The nearly forgotten story of Soviet dissidents. It has been nearly three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union enough time for the role that the courageous dissidents ultimately contributed to the communist system's collapse to have been largely forgotten, especially in the West. This book brings to life, for contemporary readers, the often underground work of the men and women who opposed the regime and authored dissident texts, known as samizdat, that exposed the tyrannies and weaknesses of the Soviet state both inside and outside the country. Peter Reddaway spent decades studying the Soviet Union and got to know these dissidents and their work, publicizing their writings in the West and helping some of them to escape the Soviet Union and settle abroad. In this memoir he captures the human costs of the repression that marked the Soviet state, focusing in particular on Pavel Litvinov, Larisa Bogoraz, General Petro Grigorenko, Anatoly Marchenko, Alexander Podrabinek, Vyacheslav Bakhmin, and Andrei Sinyavsky. His book describes their courage but also puts their work in the context of the power struggles in the Kremlin, where politicians competed with and even succeeded in ousting one another. Reddaway's book takes readers beyond Moscow, describing politics and dissident work in other major Russian cities as well as in the outlying republics.
Peter Reddaway was a professor of political science at the London School of Economics and then at George Washington University, specializing in Soviet/Russian government. The former head of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, his books and numerous articles were central to bringing Soviet dissent to the attention of the West.
Introduction 1. First Steps 2. Graduate Studies: A Double Miracle 3. Immersion: Daily Life in Khrushchev's Russia 4. Expulsion: Cultural Trends, Literary Friends, and the Sharp Edges of the Soviet State 5. The Emergence of Dissent: Bringing Dissidents and the Emerging Human Rights Movement to the World's Attention 6. The Other '68: Upheaval in the Soviet Bloc and the Chronicle of Current Events 7. Two Early Giants of Soviet Dissent: Marchenko and Grigorenko 8. Confronting the Naysayers in the West 9. "The Mental State of Such People Is Not Normal": Exposing the Political Abuse of Psychiatry 10. Dignity under Persecution: Dissent among the Ethnic Minorities 11. Religious Persecution, Religious Dissent 12. Fighting on Old and New Fronts: 1968 to 1983 13. Publishing Samizdat in the West 14. Dissent and Reform under Gorbachev: Uncertain Terrain 15. Upending Manufactured Schizophrenia 16. The End: RIP USSR, 1917 to 1991 Some Conclusions Works by Peter Reddaway Cited in This Volume, by Year Notes Subject Index Names Index
"Few Westerners had the kind of access to the Soviet human rights movement that Peter Reddaway had, in real time across nearly a quarter-century. This unique memoir offers a powerful account of a scholar-activist who made his way to the better side of history and what he found there."- Benjamin Nathans, associate professor of history, University of Pennsylvania "Peter Reddaway is a unique moral voice for decency and justice. Through his research and humanitarian activity, he helped to dispel the illusions of an uninformed and often indifferent West about Soviet repression of dissent, the abuse of psychiatry, and its victims. A fascinating memoir and a must-read for those who think that disinformation is a recent invention."- Thane Gustafson, professor of political science, Georgetown University
