections-79” (V. Sychev, V. Baranov, L. Agapova, V. Solovyov, etc. - about 40 people in total), which nominated the city as a candidate for the Union Council in the Sverdlovsk district. Moscow to R. Medvedev and to the Council of Nationalities - to L. Agapov. It is clear that the candidates were not registered. But the dissidents’ raising of the “question of power” in such an open form showed the country’s leaders that the opposition was “playing too hard.” This was also a symptom of the activation of the left wing of the opposition, which was preparing to move on to the political struggle itself, filling Soviet democratic formalities with content (which would happen during Perestroika).

With the creation of the Working Commission to investigate the use of psychiatry for political purposes, the investigation of psychiatric repression in the USSR was put on a regular basis.

V. Bukovsky, who was imprisoned for this activity back in 1972 and, considered crazy, was exchanged for L. Corvalan in 1976, says: “Reputable Soviet psychiatrists avoided participating in our endeavor, they were afraid of reprisals. Ordinary psychiatrists - the first of them was Gluzman - soon suffered reprisals themselves. I didn’t really count on Western psychiatrists. How can they know all the complexities of our lives, how can they believe, contrary to the opinion of authoritative Soviet colleagues, whom you also regularly meet at international conferences, that some unknown person does not need compulsory psychiatric treatment?

However, ironically, this particular case turned out to be one of the most successful in the twenty-year history of our movement. The very idea of ​​placing a healthy person in a mental hospital for political reasons captured the imagination with the tragedy of the situation, inevitably led to philosophical problems regarding the concepts and definitions of mental health, and everyone easily imagined themselves in the place of the victim... What was the unconscious impulse of the so-called “revolution of 1968” , suddenly found verbal expression, and our experience turned out to be the most advanced.”

In these words of Bukovsky there is a noticeable exaggeration caused by a natural misunderstanding of the situation in the civil movement in the West. The impulse of 1968 predetermined constant interest in the problem of civil rights, primarily in their own countries. The Soviet experience was only an extreme and therefore important example of the phenomena that human rights activists observed at home. It is no coincidence that the campaign of support for Soviet dissidents coincided with the appearance on the screens of the American film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which tells the story of psychiatric repression in the United States. And here there was a similarity between the two systems, which most domestic dissidents simply did not notice. The violation of human rights in the West seemed to Western liberals to be a far-fetched problem, exaggerated by the USSR (each side in the conflict “exaggerated” what it liked, but can even one single violation of human rights be exaggerated - after all, rights are universal). Bukovsky writes with disdain “about some ‘Wilmington Ten’, about bans on professions in Germany and torture in Ulster.”

Serious violations of human rights were typical for both “camps”, but in the USSR they were usually grosser - the power machine simply did not know what it was doing. For example, according to Bukovsky, “they in the Kremlin really believed that I was paranoid. So that’s why they decided to expose me with maximum publicity.” In the West, Bukovsky’s reasoning did not seem strange at all, and the assertions that in the USSR normal people were considered crazy were clearly confirmed.

The offensive of dissidents in 1976–1979, which caused an unpleasant resonance in the West and even stimulated a quarrel with a number of European communist parties (the so-called “Eurocommunism”), caused concrete damage to the regime.

International scandals, mass student protests in Leningrad and unrest in Georgia, the expansion of the "refusenik" movement, the scandal in the Writers' Union associated with Metropol (see Chapter VI), attempts to create independent trade unions, nominate candidates for deputies - all this has already happened dangerous, especially considering that the formal constitutional system of the USSR was extremely democratic. The Politburo was ready to tolerate the opposition as a closed subculture, but the vigorous activity of the late 70s. has reached the end of the authoritarian regime's patience. This, along with the deterioration of the international situation, became the main reason for the offensive against dissidents in the first half of the 80s. In preparation for reforms, the ruling elite got rid of political competitors who had shown their readiness, if necessary, to begin catalyzing mass opposition movements.

With all this, the KGB still preferred to get rid of the enemy without landing. In January 1978, the “authorities” unofficially let dissidents know that in the near future “the flow of unofficial information will stop. People transmitting such information are faced with a voluntary choice, either - it would be better for everyone - they will leave the country, otherwise they will have to deal with them in accordance with the law. We are talking about people like Kopelev, Kornilov, Voinovich, Vladimov. When asked... if this is not a return to Stalinism, the answer was: “Under Stalin, they would have been imprisoned immediately, but we give them a choice.” Three of the named writers then left the country and were stripped of their citizenship. During a trip abroad, G. Vishnevskaya and M. Rostropovich were deprived of their citizenship. The state returned to “Leninist humanity” when opposition cultural figures began to be sent abroad rather than imprisoned and shot. But the dissidents did not appreciate this “humanity”. Commenting on the decree depriving him of citizenship, V. Voinovich wrote in an open letter to Brezhnev: “You have rated my activities undeservedly highly. I did not undermine the prestige of the Soviet state. Thanks to the efforts of its leaders and your personal contribution, the Soviet state has no prestige. Therefore, in fairness, you should deprive yourself of citizenship.

I do not recognize your decree and consider it nothing more than a piece of paper... Being a moderate optimist, I have no doubt that in a short time all your decrees depriving our poor homeland of its cultural heritage will be canceled. My optimism, however, is not enough to believe in an equally rapid elimination of the paper deficit. And my readers will have to hand over twenty kilograms of your works to waste paper in order to receive a coupon for one book about the soldier Chonkin.”

Voinovich's witty lines hardly reached the addressee. The expulsion had a sad international resonance for the Kremlin leaders, but arrests would have had much more unpleasant consequences. And yet, the regime failed to stop the opposition’s advance without arrests.

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  As part of a research program launched at the end of 1990 by NIPC Memorial to study the history of dissident activity and the human rights movement in the USSR, the following definition of dissidence (dissent) was proposed:

  Since then, dissidents have often been used to refer mainly to people who oppose authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, although the word is also used in broader contexts, for example to refer to people who oppose the prevailing mentality of their group. According to Lyudmila Alekseeva, dissidents are a historical category, like the Decembrists, Narodniks and even informals:58.

  The terms “dissident” and “dissident” have caused and continue to cause terminological disputes and criticism. For example, Leonid Borodin, who actively opposed the Soviet system and was persecuted, refuses to consider himself a dissident, since by dissident he understands only the liberal and liberal-democratic opposition to the regime of the 1960s - early 1970s, which took shape in the mid-1970s in human rights movement. According to L. Ternovsky, a dissident is a person who is guided by the laws written in the country where he lives, and not by spontaneously established customs and concepts.

  The dissidents dissociated themselves from any involvement in terrorism and, in connection with the explosions in Moscow in January 1977, stated:

  …Dissidents view terror with indignation and disgust. … We urge media professionals around the world to use the term “dissidents” only in this sense and not to expand it to include violent individuals. ...

  We ask you to remember that every journalist or commentator who does not distinguish between dissidents and terrorists is helping those who are trying to revive Stalinist methods of dealing with dissidents.

  In official Soviet documents and propaganda, the term “dissident” was usually used in quotation marks: “the so-called ‘dissidents’.” Much more often they were called “anti-Soviet elements”, “anti-Soviet”, “renegades”.

  Ideology

  Among the dissidents there were people of very different views, but they were united mainly by the inability to openly express their beliefs. There has never been a single "dissident organization" or "dissident ideology" uniting the majority of dissidents.

  If what happened can be called movement - as opposed to “stagnation” - then this movement is Brownian, that is, a phenomenon that is more psychological than social. But in this Brownian movement, here and there, turbulences and currents constantly appeared, moving somewhere - national, religious “movements,” including human rights ones.

  Dissidence as a phenomenon originated among the Moscow intelligentsia, largely in that part of it that experienced the tragedy of its fathers and grandfathers in the late thirties, experienced a just feeling of revenge in the wake of the famous “thaw” and the subsequent disappointment. At the first stage, Moscow dissidence was neither anti-communist nor anti-socialist, but precisely liberal, if by liberalism we mean a certain set of good wishes, not certified by political experience, political knowledge, or, especially, a political worldview.

  • “true communists” - were guided by Marxist-Leninist teaching, but believed that it was distorted in the USSR (for example, Roy Medvedev, NCPSU, “Young Socialists”);
  • “Western liberals” considered capitalism of the Western European or American type to be the “correct” system; some of them were supporters of the “theory of convergence” - the doctrine of the inevitability of rapprochement and subsequent merging of capitalism and socialism, but most of the “Westerners” considered socialism a “bad” (or short-lived) system;
  • “eclectics” - combined different views that contradicted the official ideology of the USSR;
  • Russian nationalists - supporters of Russia's “special path”; many of them attached great importance to the revival of Orthodoxy; some were supporters of the monarchy; see also soil scientists (in particular, Igor Shafarevich, Leonid Borodin, Vladimir Osipov);
  • other nationalists (in the Baltic states, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) - their demands ranged from the development of national culture to complete separation from the USSR. They often proclaimed themselves liberals, but having achieved political power during the collapse of the USSR, some of them (for example, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Abulfaz Elchibey) became ideologists of ethnocratic regimes. As Leonid Borodin wrote, “quantitatively, the nationalists of Ukraine, the Baltic states and the Caucasus have always prevailed in the camps. There were, of course, connections between the nationalist opposition and Moscow dissidence, but according to the principle: “a lousy Muscovite gets a tuft of wool.” Limply welcoming the anti-Russian sentiments of the Moscow oppositionists, the nationalists did not connect their successes with the prospects of Moscow dissidence, pinning their hopes on the collapse of the Union in economic competition with the West, or even on the Third World War.”

  Dissidents also included activists of the Zionist movement (“refuseniks”), activists of the Crimean Tatar movement for the return to Crimea (leader - M. A. Dzhemilev), nonconformist religious figures: Orthodox - D. S. Dudko, S. A. Zheludkov, A. .E.Krasnov-Levitin, A.I. Ogorodnikov, B.V. Talantov, G.P. Yakunin, “true Orthodox Christians”, Baptist - Council of Evangelical Christian Baptist Churches, Catholic in Lithuania, Adventist Reformists led by V. A. Shelkov, Pentecostals (in particular, the Siberian Seven), Hare Krishnas (see International Society for Krishna Consciousness in Russia).

  Since the late 1960s, the meaning of the activity or tactics of many dissidents who adhered to different ideologies was the struggle for human rights in the USSR - first of all, for the right to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of emigration, for the release of political prisoners (“prisoners of conscience”) - see Human rights movement in the USSR.

  Social composition

  The institutionalization of science inevitably led to the emergence of a layer of people who critically comprehend the surrounding reality. According to some estimates, the majority of dissidents belonged to the intelligentsia. At the end of the 1960s, 45% of all dissidents were scientists, 13% were engineers and technicians:55,65-66.

  For a thousand academicians and corresponding members,
  For the entire educated cultural legion
  There were only this handful of sick intellectuals,
  Say out loud what a healthy million thinks!
  

  In fact, two main directions of dissident opposition to the totalitarian regime have emerged.

  The first of them was focused on support from outside the USSR, the second - on the use of protest sentiments of the population within the country.

  The activities, as a rule, are open; some of the dissidents, mainly Moscow human rights activists, were based on appeals to foreign public opinion, the use of the Western press, non-governmental organizations, foundations, and connections with Western political and government figures.

  At the same time, the actions of a significant part of the dissidents were either simply a form of spontaneous self-expression and protest, or a form of individual or group resistance to totalitarianism - Group of Revolutionary Communism, Valentin Sokolov, Andrei Derevyankin, Yuri Petrovsky and others. In particular, this second direction was expressed in the creation of various kinds of underground organizations, focused not on connections with the West, but exclusively on organizing resistance within the USSR.

  Dissidents sent open letters to central newspapers and the Central Committee of the CPSU, produced and distributed samizdat, organized demonstrations (for example, “Glasnost Rally”, Demonstration on August 25, 1968), trying to bring to the public information about the real state of affairs in the country.

  Dissidents paid much attention to “samizdat” - the publication of homemade brochures, magazines, books, collections, etc. The name “Samizdat” appeared as a joke - by analogy with the names of Moscow publishing houses - “Detizdat” (publishing house of children’s literature), “Politizdat” ( publishing house of political literature), etc. People themselves printed unauthorized literature on typewriters and thus distributed it throughout Moscow, and then throughout other cities. "Erica takes four copies,- Alexander Galich sang in his song. - That's all. And that's enough! (See the lyrics of the song) - this is said about “samizdat”: “Erika”, a typewriter, became the main instrument when there were no copiers or computers with printers (copiers began to appear in the 1970s, but only for institutions , and everyone working for them was required to keep track of the number of pages printed). Some of those who received the first copies reprinted and replicated them. This is how dissident magazines spread. In addition to “samizdat,” “tamizdat” was widespread - the publication of prohibited materials abroad and their subsequent distribution throughout the USSR.

  In February 1979, the “Elections-79” group arose, whose members intended to exercise in person the right granted by the Constitution of the USSR to nominate independent candidates for elections to the Supreme Council of the USSR. Roy Medvedev and Lyudmila Agapova, the wife of the defector Agapov, who sought to go to her husband, were nominated. The group submitted documents to register these candidates, but did not receive a response by the due date; as a result, the relevant election commissions refused to register the candidates.

  Position of the authorities

  The Soviet leadership fundamentally rejected the idea of ​​the existence of any opposition in the USSR, much less the possibility of dialogue with dissidents. On the contrary, in the USSR the “ideological unity of society” was proclaimed; dissidents were called nothing more than “renegades.”

  Official propaganda sought to present dissidents as agents of Western intelligence services, and dissidence as a kind of professional activity that was generously paid from abroad.

  Some dissidents actually received royalties for works published in the West (see Tamizdat); the Soviet authorities invariably tried to portray this in a negative light as “bribery” or “venality,” although many officially recognized Soviet writers also published in the West and received fees for this in the same way.

  Persecution of dissidents

  The persecution to which Soviet dissidents were subjected included dismissal from work, expulsion from educational institutions, arrests, placement in psychiatric hospitals, exile, deprivation of Soviet citizenship and deportation from the country.

  Before the year, criminal prosecution of dissidents was carried out on the basis of clause 10 and similar articles of the criminal codes of other union republics (“counter-revolutionary agitation”), which provided for imprisonment for up to 10 years, and since 1960 - on the basis of art. 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1960 (“anti-Soviet agitation”) and similar articles of the criminal codes of other union republics, which provided for imprisonment for up to 7 years and 5 years of exile (up to 10 years of imprisonment and 5 years of exile for those previously convicted of a similar crime) . Since then, Art. 190-1 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR “Dissemination of knowingly false fabrications discrediting the Soviet state and social system,” which provided for imprisonment for up to 3 years (and similar articles of the criminal codes of other union republics). For all these articles from 1956 to 1987. 8,145 people were convicted in the USSR.

  In addition, for the criminal prosecution of dissidents, Articles 147 (“Violation of the laws on the separation of church from the state and school from the church”) and 227 (“Creation of a group causing harm to the health of citizens”) of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1960, articles on parasitism and violation of the regime were used registration, there are also known cases (in the 1980s) of planting weapons, ammunition or drugs with their subsequent discovery during searches and initiation of cases under the relevant articles (for example, the case of K. Azadovsky).

  Some dissidents were declared socially dangerous and mentally ill, and forced treatment was applied to them under this pretext. During the years of stagnation, punitive psychiatry attracted the authorities due to the lack of need to create the appearance of legality required in judicial proceedings.

  In the West, Soviet dissidents who were subjected to criminal prosecution or psychiatric treatment were treated as political prisoners, “prisoners of conscience.”

  State security agencies were involved in the fight against dissidents, in particular, the 5th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR (for the fight against “ideological sabotage”)

  Until the mid-1960s, virtually any open display of political dissent resulted in arrest. But starting from the mid-1960s, the KGB began to widely use so-called “preventive measures” - warnings and threats, and arrested mainly only those dissidents who continued their activities despite intimidation. KGB officers often offered dissidents a choice between emigration and arrest.

  The activities of the KGB in the 1970-80s were significantly influenced by the socio-economic processes occurring in the country during the period of “developed socialism” and changes in the foreign policy of the USSR. During this period, the KGB focused its efforts on combating nationalism and anti-Soviet manifestations within the country and abroad. Domestically, state security agencies have stepped up the fight against dissent and the dissident movement; however, the actions of physical violence, deportations and imprisonments became more subtle and disguised. The use of psychological pressure on dissidents has increased, including surveillance, pressure through public opinion, undermining professional careers, preventive conversations, deportation from the USSR, forced imprisonment in psychiatric clinics, political trials, slander, lies and compromising material, various provocations and intimidation. There was a ban on the residence of politically unreliable citizens in the capital cities of the country - the so-called “exile for the 101st kilometer”. Under the close attention of the KGB were, first of all, representatives of the creative intelligentsia - figures of literature, art and science - who, due to their social status and international authority, could harm the reputation of the Soviet state in the understanding of the Communist Party.

  The activities of the KGB in the persecution of the Soviet writer, Nobel Prize laureate in literature A. I. Solzhenitsyn are indicative. In the late 1960s - early 1970s, a special unit was created in the KGB - the 9th department of the Fifth Directorate of the KGB - exclusively engaged in the operational development of a dissident writer. In August 1971, the KGB attempted to physically eliminate Solzhenitsyn - during a trip to Novocherkassk, he was secretly injected with an unknown poisonous substance; the writer survived, but after that he was seriously ill for a long time. In the summer of 1973, KGB officers detained one of the writer’s assistants, E. Voronyanskaya, and during interrogation forced her to reveal the location of one copy of the manuscript of Solzhenitsyn’s work “The Gulag Archipelago.” Returning home, the woman hanged herself. Having learned about what had happened, Solzhenitsyn ordered the publication of “Archipelago” to begin in the West. A powerful propaganda campaign was launched in the Soviet press, accusing the writer of slandering the Soviet state and social system. Attempts by the KGB, through Solzhenitsyn’s ex-wife, to persuade the writer to refuse to publish “Archipelago” abroad in exchange for a promise of assistance in the official publication of his story “Cancer Ward” in the USSR were unsuccessful and the first volume of the work was published in Paris in December 1973. In January 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested, accused of treason, deprived of Soviet citizenship and expelled from the USSR. The initiator of the deportation of the writer was Andropov, whose opinion became decisive in choosing the measure to “suppress anti-Soviet activities” of Solzhenitsyn at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU. After the writer was expelled from the country, the KGB and Andropov personally continued the campaign to discredit Solzhenitsyn and, as Andropov put it, “exposing the active use by reactionary circles of the West of such renegades in ideological sabotage against the countries of the socialist commonwealth.”

  Prominent scientists were the target of many years of persecution by the KGB. For example, the Soviet physicist, three times Hero of Socialist Labor, dissident and human rights activist, Nobel Peace Prize laureate A.D. Sakharov was under KGB surveillance since the 1960s, subjected to searches and numerous insults in the press. In 1980, on charges of anti-Soviet activities, Sakharov was arrested and sent into exile without trial in the city of Gorky, where he spent 7 years under house arrest under the control of KGB officers. In 1978, the KGB attempted, on charges of anti-Soviet activities, to initiate a criminal case against the Soviet philosopher, sociologist and writer A. A. Zinoviev with the aim of sending him for compulsory treatment to a psychiatric hospital, however, “taking into account the campaign launched in the West around psychiatry in USSR" this preventive measure was considered inappropriate. Alternatively, in a memorandum to the CPSU Central Committee, the KGB leadership recommended allowing Zinoviev and his family to travel abroad and blocking his entry into the USSR.

  To monitor the USSR's implementation of the Helsinki Agreements on the observance of human rights, in 1976 a group of Soviet dissidents formed the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG), the first leader of which was the Soviet physicist, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR Yu. F. Orlov. Since its formation, the MHG was subjected to constant persecution and pressure from the KGB and other security agencies of the Soviet state. Members of the group were threatened, forced to emigrate, and forced to stop their human rights activities. Since February 1977, activists Yu. F. Orlov, A. Ginzburg, A. Sharansky and M. Landa began to be arrested. In the Sharansky case, the KGB received the sanction of the CPSU Central Committee to prepare and publish a number of propaganda articles, as well as to write and transmit to US President John Carter a personal letter from the defendant’s father-in-law denying the fact of Sharansky’s marriage and “exposing” his immoral character. Under pressure from the KGB in 1976-1977, members of the MHG L. Alekseeva, P. Grigorenko and V. Rubin were forced to emigrate. In the period from 1976 to 1982, eight members of the group were arrested and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment or exile (a total of 60 years in camps and 40 years in exile), six more were forced to emigrate from the USSR and were deprived of citizenship. In the fall of 1982, under conditions of increasing repression, the three remaining members of the group were forced to announce the cessation of the activities of the MHG. The Moscow Helsinki Group was able to resume its activities only in 1989, at the height of Gorbachev's perestroika.

  The KGB sought to get arrested dissidents to make public statements condemning the dissident movement. Thus, the “Counterintelligence Dictionary” (published by the Higher School of the KGB in 1972) states: “The KGB bodies, carrying out measures for the ideological disarmament of the enemy together with party bodies and under their direct leadership, inform the governing bodies about all ideologically harmful manifestations, prepare materials to publicly expose the criminal activities of bearers of anti-Soviet ideas and views, organize open speeches by prominent enemy ideologists who have broken with their previous views, carry out political and educational work with persons convicted of anti-Soviet activities, organize disintegration work among members of ideologically harmful groups, and carry out preventive measures in that environment , in which these groups recruit their members." In exchange for mitigation of punishment, they managed to obtain “repentant” speeches from Pyotr Yakir, Viktor Krasin, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Dmitry Dudko.

  Letters from Western figures in support of dissidents were deliberately left unanswered. For example, in 1983, the then General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Yu. V. Andropov gave special instructions not to respond to a letter from Federal Chancellor of Austria Bruno Kreisky in support of Yuri Orlov.

  Lawyers who insisted on the innocence of dissidents were removed from political cases; This is how Sofya Kallistratova was removed, insisting on the absence of a crime in the actions of Vadim Delaunay and Natalya Gorbanevskaya.

  Exchange of political prisoners

  Impact and results

  Most residents of the USSR had no information about the activities of dissidents. Dissident publications were largely inaccessible to most citizens of the USSR, and Western radio broadcasting in the languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR was jammed until 1988.

  The activities of dissidents attracted the attention of the foreign public to human rights violations in the USSR. Demands for the release of Soviet political prisoners were put forward by many foreign politicians, including even some members of foreign communist parties, which caused concern among the Soviet leadership.

  There is a known case when Viktor Orekhov, an employee of the 5th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR, under the influence of the ideas of dissidents, began to inform his “supervisors” of information about upcoming searches and arrests.

  Be that as it may, by the beginning of the 1980s, according to the testimony of the former participants in the dissident movement themselves, dissidence as a more or less organized opposition was over.

  The collapse of the totalitarian regime in the USSR, the acquisition of certain political rights and freedoms by the population - such as, for example, freedom of speech and creativity - led to the fact that a significant part of the dissidents, recognizing their task as completed, integrated into the post-Soviet political system.

  However, the former dissidents did not become a significant political force. Alexander Daniel answered the question about the reasons for this:

  A little about one unfounded complaint against dissidents and the reason for disappointment in them. The basis for misconceptions about their role in the political process in the territory of the former Soviet Union is a false analogy with contemporary oppositions in Eastern and Central Europe - primarily in Poland and Czechoslovakia. But “Solidarity” or “Charter 77” were real mass movements, with their own political platforms, their own leaders, their own social ideals, etc. These movements - persecuted, semi-underground - were, nevertheless, prototypes of future political parties capable of fighting for power, winning and maintaining it. In Russia, there was no political movement called “dissidence”; there was no common political platform - from monarchists to communists. And the fact that dissidence was not a political movement meant, in particular, that dissidence did not predispose to political thinking. Dissident thinking is “I am here and now doing this. Why am I doing this? Forgive me, according to Tolstoy, according to Sartre and according to all the existentialists, I cannot do otherwise.” This is a purely existential act, emanating from a moral impulse, although framed as an act of defense of rights. Of course, most dissidents did not like Soviet power, but even then, why should they love it? But they didn’t fight against her. All their words about this at that time were by no means to divert the eyes of the KGB officers; they really did not set such a task for themselves. Why? Because there was no political perspective in sight. Acting on the basis of how your word will respond in three hundred years or never will respond at all, on a philosophy of hopelessness, is impossible in combination with political thinking. I know one very serious, strong exception - Sakharov. Sakharov, as a man of a very strong and generalizing mind, suspected that something could happen in his lifetime, and tried to rise a little higher than both existential and political thinking, to be a conductor of moral politics. But for this it was necessary to have very extraordinary intellectual fearlessness, especially given the aversion to politics that infected the entire intelligentsia. Sakharov in this sense is perhaps the only political thinker. And it’s not for nothing that he was the first to fit into political life. And dissidents as such are not politicians. They can say: “This will be good.” But no one ever taught them how to move from what is to what should be. What are the algorithms for this transition, what are the stages of this transition? How to walk along this path without slipping, without crossing the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable compromise?

  A number of Soviet dissidents are active in legal political activity in modern Russia - Lyudmila Alekseeva, Valeria Novodvorskaya, Alexander Podrabinek and others.

  At the same time, some of the Soviet dissidents either categorically did not accept the post-Soviet political regime - Adel Naidenovich, Alexander Tarasov, or were not rehabilitated - Igor Ogurtsov, or were even again subjected to repression for their opposition activities - Sergei Grigoryants

  Dissidence caused enormous harm to the USSR. The vast majority of dissidents are traitors working for Western intelligence services, members of the so-called “fifth column”. Under the guise of protecting human rights, they tirelessly and inevitably led the country to collapse. Those positive phenomena that existed in the USSR were hushed up or deliberately distorted, changing the meaning to the opposite, and the communist system, with which most of the people living in the Union were happy, was presented in every possible way as slavish, inhuman, etc. In the end, they celebrated victory when, together with traitors in the highest echelons of power, they managed to destroy a great power - the USSR. Quite a few dissidents now live in the United States and NATO countries. There, many of them were awarded various highest awards for “human rights” activities, and some - openly, for their work to destroy the USSR...

  Dissident organizations

  • All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People
  • Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR
  • Free interprofessional association of workers
  • International Union of Evangelical Christian Baptist Churches
  • Group for establishing trust between the USSR and USA
  • Russian public Fund assist the persecuted and their families
  • Working Commission to Inquire into the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes

  see also

  Notes

  1. History of Soviet dissidents
  2. History of Soviet dissidents. Memorial
  3. “Dissident” (from the manuscript of the book by S. A. Kovalev)
  4. Where did dissidence come from? : The history of Soviet dissent in the memoirs of one of the heroines of the dissident movement Lyudmila Alekseeva (undefined) . [Recording of an interview with Yu. Ryzhenko]. Colta.ru (February 27, 2014). Retrieved January 19, 2015.
  5. Bezborodov A. B. Academic dissidence in the USSR // Russian Historical Journal, 1999, volume II, No. 1. ISBN 5-7281-0092-9
  6. Vladimir Kozlov. Sedition: Dissent in the USSR under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. 1953-1982 years. According to declassified documents of the Supreme Court and the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR
  7. Dissidents about dissidence. // "Banner". - 1997. No. 9
  8. L. Ternovsky. Law and concepts (Russian version).

  A movement of Soviet citizens who were in opposition to the policies of the authorities and whose goal was to liberalize the political regime in the USSR. Dating: mid-60s - early 80s.

  A dissident (lat. dissenter, dissenter) is a citizen who does not share the official ideology dominant in society.

  Prerequisites

  The discrepancy between the rights and freedoms of citizens proclaimed in the USSR Constitution and the real state of affairs.

  Contradictions of Soviet policy in various spheres (socio-economic, cultural, etc.).

  The Brezhnev leadership's departure from the policy of de-Stalinization (thaw).

  The 20th Congress and the campaign of condemnation of the “cult of personality” and the policy of the “thaw” that began after it made the population of the country feel greater than before, albeit relative, freedom. But often criticism of Stalinism spilled over into criticism of the Soviet system itself, which the authorities could not allow. Replaced N.S. in 1964 Khrushcheva L.I. Brezhnev and his team quickly set out to suppress dissent.

  The dissident movement as such began in 1965 with the arrest of A. Sinyavsky and Y. Daniel, who published one of their works “Walks with Pushkin” in the West. As a protest against this, on December 5, 1965, on Soviet Constitution Day, a “glasnost rally” was held on Pushkin Square in Moscow. This rally was not only a response to the arrest of Yu. Daniel and A. Sinyavsky, but also a call on the authorities to comply with their own laws (the speakers’ posters read: “We demand openness of the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel!” and “Respect the Soviet Constitution!”). December 5 can be called the birthday of the dissident movement in the USSR. From this time on, the creation of a network of underground circles, wide in geography and representative in composition of participants, began, whose task was to change the existing political order. It was from this time that the authorities began a targeted fight against dissidence. As for the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel, it was still public (took place in January 1966), although the sentences were quite severe: Sinyavsky and Daniel received 5 and 7 years in maximum security camps, respectively.

  The speech on August 25, 1968 against the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia, which took place on Red Square, also became a symbol of dissidence. Eight people took part in it: student T. Baeva, linguist K. Babitsky, philologist L. Bogoraz, poet V. Delaunay, worker V. Dremlyuga, physicist P. Litvinov, art critic V. Fayenberg and poetess N. Gorbanevskaya.

  Goals of the dissident movement

  The main goals of the dissidents were:

  Democratization (liberalization) of social and political life in the USSR;

  Providing the population with real civil and political rights and freedoms (observance of the rights and freedoms of citizens and people in the USSR);

  Abolition of censorship and granting freedom of creativity;

  Removing the “Iron Curtain” and establishing close contacts with the West;

  Preventing neo-Stalinism;

  Convergence of socialist and capitalist social systems.

  Methods of the dissident movement

  Sending letters and appeals to official authorities.

  Publishing and distributing handwritten and typewritten publications - samizdat.

  Publication of works abroad without the permission of Soviet authorities - tamizdat.

  Creation of illegal organizations (groups).

  Organization of open performances.

  Directions of the dissident movement

  There are three main directions in it:

  Civil movements (“politicians”). The largest among them was the human rights movement. His supporters stated: “The protection of human rights, his basic civil and political freedoms, open protection, by legal means, within the framework of existing laws, was the main pathos of the human rights movement... Repulsion from political activity, a suspicious attitude towards ideologically charged projects of social reconstruction, rejection of any forms organizations - this is the set of ideas that can be called a human rights position";

  Religious movements (faithful and free Seventh-day Adventists, evangelical Christians - Baptists, Orthodox, Pentecostals and others);

  National movements (Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Armenians, Georgians, Crimean Tatars, Jews, Germans and others).

  Stages of the dissident movement

  The first stage (1965 - 1972) can be called the period of formation. These years were marked by: a “letter campaign” in defense of human rights in the USSR; the creation of the first human rights circles and groups; organization of the first funds for material assistance to political prisoners; intensifying the positions of the Soviet intelligentsia not only regarding events in our country, but also in other countries (for example, in Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1971, etc.); public protest against the re-Stalinization of society; appealing not only to the authorities of the USSR, but also to the world community (including the international communist movement); the creation of the first program documents of the liberal-Western (the work of A.D. Sakharov “Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom”) and pochvennik (“Nobel Lecture” by A.I. Solzhenitsyn) directions; the beginning of the publication of "Chronicles of Current Events" (1968); the creation on May 28, 1969 of the country's first open public association - the Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR; the massive scope of the movement (according to the KGB for 1967 - 1971, 3,096 “groups of a politically harmful nature” were identified; 13,602 people included in them were prevented).

  The efforts of the authorities in the fight against dissent during this period were mainly focused on: organizing a special structure in the KGB (the Fifth Directorate), aimed at ensuring control over mental attitudes and “prevention” of dissidents; the widespread use of psychiatric hospitals to combat dissent; changing Soviet legislation in the interests of combating dissidents; suppression of dissidents’ connections with foreign countries.

  The second stage (1973 - 1974) is usually considered a period of crisis for the movement. This condition is associated with the arrest, investigation and trial of P. Yakir and V. Krasin (1972-1973), during which they agreed to cooperate with the KGB. This resulted in new arrests of participants and some fading of the human rights movement. The authorities launched an offensive against samizdat. Numerous searches, arrests and trials took place in Moscow, Leningrad, Vilnius, Novosibirsk, Kyiv and other cities.

  The third stage (1974 - 1975) is considered to be a period of broad international recognition of the dissident movement. This period saw the creation of the Soviet branch of the international organization Amnesty International; deportation from the country A.I. Solzhenitsyn (1974); awarding the Nobel Prize to A.D. Sakharov (1975); resumption of publication of A Chronicle of Current Events (1974).

  The fourth stage (1976 - 1981) is called Helsinki. During this period, a group was created to promote the implementation of the 1975 Helsinki agreements in the USSR, headed by Yu. Orlov (Moscow Helsinki Group - MHG). The group saw the main content of its activities in the collection and analysis of materials available to it about violations of the humanitarian articles of the Helsinki Accords and informing the governments of the participating countries about them. The MHG established connections with religious and national movements that were previously unrelated to each other, and began to perform some coordinating functions. At the end of 1976 - beginning of 1977, the Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Georgian, Armenian, and Helsinki groups were created on the basis of national movements. In 1977, a working commission was created under the MHG to investigate the use of psychiatry for political purposes.

  Practice of the dissident movement

  We will try to follow the course of events, first of all, the activities of the main human rights movement of the dissident movement.

  Following the arrest of Sinyavsky and Daniel, a campaign of letters of protest followed. It became the final watershed between government and society.

  A special impression was made by a letter from 25 prominent scientific and cultural figures to Brezhnev, which quickly spread throughout Moscow in 1966, about the tendencies to rehabilitate Stalin. Among those who signed this letter is composer D.D. Shostakovich, 13 academicians, famous directors, actors, artists, writers, old Bolsheviks with pre-revolutionary experience. The arguments against re-Stalinization were made in a spirit of loyalty, but the protest against the revival of Stalinism was expressed vigorously.

  There was a massive distribution of anti-Stalinist samizdat materials. Solzhenitsyn’s novels “In the First Circle” and “Cancer Ward” became most famous during these years. Memoirs about the camps and prisons of the Stalin era were distributed: “This must not happen again” by S. Gazaryan, “Memoirs” by V. Olitskaya, “Notebooks for grandchildren” by M. Baitalsky, etc. “Kolyma Stories” by V. Shalamov was reprinted and rewritten. But the most widespread was the first part of E. Ginzburg’s chronicle novel “Steep Route”. The petition campaign also continued. The most famous were: a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU from 43 children of communists who were repressed during Stalin’s times (September 1967) and letters from Roy Medvedev and Pyotr Yakir to the magazine “Communist”, containing a list of Stalin’s crimes.

  The petition campaign continued in early 1968. Appeals to the authorities were supplemented by letters against judicial reprisals against samizdators: former student of the Moscow Historical and Archival Institute Yuri Galanskov, Alexander Ginzburg, Alexei Dobrovolsky, Vera Dashkova. The “Trial of Four” was directly related to the case of Sinyavsky and Daniel: Ginzburg and Galanskov were accused of compiling and transmitting to the West the “White Book on the Trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel,” Galanskov, in addition, of compiling the samizdat literary and journalistic collection “Phoenix-66” ", and Dashkova and Dobrovolsky - in assistance to Galanskov and Ginzburg. The form of the 1968 protests repeated the events of two years ago, but on an enlarged scale.

  In January, a demonstration took place in defense of the arrested, organized by V. Bukovsky and V. Khaustov. About 30 people took part in the demonstration. During the trial of the “four,” about 400 people gathered outside the courthouse.

  The petition campaign was much broader than in 1966. Representatives of all layers of the intelligentsia, right down to the most privileged, took part in the petition campaign. There were more than 700 “signatories.” The signature campaign of 1968 was not immediately successful: Ginzburg was sentenced to 5 years in a camp, Galanskov to 7, and died in prison in 1972.

  In the spring and summer of 1968, the Czechoslovak crisis developed, caused by an attempt at radical democratic transformations of the socialist system and ending with the introduction of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia. The most famous demonstration in defense of Czechoslovakia was the demonstration on August 25, 1968 on Red Square in Moscow. Larisa Bogoraz, Pavel Litvinov, Konstantin Babitsky, Natalia Gorbanevskaya, Viktor Fainberg, Vadim Delone and Vladimir Dremlyuga sat on the parapet at the Execution Ground and unfurled the slogans “Long live free and independent Czechoslovakia!”, “Shame on the occupiers!”, “Hands off Czechoslovakia” !”, “For your and our freedom!”. Almost immediately, the demonstrators were arrested by plainclothes KGB officers who were on duty in Red Square awaiting the departure of the Czechoslovak delegation from the Kremlin. The trial took place in October. Two were sent to a camp, three to exile, one to a mental hospital. N. Gorbanevskaya, who had an infant, was released. The people of Czechoslovakia learned about this demonstration in the USSR and all over the world.

  The reassessment of values ​​that took place in Soviet society in 1968 and the government's final abandonment of the liberal course determined the new alignment of opposition forces. The human rights movement has set a course for the formation of unions and associations - not only to influence the government, but also to protect their own rights.

  In April 1968, a group began working that published the political bulletin “Chronicle of Current Events” (CTC). The first editor of the chronicle was Natalya Gorbanevskaya. After her arrest in December 1969 and until 1972, it was Anatoly Yakobson. Subsequently, the editorial board changed every 2-3 years, mainly due to arrests.

  The editorial staff of the HTS collected information about human rights violations in the USSR, the situation of political prisoners, arrests of human rights activists, and acts of exercise of civil rights. Over the course of several years of work, HTS has established connections between disparate groups in the human rights movement. The chronicle was closely connected not only with human rights activists, but also with various dissidents. Thus, a significant amount of CTS materials was devoted to the problems of national minorities, national democratic movements in the Soviet republics, primarily in Ukraine and Lithuania, as well as religious problems. Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses and Baptists were frequent correspondents of the Chronicle. The breadth of the Chronicle's geographical connections was also significant. By 1972, the releases described the situation in 35 locations across the country.

  Over the 15 years of the Chronicle’s existence, 65 issues of the newsletter were prepared; 63 issues were distributed (the practically prepared 59th issue was seized during a search in 1981; the last, 65th, also remained in manuscript). The volume of issues ranged from 15-20 (in the early years) to 100-150 (at the end) typewritten pages.

  In 1968, censorship in scientific publications was tightened in the USSR, the threshold of secrecy for many types of published information increased, and Western radio stations began to be jammed. A natural reaction to this was the significant growth of samizdat, and since there was not enough underground publishing capacity, it became the rule to send a copy of the manuscript to the West. At first, samizdat texts came “by gravity”, through familiar correspondents, scientists, and tourists who were not afraid to bring “forbidden books” across the border. In the West, some of the manuscripts were published and also smuggled back into the Union. This is how a phenomenon was formed, which at first received the name “tamizdat” among human rights activists.

  The intensification of repression against dissidents in 1968-1969 gave rise to a completely new phenomenon for Soviet political life - the creation of the first human rights association. It was created in 1969. It began traditionally, with a letter about violations of civil rights in the USSR, this time sent to the UN. The authors of the letter explained their appeal as follows: “We are appealing to the UN because we have not received any response to our protests and complaints, sent for a number of years to the highest government and judicial authorities in the USSR. The hope that our voice will be heard, that the authorities will stop the lawlessness that we constantly pointed out, this hope has been exhausted.” They asked the UN to “protect human rights violated in the Soviet Union.” The letter was signed by 15 people: participants in the signing campaigns of 1966-1968 Tatyana Velikanova, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Sergei Kovalev, Viktor Krasin, Alexander Lavut, Anatoly Levitin-Krasnov, Yuri Maltsev, Grigory Podyapolsky, Tatyana Khodorovich, Pyotr Yakir, Anatoly Yakobson and Genrikh Altunyan, Leonid Plyushch. The initiative group wrote that in the USSR “... one of the most basic human rights is being violated - the right to have independent beliefs and disseminate them by any legal means.” The signatories stated that they would form the “Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR.”

  The activities of the Initiative Group were limited to investigating facts of human rights violations, demanding the release of prisoners of conscience and prisoners in special hospitals. Data on human rights violations and the number of prisoners was sent to the UN and international humanitarian congresses, the International League of Human Rights.

  The initiative group existed until 1972. By this time, 8 of its 15 members were arrested. The activities of the Initiative Group were interrupted due to the arrest in the summer of 1972 of its leaders P. Yakir and V. Krasin.

  The experience of the Initiative Group's legal work convinced others of the opportunity to act openly. In November 1970, the Human Rights Committee in the USSR was created in Moscow. The initiators were Valery Chalidze, Andrei Tverdokhlebov and Academician Sakharov, all three were physicists. Later they were joined by Igor Shafarevich, mathematician, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The committee's experts were A. Yesenin-Volpin and B. Tsukerman, and the correspondents were A. Solzhenitsyn and A. Galich.

  The founding statement indicated the goals of the Committee: advisory assistance to public authorities in the creation and application of human rights guarantees; development of theoretical aspects of this problem and study of its specifics in a socialist society; legal education, promotion of international and Soviet documents on human rights. The Committee dealt with the following problems: a comparative analysis of the USSR's obligations under the international covenants on human rights and Soviet legislation; the rights of persons recognized as mentally ill; definition of the concepts “political prisoner” and “parasite”. Although the Committee was intended to be a research and advisory organization, its members were approached by a large number of people not only for legal advice, but also for assistance.

  Since the beginning of the 70s, arrests of dissidents in the capital and large cities have increased significantly. Special “samizdat” processes began. Any text written on one’s own behalf was subject to Art. 190 or art. 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, which meant 3 or 7 years in camps, respectively. Psychiatric repression intensified. In August 1971, the Ministry of Health of the USSR agreed with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR a new instruction granting psychiatrists the right to forcibly hospitalize persons “posing a public danger” without the consent of the patient’s relatives or “other persons around him.” In psychiatric hospitals in the early 70s there were: V. Gershuni, P. Grigorenko, V. Fainberg, V. Borisov, M. Kukobaka and other human rights activists. Dissidents considered placement in special psychiatric hospitals more difficult than imprisonment in prisons and camps. Those who ended up in hospitals were tried in absentia, and the trial was always closed.

  The activities of the HTS and samizdat activities in general became an important object of persecution. The so-called Case No. 24 is the investigation of the leading figures of the Moscow Initiative Group for the Protection of Human Rights in the USSR, P. Yakir and V. Krasin, arrested in the summer of 1972. The case of Yakir and Krasin was essentially a process against HTS, since Yakir’s apartment served as the main point of collecting information for the Chronicle. As a result, Yakir and Krasin “repented” and gave evidence against more than 200 people who took part in the work of the HTS. The Chronicle, suspended in 1972, was discontinued the following year due to mass arrests.

  Since the summer of 1973, the authorities began to practice expulsion from the country or deprivation of citizenship. Many human rights activists were even asked to choose between a new term and leaving the country. In July - October, Zhores Medvedev, the brother of Roy Medvedev, who went to England on scientific business, was deprived of citizenship; V. Chalidze, one of the leaders of the democratic movement, who also traveled to the USA for scientific purposes. In August, Andrei Sinyavsky was allowed to travel to France, and in September, one of the leading members of the Islamic State and editor of the Chronicle, Anatoly Yakobson, was pushed to leave for Israel.

  September 5, 1973 A.I. Solzhenitsyn sent a “Letter to the Leaders of the Soviet Union” to the Kremlin, which ultimately served as the impetus for the forced expulsion of the writer in February 1974.

  In August 1973, the trial of Krasin and Yakir took place, and on September 5, their press conference, at which both publicly repented and condemned their activities and the human rights movement as a whole. In the same month, due to the arrests, the Human Rights Committee ceased its work.

  The human rights movement virtually ceased to exist. The survivors went deep underground. The feeling that the game was lost became dominant.

  By 1974, conditions had developed for the resumption of activities of human rights groups and associations. Now these efforts were concentrated around the newly created Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights, which was finally headed by A.D. Sakharov.

  In February 1974, the Chronicle of Current Events resumed its publications, and the first statements of the Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights appeared. By October 1974, the group had finally recovered. On October 30, members of the Initiative Group held a press conference chaired by Sakharov. At the press conference, foreign journalists were presented with appeals and open letters from political prisoners. Among them, a collective appeal to the International Democratic Federation of Women about the situation of women political prisoners, to the Universal Postal Union about systematic violations of its rules in places of detention, etc. In addition, at the press conference, recordings of interviews with eleven political prisoners of Perm camp No. 35 were played, concerning their legal status, camp regime, relations with the administration. The initiative group issued a statement calling for October 30 to be considered the Day of Political Prisoners.

  In the 70s, dissidence became more radical. Its main representatives hardened their positions. What was at first simply political criticism turns into categorical accusations. At first, most dissidents cherished the hope of correcting and improving the existing system, continuing to consider it socialist. But, ultimately, they began to see in this system only signs of dying and advocated for its complete abandonment.

  After the USSR signed the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in Helsinki in 1975, the situation with respect for human rights and political freedoms became international. After this, Soviet human rights organizations found themselves protected by international norms. In 1976, Yuri Orlov created a public group to promote the implementation of the Helsinki Agreements, which prepared reports on human rights violations in the USSR and sent them to the governments of the countries participating in the Conference and to Soviet government bodies. The consequence of this was the expansion of the practice of deprivation of citizenship and deportation abroad. In the second half of the 1970s, the Soviet Union was constantly accused at the official international level of non-compliance with human rights. The authorities' response was to intensify repression against Helsinki groups.

  1979 was the time of a general offensive against the dissident movement. In a short time (late 1979 - 1980), almost all figures of human rights, national and religious organizations were arrested and convicted. The sentences imposed became significantly more severe. Many dissidents who had served 10-15 year sentences were given new maximum sentences. The regime for holding political prisoners has been tightened. With the arrest of 500 prominent leaders, the dissident movement was decapitated and disorganized. After the emigration of the spiritual leaders of the opposition, the creative intelligentsia became quiet. Public support for dissent has also declined. The dissident movement in the USSR was practically eliminated.

  The role of the dissident movement

  There are several points of view on the role of the dissident movement. Supporters of one of them believe that a nihilistic orientation prevailed in the movement, revealing pathos prevailed over positive ideas. Supporters of the other speak of the movement as an era of restructuring of social consciousness. Thus, Roy Medvedev argued that “without these people, who retained their progressive beliefs, the new ideological turn of 1985-1990 would not have been possible.”