dissident writers. The dissident movement in the USSR

So, who in the Soviet Union and in connection with what began to be called dissidents? Dissidents (lat. dissidents - disagree) - a term that has been applied since the mid-70s to persons who openly argued with official doctrines in certain areas of public life in the USSR and came into a clear clash with the apparatus of power. Characteristically, the term "human rights activists" became the only self-name that the dissidents did not receive from the outside. 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. The human rights activists focused on the situation with human rights in the Soviet Union and the inconsistency of this provision with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights UN.

From the general mass of dissidents, dissidents stood out not only in their way of thinking, but also in their type of social behavior. The motive for participating in the dissident movement was the desire to:

• - civil and moral resistance;
• - rendering assistance to people subjected to repressions;
• - the formation and preservation of certain social ideals.

The well-known human rights activist L. Alekseeva, introducing the concept of "dissident movements", included in it such forms of dissent as national; national-religious; national democratic movements; movements of representatives of peoples to travel to their historical homeland or to their native places; for human rights; socialist; for socio-economic rights.

Among the intelligentsia, from where, in general, dissidence originates, not everyone and not always understood people who, to one degree or another, challenged the system. At the beginning of 1968, the writer K. Chukovsky noted in his diary “It seems to me that this (the speech of dissidents - author) is a pre-Decembrist movement, the beginning of the sacrificial exploits of the Russian intelligentsia, which will turn Russian history into an expanding bloody stream. This is just the beginning, just a trickle."

The first years of Brezhnev's rule (1964-1967), connected with the intensification of the attack on the small islands of freedom, born of the thaw, marked the beginning of the formation of organized opposition to the regime in the person of the human rights movement. In the history of the human rights movement, these years can be defined as the initial stage of its formation.

The main form of activity of dissidents was protests and appeals to the top political leadership of the country and law enforcement agencies.

It is not difficult to establish the exact date of birth of the human rights movement: it is December 5, 1965, when the first demonstration under human rights slogans took place on Pushkinskaya Square in Moscow. However, this event was preceded by long years of struggle between democratically minded groups and individuals.

In 1965, repression against dissidents intensified, which was probably the result of attempts by the Stalinists in the new leadership to achieve a political advantage.

In the autumn of 1965, Moscow writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Julius Daniel were arrested, who published their works abroad under the pseudonyms Abram Tertz and Nikolai Arzhak.

The arrest of the writers was seen as a prologue to ominous changes. Not only friends and acquaintances of those arrested, but also people who did not know them, heatedly discussed what fate awaited the writers.

In such an environment, the first demonstration in Soviet times under human rights slogans took place on December 5, 1965 in Moscow on Pushkinskaya Square. A few days before December 5 (the Day of the Soviet Constitution in 1936), typewriter-typed leaflets with the "Civil Appeal" were scattered at Moscow University and several humanitarian institutes. The author of the appeal and the initiator of the demonstration was Alexander Yesenin-Volpin.

The son of Sergei Yesenin, a mathematician and poet, he was twice imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals: in 1949, at the age of 25, for "anti-Soviet poetry", and after Stalin's death, in 1959, for having handed over border collection of poems and his "Free Philosophical Treatise".

According to Bukovsky, about 200 people came to the Pushkin monument at the appointed time. Volpin and several people next to him unfurled small banners, but they were quickly snatched out by state security officers; even those standing nearby did not have time to read what was written on the posters. Then it became known that it was written: “We demand publicity of the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel!” and "Respect the Soviet constitution!" As A.S. Yesenin-Volpin himself recalled these memorable days, speaking at an extended meeting of the Department of National History of Modern Times of the Historical and Archival Institute of the Russian State Humanitarian University on January 17, 1994, it was in his hands that the poster "Respect the Soviet Constitution" was in his hands, which caused in turn, a lot of "perplexed" questions from officials during his interrogation. About 20 people were detained. The detainees were released after a few hours. Most of them were students. All of them and those seen on the square that evening (about 40 people) were expelled from the institutes.

Perhaps because of such an unusual event in Soviet conditions as a demonstration, the authorities did not dare to organize a closed trial. However, in January 1966, the trial nevertheless took place and the sentence was harsh: Sinyavsky and Daniel received 5 and 7 years of strict regime camps, respectively.

The trial of Daniel and Sinyavsky showed that the authorities refused to attribute terrorist intentions to those under investigation and to use the death penalty for verbal “anti-Sovietism”. But the authorities have also demonstrated that they do not intend to abandon the practice of repression for attempts to exercise freedom of speech.

After the trial, a samizdat collection dedicated to the process (samizdat is a phenomenon in political and cultural life, when works of art and political ideas objectionable to the authorities were retyped on a typewriter and passed from one reader to another) began to be compiled. .Brodsky, according to the process of Daniel and Sinyavsky. Its compilation was undertaken by Alexander Ginzburg, the author of one of the first samizdat magazines Syntax.

The arrest of the writers was followed by a rather extensive campaign of letters of protest. It became clear that the thaw was over and society faced an urgent need to fight for their rights. The trial of the writers' case and the petition campaign of 1966 made the final dividing line between the government and society, divided the intelligentsia into friends and foes. Such a division in Russian history has always led, and led this time to the formation of a cohesive and organized political opposition.

The trial of writers was just one of the signs of re-Stalinization. Works justifying and glorifying Stalin began to appear more and more often in the press, and anti-Stalinist statements were not missed. The pressure of censorship, weakened after the 20th Congress, intensified. These alarming symptoms also provoked numerous protests, both individual and collective.

A letter from 25 prominent figures of science and culture to Brezhnev about the tendencies of Stalin's rehabilitation, which quickly spread throughout Moscow, made a special impression. Among the signatories of this letter are the composer Shostakovich, 13 academicians (including A.D. Sakharov), famous directors, artists, artists, writers, old Bolsheviks with pre-revolutionary experience. The arguments against re-Stalinization were sustained in the spirit of loyalty (re-Stalinization would bring discord into Soviet society, into people's consciousness, worsen relations with the communist parties of the West, etc.), but the protest against the revival of Stalinism was expressed vigorously.

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

In parallel, there was a massive distribution of anti-Stalinist samizdat materials. Solzhenitsyn's novels In the First Circle and The Cancer Ward were best known during these years. Memoirs about the camps and prisons of the Stalin era were distributed: “This should not happen again” by S. Gazaryan, “Memoirs” by V. Olitskaya, “Notes for grandchildren” by M. Baitalsky, etc. “Kolyma stories” by V. Shalamov were reprinted and rewritten. But the first part of E. Ginzburg's novel-chronicle "The Steep Route" received the greatest distribution. The petition campaign continued. The intelligentsia and human rights activists still wrote letters hoping to bring the authorities to reason. The most famous were: a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU of 43 children of communists repressed in Stalin's times (September 1967) and letters from Roy Medvedev and Pyotr Yakir to the Kommunist magazine containing a list of Stalin's crimes.

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

In early 1968, the petition campaign continued. Appeals to the authorities were supplemented by letters against judicial reprisals against self-publishers: former student of the Moscow Historical and Archival Institute Yuri Galanskov, Alexander Ginzburg, Alexei Dobrovolsky, Vera Dashkova. The “trial of four” was directly connected with the case of Sinyavsky and Daniel: Ginzburg and Galanskov were accused of compiling and transferring to the West the “White Paper 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. In form, the protests of 1968 repeated the events of two years earlier, but on a larger scale.

On January 22, a demonstration took place in defense of the arrested, organized by V. Bukovsky and V. Khaustov. About 30 people took part in the demonstration. (The organizers of the demonstration were arrested and subsequently sentenced to 3 years in the camps). During the trial of the Quartet, about 400 people gathered outside the courthouse.

However, as in 1966, letters to Soviet authorities became the predominant form of protest in 1968.

The petition campaign was also much broader than in 1966. Representatives of all strata of the intelligentsia, down to the most privileged, took part in the petition campaign. There were more than 700 "signers" (as those who signed protests against political persecution began to be called). Andrey Amalrik in his work "Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?" analyzed the social composition of the signatories. Among them, scientists accounted for 45%; artists - 22%; engineers and technicians - 13%; publishing workers, teachers, doctors, lawyers - 9%; workers - 6%, students - 5. The signing campaign of 1968 did not have immediate success: Ginzburg was sentenced to 5 years in the camp, Galanskov - to 7, and in 1972 he died in prison. However, petitions and numerous speeches slowed down the process of curtailing democracy, did not allow the Stalinists to achieve a complete revenge.

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 speech in defense of Czechoslovakia was the demonstration on August 25, 1968 on Red Square in Moscow. Larisa Bogoraz, Pavel Litvinov, Konstantin Babitsky, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Viktor Fainberg, Vadim Delaunay and Vladimir Dremlyuga sat on the parapet near the Execution Ground and unfurled the slogans "Long live free and independent Czechoslovakia!" (in Czech), "Shame on the occupiers!", "Hands off Czechoslovakia!", "For your and our freedom!" (in Russian). Almost immediately, plainclothes KGB officers who were on duty on Red Square, waiting for the departure of the Czechoslovak delegation from the Kremlin, rushed towards the demonstrators.

The slogans were torn out; despite the fact that no one resisted, the demonstrators were beaten and forced into cars. The trial took place in October. Two were sent to a camp, three to exile, one to a psychiatric hospital. N. Gorbanevskaya, who had a baby, 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 final rejection of the liberal course by the government determined a new alignment of opposition forces. Crystallized during the "signature" campaigns of 1966-68, protests against the invasion of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia, the human rights movement headed for the formation of unions and associations - not only to influence the government, but also to protect their own rights.

And yet, one more pole of public life should be said especially, perhaps best of all, in the words of the former Soviet dissident P.M. Litvinov. “I think everywhere: in the party, in the army, even in the KGB, there were people who were aware of the situation, were ready to change and took steps towards it,” he recalls. - The dissidents made them faster, more decisively and set an example for someone at the expense of their own sacrifice. They were one of the factors."

In April 1968, a group began to work, publishing 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 - Anatoly Yakobson. In the future, the editorial board changed every 2-3 years, mainly due to arrests. The change of editors remained almost imperceptible to readers due to the invariability of the style of presentation and selection of materials.

The mechanism for the receipt of information by the editors and distribution of the Chronicle was proposed in its 5th edition: “Everyone ... can easily transfer the information known to him to the disposal of the Chronicle. Tell it to the person from whom you took the Chronicle, and he will tell it to the person from whom he took the Chronicle, etc. Just don’t try to go through the entire chain on your own, so that you won’t be mistaken for a snitch. ”

The editors of the KhTS collected information about human rights violations in the USSR, the situation of political prisoners, the arrests of human rights activists, acts of exercising civil rights. Over several years of work, the HTS has established links between heterogeneous 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 materials of the KhTS is 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, Jehovists, and Baptists were frequent correspondents for the Chronicle. The breadth of the Chronicle's geographic connections was also significant. By 1972, the issues described the situation in 35 points of the country.

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

The natural reaction to this was a significant increase in samizdat, and since there was not enough underground publishing capacity, it became the rule to send or try to send a copy of the manuscript to the West. Samizdat texts at first went "by gravity", through familiar correspondents, scientists, tourists who were not afraid to bring "forbidden books" across the border. In the West, some of the manuscripts were published and smuggled back into the Union in the same way. This is how a phenomenon was formed, which first received the name “tamizdat” among human rights activists, the role of which in saving the most interesting works of Russian literature and social thought remains to be understood.

Increased repression against human rights activists in 1968-69. brought to life a completely new phenomenon in Soviet political life - the creation of the first human rights association. It was created in 1969. It began traditionally, with a letter about the violation of civil rights in the USSR, however, sent to a non-traditional addressee - 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 over a number of years to the highest state 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 the human rights trampled in the Soviet Union." The letter was signed by 15 people: participants in the signing campaigns of 1966-1968. Tatyana Velikanova, Natalia Gorbanevskaya, Sergey Kovalev, Viktor Krasin, Alexander Lavut, Anatoly Levitin-Krasnov, Yuri Maltsev, Grigory Podyapolsky, Tatyana Khodorovich, Petr Yakir, Anatoly Yakobson and Genrikh Altunyan (Kharkiv), Leonid Plyushch (Kiev). The initiative group wrote that in the USSR "... one of the most basic human rights is violated - the right to have independent opinions and disseminate them by any legal means." The signatories declared that they were forming the "Initiative Group for the Protection of Human Rights in the USSR" (IG). The activity of the IG was limited to investigating the 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 were sent to the UN and to international humanitarian congresses. International League for Human Rights. IS lasted until 1972. By that time, 8 of its 15 members had been arrested. The activity of the IS was interrupted due to the arrest in the summer of 1972 of its leaders P. Yakir, V. Krasin.

The experience of the legal work of the IS convinced the rest of the opportunity to act openly. In November 1970, the Committee of Human Rights in the USSR was established in Moscow. The initiators were Valery Chalidze, Andrey Tverdokhlebov and Academician Sakharov, all three physicists. Later, Igor Shafarevich, mathematician, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, joined them. A. Yesenin-Volpin and B. Zuckerman became the experts of the Committee, A. Solzhenitsyn and A. Galich became correspondents. The founding statement indicated the goals of the Committee: advisory assistance to public authorities in the creation and application of human rights guarantees; the development of the theoretical aspects of this problem and the study of its specifics in a socialist society; legal education, propaganda of international and Soviet documents on human rights. The Committee dealt with the following problems: a comparative analysis of the obligations of the USSR under international pacts on human rights and Soviet legislation; the rights of persons recognized as mentally ill; definition of the concepts of "political prisoner" and "parasite".

The dissidence that emerged within the USSR could nonetheless count on international sympathy and support. In the West, and especially in the United States, they immediately realized how much they could benefit from it. The strong ideological charge of the Cold War, public discussions on the topic of "détente" fueled the mutual attraction of East and West, despite the divide between them. The most active dissidents knew that they could find help and support abroad: the writings they sent abroad were published and then secretly sent back to the USSR through couriers. To the already existing “samizdat” that does not stop its activities in any way, “tamizdat” was added, and with the advent of new technical capabilities, also “magnetizdat”, that is, forbidden songs and programs recorded on tape. Accordingly, the means of political struggle have become more diverse. On the other hand, there was a growing understanding in the West of the processes taking place in Soviet society. More and more foreigners were living in the USSR on official business or as a result of exchanges encouraged by the policy of détente. Western institutes and research centers dealing with the Soviet Union, especially in the USA, Great Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany, are becoming more and more well-equipped and solid. There was still a lot of ballast in their work, a lot of superfluous, approximate, a lot of biased. But in general, the progress in their research was indisputable and, accordingly, the means of influencing the political struggle in the USSR became more and more thought out.

In the early 1970s, trends emerged in dissidence that were quite different in ideals and political orientation. An attempt at a precise classification, as always in such cases, leads to simplification. With all that, one can single out, at least in general terms, three main trends: Leninist-communist, liberal-democratic, and religious-nationalist. All of them had activists, but, in the end, each of them found a spokesman for their ideas in the person of one most prominent personality. In all three cases, they were people of exceptional qualities and strong character. The three directions were represented, respectively, by Roy Medvedev, Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn - people who are very dissimilar, with fundamental differences in positions due to too serious differences in views. But all three were forced to resist the power of the state. It was the only thing that made them related. But this alone was enough for the polemic between them not to develop into open hostility and put an end to cooperation in the opposition camp.

That is why, if not for some other, quite understandable political reasons, dissidence, especially abroad, was spoken of as a single and rather cohesive phenomenon. But there was no unity. In the course of the 1970s, the three spokesmen for the mainstreams and their supporters often argued with each other, their convictions were incompatible. None of them could agree with the other two without giving up what constituted the very basis of the political activity of each. But even this circumstance was not used by the Brezhnev government to start a dialogue with one or another of the three currents of dissidence. Only once was a feeble attempt of this kind made by the head of the KGB, Andropov, who, with some respect, treated Medvedev, the only one of the three who, being expelled from the party, removed from his job, nevertheless escaped arrest. However, in this case, it was not just a political choice, but the behavior of an intelligent policeman who created more problems for Medvedev than he could solve.

There were more similarities between the first two of the currents mentioned - communist and democratic. The names of Sakharov and Medvedev stood side by side in petitions written at the turn of the 60s and 70s, including a joint political appeal to Brezhnev, Kosygin and Podgorny (the latter was formally the head of state), which constituted one of the first 13 political platforms of dissidence. The neo-communist movement flowed directly from the anti-Stalinist sentiments that recurred periodically in Soviet history. His birth coincided with protests against the "rehabilitation" of Stalin. In this sense, it can be seen as a reflection of the views of some members of the CPSU itself and functionaries of the state-party apparatus, who still continued to harbor reformist hopes. It was aimed at a possible compromise with opposition groups, or, as they said at the time, an alliance "between the best representatives of the intelligentsia [...] and the most progressive representatives of the apparatus." The main aspiration of the neo-communists was the combination of political democracy with socialism, which was less statist in nature and closer to the original ideas of Marx and Lenin. It was the emphasis on democracy as a "core value" that brought this current closer to both Sakharov and the "revisionist" trends of European communism both in the East and in the West.

Socialist democracy became the headline of Roy Medvedev's main program work, published in the West and distributed in the USSR through samizdat. Calm but tenacious, Medvedev became widely known both at home and abroad for his first historical analysis of Stalinism, Soviet in form and Leninist in spirit. He presented his book to the responsible leaders of the state as a contribution to the anti-Stalinist policy of the CPSU of the Khrushchev period. The authorities did not accept the book and banned it, then it was published abroad and distributed throughout the world. Medvedev himself was the son of an old Bolshevik who died during the Stalinist repressions of the 1930s. Roy Medvedev joined the CPSU after the XX Party Congress, in 1956, and was expelled from it in the late 60s. Thanks to his great diligence, he managed to give life to the “samizdat” issue of the “Political Diary”, a kind of underground magazine, among whose readers were also people from the party and state apparatus (“a kind of “samizdat” for officials,” Sakharov later described it). It was precisely because of its balanced, not at all extremist positions that the magazine enjoyed great popularity and influence.

It must be said that in this neo-communist movement there was also a more radical direction, connected rather with the freedom-loving spirit of the Bolshevik revolution. This direction was primarily important because it gave dissidence, especially in the first years of its existence, the most active and irreconcilable activists. Their first underground organization was called the Union of Struggle for the Revival of Leninism. "Leninism - yes, Stalinism - no!" - here is the slogan of some of them. From the 1930s, similar opposition groups of the Leninist persuasion often arose in the USSR, especially among young people. The most famous among them were Grigorenko, Kosterin, Pisarev, Yakir, Litvinov, Bogoraz, Gorbanevskaya, Krasin. Unfortunately, they owe their fame to the fact that they were subjected to the most persistent persecution.

Medvedev, Sakharov and another scientist, Turchin, wrote an appeal to the heads of state that "there can be no other way out of the difficulties than democratization carried out by the CPSU according to a carefully designed project." The proposal was accompanied by a 15 step-by-step program. At this stage, the gradual, evolutionary nature of the proposals still made the neo-communist dissidence movement related to the democratic one, the most prominent representative of which was Academician Sakharov.

Andrei Sakharov entered politics in a way typical of the USSR in the 1960s. His name was provided with fame even in addition to his activities in the dissident movement. Coming from an intelligent family, a physicist of the highest class, at the age of 30 he becomes the youngest member of the Academy of Sciences, having played a paramount role in the development and creation of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. For him, as for some of his American colleagues, this was precisely the starting point of political activity: recognizing the threat posed by the new weapon, Sakharov began to think about how to prevent the catastrophe hanging over the world. By thinking and observing, he got to know the problems of his country better and became involved in political skirmishes both among scientists and in meetings with the leaders of Moscow. In this regard, in 1968, his famous pamphlet appeared, which was not published in the USSR, but nevertheless became famous and received wide resonance abroad.

Sakharov was a man of bright mind and gentle nature. But few, and least of all the Soviet leaders, understood from the very beginning what reserves of firmness such a combination could conceal.

In his work of 1968, which remained one of the highest achievements of his thought, Sakharov, based on the danger that arose in the atomic age of the destruction of all mankind as a result of its division, spoke of the “necessity of intellectual freedom” for the development of his country. The article became famous because it defended ideas that would later become widespread in the world, because what the physicist Sakharov proposed was important not only for the USSR, but for all other countries. Already in this work, he pointed to environmental pollution as a global threat. He noted the danger of insoluble problems arising from uncontrolled demographic growth of the population. But compared with all other problems, the problem of the nuclear threat was of primary importance in terms of urgency and danger. To prove it, Sakharov cited arguments that would be used by the broad circles of world public opinion against the ongoing arms race, which would pick up pace in the coming years. The main argument spoke of the impossibility of achieving a decisive superiority in this area of ​​one of the competing parties and of the fatal impossibility of creating effective protection against new types of weapons even "with the help of recklessly expensive anti-missile systems."

However, the most famous thesis was the need for "convergence" between the two systems, socialist and capitalist. It is disastrous to consider ideologies incompatible in an era when “all the positive experience accumulated by mankind” was to be used for good, providing conditions for “social justice and intellectual freedom.” We, said Sakharov, "demonstrated the vitality of the socialist orientation," but capitalism also proved the ability to evolve and develop. Neither of the two societies should plot the destruction of the other, but should master everything that is positive in it. Thus, both societies should converge "in a democratic and socialist spirit." The communist movement was called upon to put an end to its Stalinist degenerate vices. In the West, it is desirable to develop a left-wing force capable of giving life to intensive international cooperation, the culmination of which would be the creation of a "world government". Thus, democracy in the USSR was seen as an integral part of a huge world project, an obligatory and indestructible part. In Sakharov's work, this idea was the essence of the attack on "ideological censorship" and "police dictatorship", which became even more destructive when they were covered with a false cloak of progressive and socialist ideology.

Sakharov's democratic demands were further formulated in a memorandum sent to Brezhnev in March 1971. In enlightened inspiration, Sakharov proposed the creation of an International Council of Experts on Problems of Peace, Disarmament, Economic Assistance to Countries in Need, Protection of Human Rights and the Protection of the Environment, an advisory body composed of people of impeccable reputation and authority, especially scientists. The opinion of this council should be heeded by the governments of all countries. Thus, "convergence" remained the guiding idea of ​​the entire Sakharov concept.

The greatest contribution of the democratic current to the political activity of dissidents was the movement for human rights. The first committee for the defense of human rights was created in 1970 by Sakharov and two of his comrades, Chalidze and Tverdokhlebov, despite the fact that it was Sakharov who remained in the eyes of the people his true and highest representative. The birth of this organization was not accompanied by any anti-government statements. Moreover, its original concept included respect for Soviet laws, starting with the constitution, and for the rights that the latter recognized for citizens, at least on paper. It was even proposed to cooperate with the government for these purposes. Subsequently, the organization was accused by the most extremist dissident groups for abandoning the real political struggle. However, it was precisely this attitude to the observance of the rule of law that ensured the effectiveness of the organization. Gradually, during the 1970s, the demand to ensure "human rights" became, at least in tactical terms, the central slogan of the entire dissident movement.

In the democratic trend, more radical tendencies also appeared, groups appeared that preferred revolution to evolution. Many of them looked to the West as a model, an example to follow, believing that the USSR needed not convergence, but a simple and immediate return to capitalism. For them, democracy seemed possible only within this framework; they did not share Sakharov's thoughts about the transition to democracy through the reform and evolution of the society existing in the USSR. The refusal of the authorities in this case to conduct a dialogue with the reformists, the use of repressions against them contributed to the development of the most extremist tendencies. In 1973, a furious campaign was unleashed in the press against Sakharov. Without putting forward more radical slogans and still remaining a reformist, Sakharov was also forced at this moment to ask the West for more vigorous pressure on Soviet leaders. He began not only to support, but to suggest actions to those American officials who, like Senator Jackson with his famous "amendment", made any, especially economic, agreement with the USSR dependent on granting Jews the right to emigrate or on compliance with other political conditions.

It should be said that the importance of the ideas of the democratic movement was not matched 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 in the circles of the intelligentsia. For example, another well-known physicist, Kapitsa, offered to discuss Sakharov's proposals. But the matter did not go further than this. Even while disagreeing with the opinion that Sakharov's ideas "left the masses indifferent", one can nevertheless argue that the democratic movement as such, having managed to do something more than attract individual people into its ranks and use their noble aspirations, nevertheless and in the most dissident part of Russia it never became dominant.

On October 9, 1975, Sakharov learned that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was not allowed to travel for the award, as "a person with knowledge of state secrets." Instead, on December 10, his wife Elena Bonner received the award.

The third, much more significant component of the dissident movement, the nationalist trend, deserves a separate discussion. All dissident currents acquired political significance only because, not being isolated, as it might seem, they found their continuation in the hidden convictions and in the state of mind of various groups of society and even the very powerful apparatus. But both currents, which were mentioned above, always remained a reflection of the views of small groups. According to the count already mentioned, of the dissidents, who numbered about half a million people, almost all, with the exception of two or three tens of thousands, belonged in one way or another to this third current.

The nationalist dissident trend is important not so much because of the spirit of opposition to the communist leadership that was present in it, but because, in line with this trend, nationalist problems were discussed openly, in an official environment. Previously, this did not happen at all or was observed to a small extent even where there was an increased sensitivity to the trumpet sounds of nationalism. In the third dissident current, various streams of nationalist tradition - religious, Slavophile, cultural - or simply anti-communist in color, merged together. But the crisis of official ideology created the most fertile ground for nationalism. In 1961, Khrushchev's program of the party made a careless promise that in 20 years communism would come to the USSR, a society of well-being and equality would be created, to which the whole world would sooner or later come. As a reaction to this promise, in the 70s there appeared the conviction that communism would never come either in the USSR or in any other country. To an outside observer, such a declaration might seem naive and generally insignificant. But it was felt in a completely different way in a country where for decades they worked, fought and suffered for the sake of this future. There was a need to replace the outdated ideology with a new, spare one in order to move forward.

The prophet of this movement was Solzhenitsyn. The writer did not immediately openly declare his beliefs. In his autobiographical notes, he noted that these beliefs were kept under wraps for a long time in order to better prepare for the "mission" that, in his opinion, was intended for him.

Undoubtedly, the original concept of Solzhenitsyn differs from the later one. In the 1960s, this gave grounds to various people to believe that even Solzhenitsyn, despite his oppositional views, remained invariably in line with the socialist orientation, albeit only in its “ethical”, Tolstoyan or religious plane, but still within the framework of the Soviet culture in the broadest sense of the word. Only later, in the 1970s, when the writer decided to make his political ideas public, did it become clear that Solzhenitsyn was an absolute and implacable opponent of any socialist idea and of all the revolutionary and post-revolutionary experience of his country.

Solzhenitsyn gained fame not only for his political ideas and talent as a writer. His popularity was greatly facilitated by the outstanding temperament of a fighter, absolutely convinced of his innocence, distinguished even by a certain smack of intolerance and fanaticism, characteristic of people of his warehouse. By this he won sympathy among those who did not at all share his way of thinking. More than anyone else, Solzhenitsyn gave dissent the character of an uncompromising anti-communist struggle. In this he wanted to differ from other dissident currents, even those, as was the case with Sakharov and the Medvedev brothers, who helped him a lot in the fight against the authorities.

Solzhenitsyn acted not only as an enemy of Bolshevism in all manifestations of the latter, starting with Lenin and beyond, not making allowances even for Khrushchev, to whom he owed his release from the camp where he was thrown at the end of the war, and the publication of his first book. In his opinion, Marxism and communism were "first of all, the result of a historical crisis, psychological and moral, a crisis of the entire culture and the entire system of thought in the world, which began in the Renaissance and found its maximum expression in the enlighteners of the 18th century." According to Solzhenitsyn, all Russia's troubles began with Peter's "ruthless reforms" or even earlier, with attempts to modernize the Orthodox cult undertaken in the 17th century by Patriarch Nikon. The year 1917 with its revolution was only the last and fatal step into the abyss.

Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov, who were "united by the fact that they were both victims of repression", were perfect antipodes in their political views. Solzhenitsyn did not want to hear about any "convergence", because for him the West was not a model to follow, but an example to be avoided. He believed that the powerless, selfish and corrupt Western world could not be promising. Even "intellectual freedom" was for the writer more of a means than an end; it only made sense if it was used to achieve a "higher" goal. For Russia, he saw a way out not in parliamentary democracy and not in parties; for him, a system “outside parties” or simply “without parties” would be preferable. For centuries, Russia lived under authoritarian rule, and everything was fine. Even the autocrats of the “religious centuries” were worthy of respect because they “felt responsible before God and before their conscience.” The highest principle should be a "nation" - the same living and complex organism as individual people, similar to each other in their "mystical nature", innate, unartificial. Solzhenitsyn proclaimed himself an enemy of all internationalism or cosmopolitanism. There is nothing surprising in the fact that these positions of his were bitterly rejected by Sakharov.

In all dissident circles, including those that did not share his views in all or at all, the name of Solzhenitsyn was respected due to the intransigence of positions and worldwide recognition after the publication of his works abroad (in 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature). A whole series of more or less underground groups were active, spreading and defending views similar to those of Solzhenitsyn.

Neo-nationalist currents of all shades merged together when faced with criticism from outside. There was something that united them. First of all, the thesis that the Soviet system is not a product of Russian history, but the result of a forcible imposition from the outside (or, as the same Solzhenitsyn says, “a muddy whirlpool of progressive ideology that washed over us from the West”). Common to all neo-nationalists was the belief in the "potential superiority of the Russian nation", in its "social, moral and religious revival", in its "mission". For all of them, only Russia existed, not the Soviet Union. Some of the neo-nationalists considered the rest of the peoples of the USSR, especially the Slavic peoples, as an appendage, as a kind of Russian people; others are like a burden that it would be desirable to get rid of. All of them were alien to the idea of ​​equal unification of the Russian nation with other peoples.

The neo-nationalist press was not censored, and this led many observers to speculate about official incentives for the movement. This phenomenon was also discussed at the highest level. Brezhnev personally expressed dissatisfaction with the pressure from the neo-nationalists. The open discussion that unfolded at that time was regarded as evidence of a “deep conflict” hidden behind the facade of official unity, which was destined to have a great impact on society and especially on young people. The verdict on neo-nationalist tendencies has been pronounced. But, unlike in the past, in this case the practical consequences were insignificant: the most visible of the neo-Slavophiles were removed from their posts, but continued their careers in other, often even more prestigious, positions. It was no coincidence that rumors appeared about influential patrons standing behind them: the name of Polyansky, the then head of the government of the RSFSR, was most often mentioned. (He, in turn, was removed from his post in 1973 and, accordingly, removed from the Politburo. However, the documentation now available does not confirm the fact that Russophile sympathies were the reason for his fall, as they said then.) much more important than the support of this or that leader turned out to be the sympathy that the emerging ideology found among civil servants, especially in the army and even in the party itself.

Indicative in this regard are the vicissitudes of the fate of Alexander Yakovlev, deputy head of the propaganda department of the Central Committee of the CPSU. It was he who carried out the strongest attack on the new nationalist, in particular Russian, tendencies. He did this very carefully, using labels that characterize these ideas as "anti-Marxist" and even "counter-revolutionary", incompatible with the policy of détente and "dangerous because of the obvious attempt to return to the past." These unobjectionable, orthodox, at first glance, statements cost the author a place. The then secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU for culture, Demichev and Suslov, criticized him for going too far, after which Yakovlev was sent to a distant Canadian embassy for almost ten years.

From the beginning of the 70s. arrests of human rights defenders in the capital and major cities have intensified significantly. Special "samizdat" processes began. Any text written in one's own name was subject to Art. 190(1), or Art. 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, which meant, respectively, 3 or 7 years in the camps. Repressions and trials by the beginning of the 70s. demonstrated the power of the totalitarian machine of state power. 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 that gives psychiatrists the right to forcibly hospitalize persons "representing a public danger" without the consent of the patient's relatives or "other persons around him." In psychiatric hospitals in the early 70s were: V. Gershuni, P. Grigorenko, V. Fainberg, V. Borisov, M. Kukobaka and other human rights activists. Especially strong psychiatric repressions were used in the Russian hinterland and in the Union republics, primarily in Ukraine. Dissidents considered placement in special psychiatric hospitals (SPB) more difficult than incarceration in prisons and camps. P. Grigorenko, who twice visited such special psychiatric hospitals, noted: “A patient with St. Petersburg does not even have those meager rights that prisoners have. He doesn't have any rights at all. Doctors can do whatever they want with him."

Hundreds, if not thousands of dissidents, turned out to be prisoners of St. Petersburg and ordinary mental hospitals. Tried in such cases in absentia, and the court was always closed. The conclusion in St. Petersburg could last as long as you like, and the medical commission from year to year asked two usual questions. First: Have your beliefs changed? If the patient answered “yes”, he was asked: “Did it happen by itself or as a result of treatment?”. If he confirmed that this was due to treatment, then he could hope for a speedy release.

The authorities made no secret of the widespread use of psychiatry against dissidents. In February 1976, for example, Literaturnaya Gazeta reported on the "Leonid Plush case." Soviet doctors recognized him as insane, and Western doctors recognized him as mentally healthy. “Guided by purely humane considerations,” the newspaper noted on this occasion, “we want to believe that the course of treatment in a Soviet psychiatric hospital contributed to his recovery and there will be no relapse. It is known, however, that mental illness is insidious, and it is impossible to give an absolute guarantee that a person who once imagined himself a prophet, after some time, will not declare himself Julius Caesar, who is pursued by Brutus in the form of a KGB captain.

The arrested activists of the human rights movement numbered in the hundreds. Gradually, the activities of the KhTS and samizdat activity in general became the main object of persecution. The apogee of repression was the so-called Case No. 24 - 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, who were arrested in the summer of 1972. The case of Yakir and Krasin was conceived by the security authorities as a process against the KhTS, since it did not secret that Yakir's apartment served as the main collection point for information for the Chronicle. The KGB case was successful - Yakir and Krasin "repented" and testified against more than 200 people who took part in the work of the KhTS.

The release of the Chronicle, suspended in 1972, was discontinued the following year due to mass arrests. Since the summer of 1973, the nature of repression has changed. In the practice of the authorities, expulsion from the country or deprivation of citizenship began to be present. Many human rights activists were even asked to choose between a new term and leaving the country. In July-October, Zhores Medvedev, brother of Roy Medvedev, a fighter against psychiatric repressions, who had left for England on scientific business, was deprived of his citizenship; V. Chalidze, one of the leaders of the democratic movement, who also left for the USA for scientific purposes. In August, Andrei Sinyavsky was allowed to leave for France, and in September, Anatoly Yakobson, one of the leading members of the Islamic State and the editor of the Chronicle, was pushed to leave for Israel.

• On September 5, 1973, A. 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.
• On August 27, the trial of Krasin and Yakir took place, and on September 5, their press conference took place, at which both publicly repented and condemned their activities and the human rights movement as a whole. Soon, depressed by what had happened, Yakir's friend, a well-known human rights activist, Ilya Gabai, committed suicide. In the same month, the Human Rights Committee ceased its work due to arrests.

The human rights movement actually ceased to exist. The survivors went deep underground. The feeling that the game was lost and that the system that remained unshaken would exist almost forever became dominant both among those who escaped arrest and among the prisoners of the Brezhnev camps.

1972-1974 were perhaps the period of the most severe crisis of the human rights movement. The prospect of action was lost, almost all active human rights activists ended up in prison, the very ideological basis of the movement was called into question. The current situation required a radical revision of the opposition's policy. This revision was carried out in 1974.

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

In February 1974, the Chronicle of Current Events resumed its issues, the first (after three years of silence) statements of the Initiative Group for the Protection of Human Rights appeared. By October 1974, the group finally recovered. On October 30, members of the initiative group held a press conference chaired by Sakharov. At the press conference, appeals and open letters of political prisoners were handed over to foreign journalists. 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. their legal status, camp regime, relations with the administration. IS issued a statement in which it called for October 30 to be considered the Day of the Political Prisoner.

In the 70s. dissidence became more radical. Its main representatives have toughened their positions. Everyone, even those who subsequently denied it, began their activities with the idea of ​​starting a dialogue with representatives of the authorities: the experience of the Khrushchev era gave rise to such hope. However, it was destroyed by new repressions and the refusal of the authorities to conduct a dialogue. What at first was just political criticism turns into peremptory accusations. At first, the dissidents cherished the hope of correcting and improving the existing system, continuing to consider it socialist. But, in the end, they began to see in this system only signs of dying and advocate a complete rejection of it. The policy pursued by the government proved unable to cope with dissidence and only radicalized it in all its components.

After the USSR signed the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in 1975 in Helsinki, the situation with respect for human rights and political freedoms turned into an international one. After that, Soviet human rights organizations found themselves under the protection of international norms, which extremely irritated the Brezhnev leadership. In 1976, Yu. Orlov created a public group to promote the implementation of the Helsinki Accords, which prepared reports on human rights violations in the USSR and sent them to the governments of the countries participating in the Conference, to Soviet state bodies. The consequence of this was the expansion of the practice of deprivation of citizenship and expulsion abroad. In the second half of the 1970s, the Soviet Union was constantly accused at the official international level of non-observance of human rights. The authorities' response was to intensify repressions against the Helsinki groups.

The human rights movement ceased to exist in the late 80s, when, due to a change in the course of the government, the movement no longer had a purely human rights character. It has moved to a new level, has acquired other forms.

dissidents in the ussr of sex, dissidents in the ussr
Dissidents in the USSR(lat. dissidens - “dissenting”) - citizens of the USSR who openly expressed their political views, which differed significantly from the communist ideology and practice that prevailed in society and the state, for which many of the dissidents were persecuted by the authorities.

A special place within the dissident world was occupied by the human rights movement, which united the disparate manifestations of an independent civil and cultural initiative into a single whole. Human rights activists created a unified information field supported by dissident activity itself, which radically distinguished the situation of the 1960s and 1980s from the disparate attempts to create a political underground in the 1950s. From the mid 1960s to the early 1980s. this direction of independent civic activity absolutely dominated the public scene.

• 1 History of the term
• 2 Ideology
• 3 Social composition
• 4 Activities of Soviet dissidents
• 5 Position of the authorities
• 6 Persecution of dissidents
• 7 Exchange of political prisoners
• 8 Influence and outcomes
• 9 Dissident organizations
• 10 See also
• 11 Notes
• 12 Links
• 13 Literature

History of the term

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

• a set of movements, groups, texts and individual actions, heterogeneous and multidirectional in their goals and objectives, but very close in terms of basic principles:
  • non-violence;
  • publicity;
  • implementation of fundamental rights and freedoms "without prior notice";
  • requirement to comply with the law
• by forms of social activity:
  • creation of uncensored texts;
  • association in independent (most often - non-political in their goals) public associations;
  • occasionally - public actions (demonstrations, distribution of leaflets, hunger strikes, etc.)
• and according to the tools used:
  • dissemination of literary, scientific, human rights, informational and other texts through samizdat and Western mass media;
  • petitions addressed to Soviet official bodies, and "open letters" addressed to public opinion (Soviet and foreign); in the end, petitions, as a rule, also ended up in samizdat and / or published abroad.

In the 1960s, the term "dissident" was introduced to refer to representatives of the opposition movement in the USSR and Eastern Europe, which (in contrast to the anti-Soviet and anti-communist movements of the previous period) did not try to fight by violent means against the Soviet system and Marxist ideology, but appealed to Soviet laws and officially proclaimed values. The term first began to be used in the West, and then by dissidents themselves - at first, perhaps in jest, but then quite seriously. depending on who exactly used this word, it could acquire different connotations.

Since then, dissidents have often been referred to primarily as people who oppose authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, although the word also occurs in a broader context, for example, to refer to people who oppose the prevailing mentality in their group. According to Lyudmila Alekseeva, dissidents are a historical category, like the Decembrists, populists 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 subjected to persecution, refuses to consider himself a dissident, since by dissident he understands only the liberal and liberal democratic opposition to the regime of the 1960s and 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.

Dissidents dissociated themselves from any involvement in terrorism and in connection with the bombings in Moscow in January 1977, the Moscow Helsinki Group stated:

... Dissidents treat terror with indignation and disgust. … We appeal to media professionals around the world to use the term “dissidents” in this sense only 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 helps those who are trying to revive the Stalinist methods of reprisals against 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 were people of very different views, but they were united mainly by the inability to openly express their beliefs. A single "dissident organization" or "dissident ideology" uniting the majority of dissidents has never existed.

Larisa Bogoraz wrote in 1997:

If what was, and can be called movement - as opposed to "stagnation", - then this movement is Brownian, that is, a phenomenon more psychological than social. But in this Brownian movement, here and there, eddies and currents constantly arose, moving somewhere - "movements" national, religious, including human rights.

According to Elena Bonner, the dissidence of the 1960s - 1970s should be considered primarily a moral and ethical movement, the participants of which wanted to "free themselves from official lies." According to her, many of the dissidents never aspired to political activity and, when the opportunity arose, they deliberately left it.

Leonid Borodin, who, as mentioned above, does not consider himself a dissident, gave the following characterization:

Dissidence as a phenomenon originated among the Moscow intelligentsia, to a large extent in that part of it that survived the tragedy of fathers and grandfathers at the end of the thirties, experienced a fair sense of revenge on the wave 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 confirmed by either political experience, or political knowledge, or, even more so, political worldview.

Back in 1983, Lyudmila Alekseeva identified several "ideological types" of dissidents in the USSR:

• "true communists" - they were guided by the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, but believed that it was distorted in the USSR (for example, Roy Medvedev, the Group of Revolutionary Communism, NKPSS, "Young Socialists");

• "Western liberals" - considered Western European or American-style capitalism to be the "correct" system; some of them were supporters of the "convergence theory" - the doctrine of the inevitability of rapprochement and subsequent merging of capitalism and socialism, however, most of the "Westerners" considered socialism a "bad" (or short-lived) system;

• "eclectic" - 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 specialists (in particular, Igor Shafarevich, Leonid Borodin, Vladimir Osipov);

• other nationalists (in the Baltics, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) - their demands ranged from the development of a 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 the 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. Between the nationalist opposition and the Moscow dissidence, of course, there were connections, but according to the principle - "at least a tuft of wool from a lousy Muscovite." Sluggishly welcoming the anti-Russian sentiments of the Moscow opposition, the nationalists did not connect their successes with the prospects of Moscow dissidence, pinning their hopes on the collapse of the Union in economic rivalry with the West, and even on the third world.

Activists of the Zionist movement (“refuseniks”), activists of the Crimean Tatar movement for the return to Crimea (leader - M. A. Dzhemilev), non-conformist 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 Churches of Evangelical Christian Baptists, 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 has become 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.

In 1978, the Free Interprofessional Association of Workers (SMOT), an independent trade union, was created. 1982, the "Group for establishing confidence between the USSR and the USA" appeared.

Social composition

The institutionalization of science inevitably led to the emergence of a layer of people critically comprehending the surrounding reality. By some estimates, most of the 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 whole of the educated cultural legion
There was only this handful of sick intellectuals,
Say out loud what a healthy million thinks!

The poem "Imitation of V. Vysotsky" by Yuli Kim (1968)

In fact, there were two main directions of dissident opposition to the totalitarian regime.

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

The activities, as a rule - open, of some of the dissidents, mainly Moscow human rights activists, were based on an appeal to foreign public opinion, the use of the Western press, non-governmental organizations, foundations, contacts with political and state figures of the West.

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 - the All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People, the Revolutionary Communism Group, 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 relations with the West, but exclusively on organizing resistance within the USSR.

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

One of the posters of the demonstrators 08/25/1968

The beginning of a broad dissident movement is associated with the process of Daniel and Sinyavsky (1965), as well as with the entry of Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia (1968).

Dissidents paid much attention to "samizdat" - the publication of self-made 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 typed unauthorized literature on typewriters and thus distributed it around Moscow, and then to other cities. “Erika takes four copies,” Alexander Galich sang in his song. - That's all. And that's enough!" (See song lyrics) - this is about "samizdat": "Erika", a typewriter, became the main instrument when there were no copiers or computers with printers (copiers in the 1970s began to appear, but only for institutions , and all those working for them were required to keep a record of the number of printed pages). Some of those who received the first copies reprinted and replicated them. This is how dissident magazines spread. In addition to "samizdat", "tamizdat" was distributed - the publication of prohibited materials abroad and their subsequent distribution on the territory of the USSR.

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

The position of the authorities

The Soviet leadership fundamentally rejected the idea of ​​the existence of any opposition in the USSR, and even more so the possibility of a dialogue with dissidents was rejected. On the contrary, in the USSR the "ideological unity of society" was proclaimed; dissidents were referred to only as "renegades".

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

So, the chairman of the KGB of the USSR, Yu. V. Andropov, speaking at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU on April 27, 1973, stated that, according to available information, in the conditions of detente, Western intelligence services changed their tactics of work aimed at undermining the socialist system, moving from "frontal attack”, direct preaching of anti-Sovietism and anti-communism, to attempts to “erode” socialism, incite negative processes that would “soften and ultimately weaken socialist society”. In this regard, according to him, the KGB is aware of the plans of Western intelligence services to intensify work on “establishing contacts with various kinds of dissatisfied persons in the Soviet Union and creating illegal groups from them,” and subsequently on consolidating such groups and turning them into a “resistance organization” , that is, in the current opposition. Andropov, in his speech, mentioned the KGB's "preventive measures against a number of persons who harbored hostile political intentions in the form of the worst nationalism", as well as the criminal prosecution "for outright anti-Soviet activities" of a number of nationalists in Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Armenia . In almost all cases, according to Andropov, the activities of these persons were "inspired by subversive centers located in the West" and sent through their emissaries to the Soviet Union instructions, money, cryptography and printing equipment for their wards.

Some dissidents did receive royalties for works published in the West (see tamizdat); the Soviet authorities invariably tried to portray this in a negative light as "bribery" or "corruption", although many officially recognized Soviet writers also published in the West and received royalties for this in the same way.

Persecution of dissidents

The persecution suffered by Soviet dissidents included dismissal from work, expulsion from educational institutions, arrests, placement in psychiatric hospitals, exile, deprivation of Soviet citizenship, and expulsion from the country.

Wikisource has the full text Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1926

The criminal prosecution of dissidents before 1960 was carried out on the basis of paragraph 10 of Art. 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1926 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 in prison and 5 years of exile for those previously convicted of a similar crime) . Since 1966, Art. 190-1 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR "Dissemination of deliberately 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 in the USSR there were 8145 people were convicted.

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

Some dissidents were declared socially dangerous mentally ill, applying measures of compulsory treatment to them under this pretext. years of stagnation, punitive psychiatry attracted the authorities by the lack of the need to create the appearance of legality required in legal proceedings.

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

The fight against dissidents was carried out by state security agencies, in particular, since 1967 - the 5th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR (to combat "ideological sabotage")

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

The activities of the KGB in the 1970s and 1980s were significantly influenced by the socio-economic processes taking place in the country during the period of “developed socialism” and changes in the foreign policy of the USSR. During this period, the KGB concentrated its efforts on combating nationalism and anti-Soviet manifestations at home and abroad. Inside the country, the state security agencies stepped up the fight against dissent and the dissident movement; however, the acts of physical violence, deportations and detentions became more subtle and disguised. The use of means of psychological pressure on dissidents has intensified, including surveillance, pressure through public opinion, undermining professional careers, preventive talks, deportation from the USSR, forced confinement to psychiatric clinics, political trials, slander, lies and compromising evidence, 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 "link 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 winner in literature A. I. Solzhenitsyn are indicative. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a special unit was created in the KGB - the 9th department of the Fifth Directorate of the KGB - which was exclusively engaged in the operational development of a dissident writer. In August 1971, the KGB made an attempt 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. Upon learning of what had happened, Solzhenitsyn ordered the publication of The Archipelago in the West to begin. In the Soviet press, a powerful propaganda campaign was launched, 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 The Archipelago abroad in exchange for a promise of assistance in the official publication in the USSR of his story Cancer Ward 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 a measure to "suppress anti-Soviet activities" of Solzhenitsyn at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU. After the expulsion of the writer from the country, the KGB and personally Andropov continued the campaign of discrediting Solzhenitsyn and, as Andropov put it, "exposing the active use of such renegades by the reactionary circles of the West in ideological sabotage against the countries of the socialist community."

A. D. Sakharov

Prominent scientists were the object 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 the supervision of the KGB since the 1960s, subjected to searches, 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 the KGB. In 1978, the KGB made an attempt, 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 in a psychiatric hospital, however, “taking into account the campaign unleashed in the West around psychiatry in the USSR This measure of restraint was considered inappropriate. Alternatively, in a memorandum to the Central Committee of the CPSU, the leadership of the KGB recommended that Zinoviev and his family be allowed to travel abroad and that he be banned from entering the USSR.

Yu. F. Orlov A. B. Sharansky

To control the implementation of the Helsinki agreements on the observance of human rights by the USSR, 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 inception, the MHG has been subjected to constant persecution and pressure from the KGB and other law enforcement agencies of the Soviet state. Members of the group were threatened, they were forced to emigrate, they were 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 case of Sharansky, the KGB received the sanction of the Central Committee of the CPSU to prepare and publish a number of propaganda articles, as well as to write and transfer to US President J. Carter a personal letter from the defendant's father-in-law denying the fact of Sharansky's marriage and "exposing" his immoral appearance. Under pressure from the KGB in 1976-1977, MHG members 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 deprived of their citizenship. In the autumn of 1982, in the face of increasing repression, the three remaining free members of the group were forced to announce the termination 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 organs, carrying out measures for the ideological disarmament of the enemy together with the party organs and under their direct supervision, inform the leading authorities about all ideologically harmful manifestations, prepare materials to publicly expose the criminal activities of carriers of anti-Soviet ideas and views, organize open speeches by prominent enemy ideologists who have broken with their former 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." exchange for mitigation of punishment, it was possible to achieve "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 a special instruction not to respond to a letter from Austrian Federal Chancellor Bruno Kreisky in support of Yuri Orlov.

Lawyers who insisted on the innocence of dissidents were removed from political affairs; this is how Sofya Kallistratova was dismissed, insisting on the absence of corpus delicti in the actions of Vadim Delone and Natalia Gorbanevskaya.

Exchange of political prisoners

In 1976, Vladimir Bukovsky, who was serving his fourth term of imprisonment under Art. 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (“anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”). December of this year, he was exchanged for a Chilean political prisoner - the former leader of the Communist Party of Chile, Luis Corvalan. The exchange took place in Switzerland, where Bukovsky was taken under escort and handcuffed.

Shortly after his expulsion from the USSR, Bukovsky was received at the White House by US President Carter. He settled in the UK, graduated from the University of Cambridge with a degree in neurophysiology. Wrote a book of memoirs "And the wind returns ...", published in many languages

Corvalan, after being released from a Chilean prison, was received in the Kremlin by Leonid Brezhnev. Later, Luis Corvalan changed his appearance and illegally returned to Chile.

The exchange of Bukovsky and Korvalan became the most famous case of a successful exchange of political prisoners.

On February 11, 1986, in Berlin, on the Glienicke Bridge, the dissident Natan Sharansky was exchanged for Soviet intelligence officers arrested in the West - Karl Koecher and his wife Hana.

Impact and Outcomes

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

According to Yakov Krotov, who describes the parishioners of Alexander Men,

The activities of dissidents drew 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 to the Soviet leadership.

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

In the mid-1980s, democratic reforms were launched in the USSR, which ultimately led to the collapse of the USSR and the beginning of building democratic forms of government in most of the newly formed states of the post-Soviet space.

In 1986-1987 on the initiative of M. S. Gorbachev, most of the dissidents, including Academician Sakharov, were released from imprisonment and exile. Some dissidents emigrated after their release, but others (L. Alekseeva, K. Lyubarsky) returned to the USSR from forced emigration. A number of dissidents got involved in political life, became people's deputies of the USSR (A. D. Sakharov), the RSFSR (S. A. Kovalev, R. I. Pimenov, M. M. Molostov), ​​the Ukrainian SSR (Vyacheslav Chernovol), the activities of human rights organizations resumed (MHG).

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

A number of Soviet dissidents are active legal political activities 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 Naydenovich, Alexander Tarasov, or were not rehabilitated - Igor Ogurtsov, or even repressed for their opposition activities - Sergey Grigoryants, Vladimir Osipov, Andrey Derevyankin.

Dissident organizations

• People's Labor Union of Russian Solidarists
• All-Russian Social Christian Union for the Liberation of the People
• Initiative Group for the Protection of Human Rights in the USSR
• Human Rights Committee in the USSR
• Moscow Helsinki Group
• Free interprofessional association of workers
• Revolutionary Communism Group
• International Union of Evangelical Christian Baptist Churches
• Group for the establishment of trust between the USSR and the USA
• Russian Public Fund for Assistance to the Persecuted and Their Families
• Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes

see also

• Case of Ginzburg and Galanskov
• Demonstration August 25, 1968
• Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repressions
• The communists caught the boy
• Unofficial art of the USSR
• They chose freedom
• Human rights movement in the USSR
• Dissidence in the Far East of the USSR
• Sinyavsky and Daniel trial
• Religion in the USSR
• samizdat
• Censorship in the USSR
• Sixties
• Dubravlag
• Perm-36
• Chronicle of current events

Notes

1. 1 2 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. . Colta.ru (February 27, 2014). Retrieved 19 January 2015.
5. 1 2 Bezborodov A. B. Academic dissidence in the USSR // Russian Historical Journal, 1999, Volume II, No. 1. ISBN 5-7281-0092-9
6. 1 2 3 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. 1 2 3 4 5 Dissidents about dissidence. // "Banner". - 1997. No. 9
8. L. Ternovsky. Law and "concepts" (Russian version). Leonard Ternovksi. The law and the idea
9. Sergei Ermilov. cartoon "Laws - concepts"
10. Regarding the explosions in the Moscow metro (Statement for press)
11. About the resistance movement or dissidents
12. 1 2
13. SOCIALISTS
14. Scientific Communism: A Dictionary (1983) / "Convergence" Theory
15. Socio-political and ideological unity of society // Scientific Communism: Dictionary (1983)
16. The FSB declassified the contents of the "Special folder" of the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR
17. From the speech of the chairman of the KGB of the USSR Yu. V. Andropov at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU on April 27, 1973
18. 1 2 Intercessor. S. V. Kallistratova. Compiled by: E. Pechuro. "Links", 2003.
    http://lib.web-malina.com/getbook.php?bid=5700&page=1
    http://lib.prometey.org/?id=1844
    http://bookz.ru/authors/pe4uro-e/kallistr.html
    http://bibliotera.org.ua/book.php?id=1153866711&s=81
19. Brandeis University, KGB file of Sakharov, http://www.brandeis.edu/departments/sakharov/
    The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov. (ed.: J. Rubenstein, A. Gribanov), New Haven: Yale University Press, c2005; ISBN 0-300-10681-5, Call number JC599.S58 K43 2005, http://catalog.library.georgetown.edu/search/o?SEARCH=57557418
    The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov, http://www.yale.edu/annals/sakharov/sakharov_list.htm, (images of original pages and text in Windows-1251 encoding, as well as English translations).
20. KGB in the Baltic States: Documents and Researches. KGB 1954-1991
21. 1 2 Likhanov D. Deadly heat // Top secret. - 2007. - Issue. 2.
22. Persecution of Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov. Official publications and documents (Russian). Samizdat anthology. Retrieved August 23, 2012. Archived from the original on August 24, 2011. .
23. Counterintelligence Dictionary. Higher Red Banner School of the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. F. E. Dzerzhinsky, 1972
24. Instruction to leave Chancellor Bruno Kreisky's request for Orlov's release unanswered, July 29, 1983
25. Speech by S. V. Kallistratova in defense of V. Delone. http://www.memo.ru/library/books/sw/chapt49.htm
26. • The interview with V. Bukovsky was first published in Gazeta wyborcza. March 1998 Warsaw. Translation from Polish: Julia Sereda
    • Vladimir Bukovsky. New York with Victor Topaller.
    • Bukovsky offers to exchange Mikhail Khodorkovsky for Yevgeny Adamov October 11, 2005, 11:56 pm
    • "Vladimir Bukovsky" http://politzeki.mypeople.ru/users/politzeki/wiki/vladimir_bukovskii/
    • Appeal to the Communists of the West in support of the release of Bukovsky and Korvalan.
    • Interview with Bukovsky.
    • Konstantinovich Bukovsky. Electronic library of Alexander Belousenko.
    • Yuri Glazov. So where did we go wrong? // New world. 1998, No. 1. http://magazines.russ.ru/novyi_mi/1998/1/rec06.html
    • Vladimir Bukovsky. The grumbling of the last dissident. http://gazeta.aif.ru/online/aif/1211/10_01
    • Luis Corvalan: "It's not socialism's fault that there is no sausage!" // Arguments and facts, No. 44 (1305) dated November 2, 2005, http://gazeta.aif.ru/online/aif/1305/11_01
    • Joseph Raskin. Bukovsky Vladimir. Encyclopedia of the hooligan Orthodox.
27. Vladimir Bukovsky. "And the wind returns..." 1978
28. Vladimir Bukovsky. "And the wind returns..." 1978
29. Podrabinek A.P. Moneychangers
30. Krotov, Ya. Alik in Wonderland
31. Time mine
32. Bergman J. Was the Soviet Union totalitarian? The view of Soviet dissidents and the reformers of the Gorbachev era // Studies in East European Thought. 1998 Vol.50, No. 4. P. 247. DOI:10.1023/A:1008690818176
33. S. I. Grigoryants about the murder of his son
34. In the Vladimir region, the prosecutor's office demands to recognize the book of the leader of the "Christian Renaissance" Union as extremist
35. Russian "eternal revolutionary" asked for asylum in Georgia to fight Putin's "fascist regime" from there

Links

• Cecile Vessier. For your freedom and ours! dissident movement in Russia. - M.: New Literary Review, 2015. - 576 p. - ISBN 978-5-4448-0268-7.

• Alekseeva L.M. History of dissent in the USSR: The newest period. - Vilnius - M.: Vesti, 1992. - ISBN 5-89942-250-3.
• Power and dissidents. From the documents of the KGB and the Central Committee of the CPSU / Archive nat. security at the University of George Washington (USA), Moscow Helsinki Group. - M.: MHG, 2006. - 282 p. - ISBN 5-98440-034-0.
• Conversation between V. Igrunov and B. Dolgin. 02/20/94 - 03/6/94. Edited by Elena Schwartz. 2007 REASONS FOR SOVIET DISSENT AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE
• A. Yu. Daniel. Dissidence: a culture that eludes definitions?
• Giuseppe Boffa "From the USSR to Russia. The history of the unfinished crisis. 1964-1994" Chapter V: "Power and dissidence"
• Vladimir Kozlov SEDITION: DISSENT OF THE USSR UNDER KHRUSHCHEV AND BREZHNEV. 1953-1982 YEARS. ACCORDING TO THE DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS OF THE SUPREME COURT AND PROSECUTION OF THE USSR
• Section of the website of the society "Memorial" about Soviet dissidents
• Leningrad. History of resistance in the mirror of repression (1956-1987)
• Dissident movement in Leningrad
• The ideological origins of the modern concept of human rights.
• Information about dissidents in the Andreevskaya Encyclopedia
• V. E. Dolinin, D. Ya. Severyukhin. Overcoming Silence
• Molostov M. M. "Revisionism - 58"
• Bukovsky V. K .. “And the wind returns ...” 1978
• "DISSIDENT" (from the manuscript of the book by S. A. Kovalev)
• Sinyavsky A. D. Dissidence as a personal experience. // Youth Magazine No. 5, 1989
• Amalrik A. A. Notes of a dissident. - Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1982. - 361 p.
• Ternovsky, Leonard B. "why" or "why".
• Dissident slide films and books by V. and L. Sokirko 1960-80s.
• A.Shubin Dissidents, informals and freedom in the USSR
• Soviet dissidents and human rights activists. Sakharov Center. - Photo documents. Retrieved June 12, 2015.

Literature

• 58-10. Supervisory proceedings of the USSR Prosecutor's Office on cases of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. Annotated directory. March 1953-1991. Edited by V. A. Kozlov and S. V. Mironenko. Compiled by O. V. Edelman with the participation of E. Yu. Zavadskaya and O. V. Lavinskaya. - M.: Democracy, 1999.
• Shubin A. V. Dissidents, informals and freedom in the USSR. M., 2008.- 384 p.: ill.
• Viktor Seleznev. “Who chooses freedom. Saratov. A Chronicle of Dissent in the 1920s-1980s” (Edited by V. M. Zakharov, Candidate of Historical Sciences). Saratov, 2012
• Robert Horvath (2005) The Legacy of Soviet Dissent: Dissidents, Democratization and Radical Nationalism in Russia, ISBN 0-415-33320-2
• Skutnev A.V. The protest movement in the USSR in 1945-1985: emigration and the dissident movement. - Kirov, 2011. - 105 p. ISBN 978-5-91371-031-4 http://search.rsl.ru/ru/catalog/record/5375297
• Typology of the dissident movement in the USSR: 1950s - 1980s (dissertation)
• Saveliev A.V. Political originality of the dissident movement in the USSR in the 1950s - 1970s. // Questions of history. 1998. No. 4.

dissidents in the ussr, dissidents in the ussr sex

Dissidents in the USSR Information About

Dissidents (from lat. dissidens - disagree) - persons who disagree with the official socio-political doctrines, the principles of the political structure, the domestic and foreign policy of the USSR. They acted individually and in small groups, sometimes expressing disagreement openly, but more often they resorted to illegal methods. Dissidence as a social phenomenon was a spectrum of public organizations and movements, literary trends, art schools, a set of individual dissident actions. A certain unity of dissidence as a social phenomenon was given by the active rejection of the prevailing order in the country, the desire for freedom and human rights.

The most important for understanding the phenomenon of dissidence are ideas about public associations, mass psychology, public consciousness, ideological currents and directions of social thought. According to modern ideas (see, for example, the current Federal Law "On Public Associations" dated May 19, 1995), a public association is a formation created on the initiative of citizens united on the basis of common interests to achieve common goals formulated in the relevant documents. A variety of associations are public organizations (membership-based public associations created on the basis of joint activities to protect common interests and achieve the statutory goals of united citizens) and public movements (public associations consisting of members and not having membership, pursuing social, political and other socially useful goals supported by road users). The emergence of associations is preceded by the activities of thinkers and ideologists who give rise to socially significant ideas and systems of ideas about public interests, goals and ways to achieve them. The condition for the emergence and activity of associations is the corresponding state of public consciousness, public moods and aspirations that form social thought, its currents and directions.

Dissidence began to draw attention to itself after the XX Congress of the CPSU (1956), in the conditions of the liberalization of the regime, when dissent (mainly representatives of the intelligentsia) received some opportunities for manifestation. Opposition moods were largely stimulated by the publication of N.S. Khrushchev "On the personality cult of Stalin", a letter from the Central Committee of the CPSU to party organizations "On strengthening the political work of party organizations among the masses and suppressing attacks by anti-Soviet, hostile elements" (dated December 19, 1956) and similar "closed letters", which, in order to condemnation, operated with numerous examples of manifestations of discontent and rejection of the Soviet-communist system.

The first manifestations of legal dissidence in the literary environment include V. Dudintsev’s book “Not by Bread Alone” (1956), K. Paustovsky’s speech in its defense, O. Bergholz’s speech against the decisions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on issues of literature and art adopted in 1946-1948 Public manifestations of dissidence were the reading of poetry (usually not accepted for publication in Soviet censored publications) at meetings of non-conformist youth near the monument to V.V. Mayakovsky in Moscow (1958-1961, active participants V.N. Osipov, E.S. Kuznetsov, I.V. Bokshtein).

Since the second half of the 1950s. dissident underground organizations arose in different cities, numbering within a dozen people. In Moscow - "Russian National Party", or "People's Democratic Party of Russia" (1955-1958, organizer V.S. Polenov and others), "Russian National Socialist Party" (1956-1958, and .A. Dobrovolsky). In Leningrad - a circle led by student V.I. Trofimov (1956-1957) and others. The activities of organizations were suppressed by the KGB.

In late 1956 - early 1957, a group of Marxist persuasion was formed at the history department of Moscow State University under the leadership of L.N. Krasnopevtseva. Its participants tried to create a new concept of the history of the CPSU and a new ideology. In the spring of 1957 they established contact with the Polish oppositionists. They wrote historical notes about the USSR as an obstacle to the progress of civilization. They opposed "Stalinist socialism", for the creation of workers' self-government. In July 1957, leaflets were distributed demanding a trial of Stalin's accomplices, strengthening the role of the Soviets, the right of workers to strike, and the abolition of Article 58 of the Criminal Code. In February 1958, nine members of this circle were sentenced for "anti-Soviet" activities to 6-10 years in prison.

In 1956-1957. in Leningrad there was a circle of the young Leningrad mathematician R.I. Pimenov. Its participants established connections with other youth circles in Leningrad, Moscow, Kursk, tried to consolidate their activities. In September 1957 five members of the circle were convicted for "creating an illegal group of students of the library institute for an organized struggle against the existing system," and in fact - for distributing leaflets against uncontested elections.

In October 1958, the activities of a group of graduates of the Leningrad University headed by M.M. Molostvov. They were arrested for the content of the correspondence they had among themselves, for discussing the possibility of creating an organization and for a manuscript on ways to reform socialism.

In the autumn of 1963, Major General P.G. Grigorenko, later a prominent member of the human rights movement, and several of his supporters distributed leaflets in Moscow and Vladimir on behalf of the Union of Struggle for the Revival of Leninism.

In 1962-1965. in Leningrad there was an underground Marxist "League of Communards". She was guided by the program "From the dictatorship of the bureaucracy - to the dictatorship of the proletariat" (L., 1962, authors V.E. Ronkin, S.D. Khakhaev), distributed leaflets calling for a revolutionary struggle against the Soviet bureaucracy, the samizdat magazine "Kolokol" (L. ., 1965).

The most numerous of all the underground dissident organizations (28 members, 30 candidates) was the Leningrad "All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People" (1964-1967, leader I.V. Ogurtsov), who intended to offer the country Orthodox soil values ​​with the appropriate government device.

Underground circles also operated in Saratov ("Group of Revolutionary Communism", O.M. Senin and others, 1966-1970), Ryazan (Yu.V. Vudka's group, 1967-1969), Gorky (V. I. Zhiltsova, 1967-1970). Their participants were most often inspired by social democratic ideals, but in their practical activities they were guided by general democratic and liberal values, and established contacts with the openly active movement for human rights in Moscow and other cities. To an even greater extent, this can be said about the "Union of Struggle for Democratic Rights" (G. Gavrilov), opened in Tallinn in 1969, which published the samizdat magazine "Democrat" in Russian and Estonian, and the "Estonian Democratic Movement" (1970-1974 years, leader S.I. Soldatov).

At the end of the 70s. in Moscow, a circle of "liberal communists" was formed, grouped around the samizat magazines "Search" (M., 1978-1979. N 1-8), "Search and Reflections" (1980. N 1-4). Their editors and authors (P.M. Abovin-Egides, V.F. Abramkin, R.B. Lert, G.O. Pavlovsky, V.L. Gershuni, Yu.L. Grimm, V.V. Sokirko, M .J. Gefter, PA Podrabinek and others) were people of predominantly left-wing socialist views, supporters of the liberalization of the Soviet system, the expansion of freedoms in it. They tried to carry out a synthesis of ideas that could form the basis for a smooth reform of the system and at the same time gain the support of at least a part of Soviet society, including the reformist wing of the ruling elite. A special position in the circle was occupied by V.V. Sokirko, who was also the author, compiler and editor of the samizdat collection "In Defense of Economic Freedoms" (Moscow, 1978-1979, issue 1-6). He proposed to form a bourgeois-liberal party that would act as an opponent of the CPSU for the development of economic freedoms, for a kind of "bourgeois-communist", "very liberal and communist future society."

In the late 1970s in Moscow there was a group of "Soviet Eurocommunists" (A.V. Fadin, P.M. Kudyukin, B.Yu. Kagarlitsky and others). The group published "samizdat" magazines "Variants" (M., 1977-1982), "Left Turn" (M., 1978-1980), "Socialism and the Future" (M., 1981-1982). In April 1982, the "young socialists" were arrested, but the trial scheduled for February 12, 1983 did not take place. It was canceled thanks to the intercession of foreign communist parties and the unwillingness of Yu. V. Andropov to start his "reign" with a high-profile trial. No great importance was attached to the case of V.K. Demin, technique in the Museum of Oriental Art, which in 1982-1984. wrote and distributed the manuscript "Unicapitalism and Social Revolution", as well as program documents for the RSDLP - "Revolutionary Social Democratic Party".

The development of dissidence was largely facilitated by "tamizdat" - a publication abroad with subsequent popularization by foreign radio broadcasting and distribution in the USSR of uncensored literary works created outside the framework of socialist realism: B.L. Parsnip. Doctor Zhivago (1958); HELL. Sinyavsky. The court is coming (1959), Lyubimov (1963); V.S. Grossman. Life and Fate (1959), Everything Flows (1963); Yu.M. Daniel. Moscow Speaks (1961), Redemption (1963), and others. Inside the USSR, "samizdat" was distributed - production on typewriters in several copies, followed by reprinting of dissident materials and documents.

Syntax (Moscow, 1959-1960, edited by AI Ginzburg) was the first samizdat literary magazine. Three issues were published, the circulation of which reached 300 copies. It consisted of poems by Moscow and Leningrad poets, whose publications met with obstacles from censorship. In N 1 of the journal (December 1959) A. Aronov, N. Glazkov, G. Sapgir, I. Kholin, S. Chudakov were published; in No. 2 (February 1960) - A. Avrusin, B. Akhmadulina, B. Okudzhava, V. Shestakov; in N 3 (April 1960) - D. Bobyshev, I. Brodsky, A. Kushner, V. Uflyand and others. All issues were reprinted in the Entees magazine "Grani" (1965. N 58). Two more issues were partially prepared (the 4th was dedicated to Leningrad poetry, the 5th - to the poets of the Baltic republics). However, with the arrest of Ginzburg (July 1960), the release of "Syntax" ceased.

Syntax was followed by other "samizdat" almanacs and magazines, and in 1964 a group of young Moscow writers, led by L. Gubanov, created an unofficial association of creative youth SMOG (decoding: The Youngest Society of Geniuses; Courage, Thought, Image, Depth; Compressed Moment of the Reflected Hyperbole) In July 1965, the smogists published the journal "Sphinxes" (M., 1965, ed. V.Ya. Tarsis), in the same year its contents were reproduced by "Frontiers" (N 59). The magazine published poems by V. Aleinikov, V. Batshev, S. Morozov, Yu. Vishnevskaya and others. Samizdat collections of smogists were also published: "Hello, we are geniuses", "Vanguard" (M., 1965), "Chu!" (M., 1965), etc. The society existed until April 14, 1966, when the last performance of SMOG took place at the monument to Mayakovsky. After that, the participants of the association marched from Mayakovsky Square to the Central House of Writers, raising the outrageous slogan "Let's deprive socialist realism of innocence!" above their heads.

In February 1966, the founder of the Sphinxes magazine, who left for England, was deprived of Soviet citizenship. In the same year, Daniel and Sinyavsky were tried in Moscow, charged under article 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda aimed at undermining or weakening Soviet power." In defense of the accused, 22 letters were received from the “public”. They were signed by 80 people, mostly members of the Writers' Union.

The most famous events in the history of liberal dissidence were the trial of 21 members of the All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People (February-December 1967) and the release of the "samizdat" human rights bulletin "Chronicle of Current Events" (M., 1968-1983. N 1-64 ). Its compilers (N.E. Gorbanevskaya and others) sought to record all cases of human rights violations in the USSR, as well as speeches in their defense. The chronicle contained information about national movements (Crimean Tatars, Meskhs, Balts), religious (Orthodox, Baptists), etc.

In the dissidence of the social democratic trend, the brothers R.A. and J.A. Medvedev. They believed that all the shortcomings of the socio-political system stem from Stalinism, are the result of a distortion of Marxism-Leninism, and saw the main task in "purifying socialism." Beginning in 1964, R. Medvedev published a monthly samizdat magazine, later published in the West under the title "Political Diary" (M., 1964-1970. No. 1-70). Each issue was printed on a typewriter with a circulation of up to 40 copies, distributed among "reliable" people. The journal had correspondents and authors in scientific research institutes in Moscow and even in the Central Committee of the CPSU (among them was E. Frolov, a senior official of the Kommunist journal). The magazine reflected the attitude to various events in the country and abroad. In the words of A. Sakharov, it was "a mysterious publication ... something like samizdat for top officials." Later, the almanac "XX Century" ("Voices of the Socialist Opposition in the Soviet Union") was published (Moscow, 1976-1977, No. 1-3). It was published by a publishing house established by R. and Zh. Medvedev abroad, translated into Italian, Japanese, English and French. The Almanac was a collection of works by Soviet authors (R. Medvedev, M. Maksudov, A. Krasikov, A. Zimin, A. Bekhmetiev, N. Pestov, M. Bogin, M. Yakubovich, L. Kopelev, S. Elagin, etc.) about the problems of Soviet history and modernity, Western and Eastern democracy, etc. R. Medvedev did not recognize the human rights movement (he considered it an "extremist opposition"), he hoped that the socialist movement would become massive and would allow a serious program of democratic reforms to be implemented in the USSR, and in the subsequent (at the beginning of the 21st century) - a classless communist society. Nevertheless, R. Medvedev was expelled from the party in 1969 "for views incompatible with membership in the party", his brother Zhores, the author of a revealing book about T.D. Lysenko, critical works on the state of science in the USSR, in May 1970 was forcibly placed in a psychiatric hospital. As a result of protests by representatives of the intelligentsia (P.L. Kapitsa, A.D. Sakharov, I.L. Knunyants, A.T. Tvardovsky, M.I. Romm, etc.), he was released, but in 1973 he was deprived of Soviet citizenship, expelled from the country. After the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia, the social democratic direction begins to lose its supporters. Disappointed in him and Academician A.D. Sakharov, who took one of the key roles in dissidence after the publication in "samizdat" in June 1968 of the work "Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom" (the liberal-Western program of the movement).

On the development of dissidence in the late 60s. the demonstration of protest against the entry of troops into Czechoslovakia and the trial (October 1968) of its participants had a significant impact, the exclusion in November 1969 of A.I. Solzhenitsyn from the Union of Writers of the USSR for the publication in the West of the novels "In the First Circle" and "Cancer Ward", awarding him the Nobel Prize in Literature (1970).

Solzhenitsyn's "Nobel Lecture" became an expression of the liberal pochvennik trend in the movement. In this regard, he wrote: "When in the Nobel lecture I said in the most general form: Nations are the wealth of mankind ..." this was received with general approval ... But as soon as I concluded that this also applies to the Russian people, that also and he has the right to national self-consciousness, to national revival after a cruel and severe illness, this was declared with fury by great-power nationalism. "The writer repeatedly defined his ideology not as nationalism, but as national patriotism.

In the summer of 1970, 12 people were arrested at the gangway of a passenger plane cruising from Leningrad to Priozersk, intending to seize and use the plane for a flight to Israel. The trial of the "airplane pilots", unsuccessfully seeking permission to emigrate, ended in harsh sentences for the instigators of this action and arrests among Zionist youth in a number of cities in the country. The court drew the attention of the world community to the problem of freedom to leave the USSR. Thanks to this, the authorities had to increase the number of exit permits every year. In total, more than 255,000 adults emigrated from the USSR from 1971 to 1986 (over 360,000 including children). Almost 80% of all emigrants were of Jewish nationality, who automatically received refugee status upon entering the United States and Canada. According to censuses, the Jewish population in the USSR decreased from 2,151,000 in 1970 to 1,154,000 in 1989, and in Russia (2002) to 230,000.

The "Aircraft Trial" drew the attention of the authorities and the public to the problem of Jewish nationalism and Zionism as one of the forms of its expression. During the development of an international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination in 1973, representatives of some states in the UN tried to condemn anti-Semitism, but objected to the proposal of the Soviet delegation to classify both anti-Semitism and Zionism as racial discrimination. Nevertheless, on November 10, 1975, the UN adopted a resolution defining that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." After the abolition of the USSR, the resolution was cancelled.

The trial of the hijackers showed that a significant part of the "human rights activists" used the human rights idea to cover up militant nationalism and other ideas far from human rights. However, it was in the 70s. the human rights movement becomes one of the main components of the dissident movement. In November 1970, V.N. Chalidze created the Committee for the Protection of Human Rights, which included prominent scientists A.D. Sakharov and I.R. Shafarevich. The committee operated until 1973. In 1973, the Russian section of Amnesty International arose.

In the summer of 1972, P.I. Yakir and V.A. Krasin. The arrested agreed to cooperate with the investigators. The result was a massive wave of new arrests and a marked waning of the dissident movement. Its new rise is largely connected with the appearance in the West in 1973, and then in the "samizdat" of Solzhenitsyn's "experience in artistic research" of the state repressive system called the Gulag Archipelago.

September 5, 1973 A.I. Solzhenitsyn wrote a "Letter to the Leaders of the Soviet Union", in which he proposed a way out of the main, in his opinion, dangers that threatened us in the next 10-30 years: a war with China and death in an ecological catastrophe common with Western civilization. It was proposed to abandon the Marxist ideology, "give it to China" and, according to Stalin's experience from the first days of the Patriotic War, unfold the "old Russian banner, partly even the Orthodox banner", and no longer repeat the mistakes of the end of the war, when "they again pulled the Advanced Teaching from naphthalene". It was also proposed to transfer all the efforts of the state from external to internal tasks: to abandon vodka as the most important item of state income, from many types of industrial production with toxic waste; be freed from compulsory general military service; to focus on the construction of dispersed cities, to recognize that for the foreseeable future, not a democratic, but an authoritarian system is necessary for Russia.

After studying the letter, the authorities in January 1974 decided to prosecute the writer "for malicious anti-Soviet activities", and then deprive him of his citizenship and expel him from the country. The writer was arrested, placed in the Lefortovo prison, and on February 13 he was sent abroad. In Switzerland, he founded the Russian Fund for Helping Prisoners, the first manager of which was A.I., who was released from prison. Ginzburg. There was someone to help. For 1967-1974 729 dissidents were prosecuted for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. In 1976, there were about 850 political prisoners in the USSR, 261 of them for anti-Soviet propaganda.

In 1974 A.D. Sakharov wrote the work "Anxiety and Hope", which presented a vision of the future of world civilization, possible only if a world nuclear confrontation is prevented. The best way to avoid this, he believed, was the convergence of the two systems. “I consider it especially important to overcome the disintegration of the world into antagonistic groups of states, the process of rapprochement (convergence) of the socialist and capitalist systems, accompanied by demilitarization, strengthening of international trust, protection of human rights, law and freedom, deep social progress and democratization, strengthening of moral , spiritual personal principle in man. I suggest that the economic order that arose as a result of this process of rapprochement should be a mixed economy. " Considering that the volume of the gross output of the Soviet economy was 12% of the world economy (and almost all of it is capitalist), this meant, first of all, the transformations in the USSR. The judgments of the "father of the hydrogen bomb" made a great impression in the country and the world. M.S. Gorbachev eventually made them the basis of the course of the state's domestic and foreign policy, believing it possible to start convergence unilaterally.

In December 1975 A.D. Sakharov became the third Soviet dissident to be awarded the Nobel Prize. This act, along with the expulsion from the country of A.I. Solzhenitsyn (February 1974), brought the dissident movement in the USSR wide international fame, and, accordingly, influence on the masses in their country. Later, the dissident poet I.A. Brodsky. In 1972, he emigrated to the USA, where he continued to write (in Russian and in English) poetry, which brought him this award (1987).

After the conclusion of the Helsinki Accords, the Moscow Group for Assistance in the Implementation of the Humanitarian Articles of these Agreements was established (May 1976). It included Corresponding Member of the Armenian Academy of Sciences Yu.F. Orlov (head) and 10 other people: L.M. Alekseeva, M.S. Bernshtam, E.G. Bonner and others. Soon similar groups arose in Ukraine, Georgia, Lithuania and Armenia. In January 1977, a working commission was formed under the Moscow Helsinki Group to investigate the use of psychiatry for political purposes, one of the founders of which was A.P. Podrabinek. In February 1977, faced with the prospect of expanding opposition, the authorities turned to repressions against members of the Helsinki groups.

The authorities believed that one of the main dangers to the state came from dissidents. In an effort to muffle the tension in public life that had intensified with the beginning of the participation of Soviet troops in the civil war in Afghanistan, they tightened repressions against dissidents. In late 1979 - early 1980, almost all the leaders and active participants of not only human rights, but also national, religious organizations opposed to the authorities were arrested and exiled. HELL. Sakharov for speaking out against the war in Afghanistan was deprived of government awards and exiled to the city of Gorky (January 1980). A year and a half later, Deputy Chairman of the KGB S.K. Tsvigun announced from the pages of the Kommunist magazine (1981. No. 14) that the anti-social elements masquerading as champions of democracy had been neutralized, and the human rights movement had ceased to exist.

In the 60-80s. in dissidence, there was a noticeable trend of Russian liberal national-patriotic thought, making itself felt mainly in "samizdat" journalism, which was a kind of response to "samizdat" of a liberal-cosmopolitan persuasion. The first of the texts of Russian "nationalists" that became known to the general public was "The Word of the Nation", written on December 31, 1970 by A.M. Ivanov (Skuratov) as a response to the anonymous "Program of the Democratic Movement of the Soviet Union", which appeared in 1969.

The main issue for Russia in the Slova is the national question. It was stated that the Russians play a disproportionately small role in the life of the country. The situation was to be changed by a national revolution under the slogan "United Indivisible Russia", which would turn the Russian people into a dominant nation. In the nation state that needed to be built, the traditional Russian religion should take its rightful place of honor.

An important event in the Russian liberal-patriotic movement was the appearance of the Veche magazine, which was also a kind of response to dissident liberal and national publications. The publication was initiated by V.N. Osipov, who served 7 years in a strict camp regime for organizing "anti-Soviet gatherings" on Mayakovsky Square in Moscow in 1960-1961. and settled in 1970 in Alexandrov. The magazine was conceived as loyal to the authorities (the name and address of the editor were on the cover).

The first issue of the magazine was published on January 19, 1971. Almost immediately, the magazine was labeled as a chauvinistic anti-Semitic publication. In this regard, the editors on March 1 issued a statement stating: “We strongly reject the definition of the magazine as “extremely chauvinistic” ... We are by no means going to belittle the dignity of other nations. We want only the strengthening of Russian national culture, patriotic traditions in the spirit of the Slavophiles and Dostoevsky, the assertion of the originality and greatness of Russia. As for political problems, they are not included in the subject of our magazine. " The number of regular readers of the magazine was approximately 200-300 people. It was sent to 14 Russian cities, as well as to Kyiv and Nikolaev. One of the circles of "Vecha" were the "Young Guards", members of the "Russian Club". The degree of their involvement in the publication of the journal was limited to the topic of protecting historical and cultural monuments, some financial support.

The most striking exponent of Russian ideology in relation to the new conditions was G.M. Shimanov, who published in the West the book "Notes from the Red House" (1971). The publicist exposed the root of the world's evil (and the tragedy of Russia), seeing it in the catastrophic dead end of Western civilization, which in fact abandoned Christianity and replaced the fullness of spiritual life with a false brilliance of material well-being. He believed that the fate of Russia is not only the fate of her, but of all mankind, which will be able to get out of the impasse, relying on the traditional spiritual values ​​of the Russian people. Russians need to unite on their spiritual foundations. And in this association, the atheistic Soviet power is not an obstacle, because it can be transformed from within, the main thing is to revive the fundamental Russian self-consciousness.

The magazine did not last long. In February 1974, a split occurred in the editorial office, and in July, after the release of the 10th issue of the magazine, it was closed. Osipov decided to resume the publication under the new name "Earth", his first issue was soon released. Meanwhile, the KGB launched an investigation into the publication of the magazine. At the end of November 1974, Osipov was arrested, and while he was under investigation, B.C. Rodionov and V.E. Mashkov released the second issue of "Earth". This is the end of the magazine. In September 1975 V.N. Osipov was sentenced by the Vladimir Regional Court to 8 years of strict regime.

In 1974, a former member of the All-Russian Union of Artists, L.I. Borodin began publishing the magazine "Moscow collection", devoting it to the problems of the nation and religion. In his publishing activities, he relied on the help of young Christians who were grouped around G.M. Shimanova (foreman V.V. Burdyug, poet S.A. Budarov, etc.), belonged to the flock of Father Dmitry Dudko and maintained relations with other dissidents of a liberal-patriotic orientation. Two issues were published with a circulation of 20-25 copies, two more were prepared, but the publication was discontinued. Borodin, having received in the prosecutor's office "Warning under the Decree of the USSR PVS of 1972" that his actions could harm the security of the country and entail punishment, moved away from the publication, returned to Siberia and took up literary activities. In 1982, he was arrested and convicted for publishing his works in the West to 10 years in camps and 5 years in exile.

In the mid 70s. there was an ideological reorientation of the mathematician and dissident I.R. Shafarevich (Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1991, President of the Moscow Mathematical Society). He wrote a number of works criticizing the totalitarian system. Particularly well-known were his articles "Separation or Rapprochement?", "Does Russia Have a Future?" the books "Socialism as a Phenomenon of World History" (first published in Paris in 1977) and "Russophobia" (written in 1980, distributed in samizdat, reprinted many times since 1989). These works created the author's reputation as an ideologist of the national Orthodox movement, immediately evoking criticism in the circles of the democratically minded intelligentsia, professional historians and ethnographers, who find all sorts of exaggerations and inaccuracies in them. However, the theory of the "small people", developed by Shafarevich following the French historian O. Cochin, was widely recognized in patriotic circles.

In the second half of the 70s. in dissidence, a current appeared, later called "national-communist". It claimed to be fighting together with the authorities against Zionism for an original Russian state. There were two groups of such "communists": the Orthodox, headed by G.M. Shimanov and F.V. Karelin; pagans led by A.M. Ivanov (Skuratov), ​​V.N. Emelyanov, V.I. Skurlatov. Both groups actively dissociated themselves from dissidence in its liberal incarnation and criticized the activities of the MHG, the Working Commission, the Christian Committee for the Defense of Believers, and the Solzhenitsyn Foundation.

In 1980-1982 Five issues of the samizdat magazine "Many Leta" were published. Its main authors, apart from the editor Shimanov, were F.V. Karelin and V.I. Prilutsky. A circle of a dozen like-minded people was grouped around them. The main idea of ​​the magazine was to incline the Soviet authorities to the policy of "common sense", to strengthen the power at the expense of communes, united by tribal and religious characteristics. In 1982, after being threatened by the KGB, Shimanov stopped publishing the magazine. With its closure, the organized structures of the Russian national dissident movement ceased to exist.

Religiously, the Russian national-patriotic movement included not only Christians. By the mid 70s. small but stable groups of "neopagans" were formed, calling for a return to pre-Christian beliefs. "Neo-pagans" considered the Proto-Slavs and the ancient Slavs to be part of the tribes of the ancient Aryans, who had a common culture and religion in the space from India to Spain.

To combat dissidents, the authorities used the relevant provisions of Soviet legislation, discredit through the media. The conductor of the punitive policy was mainly the KGB. Dissidents, as a rule, were accused of such crimes as "a socially dangerous deliberate act aimed at undermining or weakening the Soviet state of the whole people, the state or social system and the external security of the USSR, committed in order to undermine or weaken Soviet power." According to the Supreme Court and the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR, in 1956-1987. 8145 people were convicted for such crimes. For 1956-1960 935 people were sentenced annually on average, in 1961-1965. - 214, in 1966-1970. - 136, in 1971-1975. - 161, in 1976-1980. - 69, in 1981-1985. - 108, in 1986-1987. - 14 people.

A specific type of punishment for dissidents was their forced, by court order, placement in a psychiatric hospital, which from a legal point of view was not a repressive sanction. Such a measure of influence as deprivation of Soviet citizenship was also applied to dissidents. From 1966 to 1988, about 100 people were deprived of Soviet citizenship for actions "discrediting the high rank of a citizen of the USSR and damaging the prestige or state security of the USSR," incl. M.S. Voslensky (1976), P.G. Grigorenko (1978), V.P. Aksenov (1980), V.N. Voinovich (1986). Several imprisoned oppositionists (G. Vins, A. Ginzburg, V. Moroz, M. Dymshits, E. Kuznetsov) were exchanged for two Soviet intelligence officers arrested abroad, and V.K. Bukovsky - on the leader of the Chilean communists, L. Corvalan, who was imprisoned.

By the second half of the 80s. dissidence was largely suppressed. However, as subsequent events showed, the victory over dissidence turned out to be ephemeral. Gorbachev's "perestroika" fully revealed its significance. It turned out that the open struggle of several hundred dissidents, with the moral and material support of the West, against the vices of the existing regime of power aroused the sympathy of an immeasurably wider circle of fellow citizens. The confrontation testified to significant contradictions in society. The ideas of dissidence were widely popularized by the world mass media. Sakharov alone in 1972-1979. held 150 press conferences, prepared 1200 broadcasts for foreign radio. Dissidence in the Soviet Union was actively promoted by the American CIA. It is known, for example, that by 1975 it participated in the publication in Russian of more than 1,500 books by Russian and Soviet authors. All this greatly increased the strength of the dissident component itself. According to Yu.V. Andropov (1975), there were hundreds of thousands of people in the Soviet Union who either act or are ready (under suitable circumstances) to act against the Soviet regime. There were those in the party-state elite of Soviet society.

The lowering of the national flag of the USSR from the flagpole over the domes of the Kremlin on December 25, 1991, if you look at this event through the prism of anti-Soviet dissidence, means that the main forces of the former party and state leadership essentially moved to the position of the movement. They became the driving force behind the nomenklatura revolution of 1991-1993, which instantly (by historical standards) undermined the foundations of "developed socialism" and brought down the building of the "indestructible Union." The phenomenon of intra-party liberal dissidence and its method are well described in the article by A.N. Yakovlev "Bolshevism is a social disease of the XX century" (1999). It claims that in the days of "developed socialism" a group of "true reformers" unleashed a new round of exposure of "Stalin's personality cult" "with a clear implication: not only Stalin is a criminal, but the system itself is criminal." The party dissidents proceeded from the conviction that "the Soviet totalitarian regime could be destroyed only through glasnost and totalitarian party discipline, while hiding behind the interests of improving socialism." To our days, it turned out that M.S. was a kind of "general dissident". Gorbachev. This is evidenced by his speech at a seminar at an American university in Turkey in 1999 (see appendix).

The policy of glasnost and other perestroika processes changed the attitude of the Soviet authorities towards dissidents. With the freedom to emigrate, many of them left the country, samizdat publications (by the end of 1988 there were 64 of them) began to operate in parallel with the state ones. In the second half of the 80s. in the USSR, the last dissidents serving their sentences were released. In December 1986, A.D. was returned from exile. Sakharov. In 1989, the Gulag Archipelago was allowed to be published; in August 1990, A.I. Solzhenitsyn, Yu.F. Orlov and other former dissidents. Dissidence as a movement ceased to exist. Since 1986, dissident groups have been replaced by political clubs and then popular fronts. At the same time, the process of formation of a multi-party system began; until its completion, the functions of political parties were performed by "informal" public organizations.

In 1994, the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation published the book "The Tale of Sakharov", which includes materials from a conference dedicated to the outstanding scientist's birthday. The book contains a speech by S.A. Filatov, who completely identified the current government with the participants headed by A.D. Sakharov's branches of dissidence and those of his students, "who took upon themselves the heavy duty to realize much of what Andrei Dmitrievich dreamed of ... May Sakharov's experience, Sakharov's thoughts, Sakharov's ideas and Sakharov's feelings help us to fulfill this difficult mission!". These words contain an official assessment of the historical role of one of the currents of dissidence. As for dissidence in general, its participants, with a few exceptions (L.M. Alekseeva, L.I. Borodin, S.A. Kovalev, R.A. Medvedev, V.N. Osipov, V.I. Novodvorskaya, G. O. Pavlovsky, A. I. Solzhenitsyn and others) did not retain a noticeable influence on the post-Soviet political and social life of the country.

Literature: Alekseeva L.M. History of dissent in the USSR: The latest period. Vilnius, M, 1992, 2006; Bezborodov A.B., Meyer M.M., Pivovar E.I. Materials on the history of the dissident and human rights movement in the USSR in the 50s - 80s. M., 1994; Alekseeva L. History of the human rights movement. M., 1996; Dissidents about dissidence // Znamya. 1997. No. 9; Polikovskaya L.V. We are a premonition... forerunner: Mayakovsky Square, 1958-1965. M., 1997; Self-publishing of the century. Minsk; M., 1997; 58-10. Supervisory proceedings of the USSR Prosecutor's Office on cases of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. March 1953 - 1991. M., 1999. Koroleva L.A. The historical experience of Soviet dissidence and the present. M., 2001; History of political repressions and resistance to unfreedom in the USSR. M., 2002; Anthology Samizdat: Uncensored Literature in the USSR. 1950-1980s: In 3 vols. M., 2005; Sedition: Dissent in the USSR under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. 1953-1982 M., 2005; Shubin A.I. Faithful Democracy. USSR and informals (1986-1989). M., 2006.

Application
M.S. Gorbachev's speech at the seminar
at the American University in Turkey, 1999

The goal of my whole life was the destruction of communism, the unbearable dictatorship over people.

I was fully supported by my wife, who understood the need for this even earlier than I did. It was to achieve this goal that I used my position in the party and the country. That is why my wife kept pushing me to consistently rise to higher and higher positions in the country.

When I personally got acquainted with the West, I realized that I could not deviate from my goal. And to achieve it, I had to replace the entire leadership of the CPSU and the USSR, as well as the leadership in all socialist countries. My ideal at that time was the path of the social democratic countries. The planned economy did not allow realizing the potential possessed by the peoples of the socialist camp. Only the transition to a market economy could enable our countries to develop dynamically.

I managed to find associates in the realization of these goals. Among them, A.N. Yakovlev and E.A. Shevardnadze occupy a special place, whose merits in our common cause are simply invaluable.

A world without communism would look better. The year 2000 will be followed by an era of peace and shared prosperity. But there is still a force in the world that will slow down our movement towards peace and creation. I mean China.

I visited China during the big student demonstrations when it looked like communism in China would fall. I was going to address the demonstrators in that huge square, express my sympathy and support to them and convince them that they must continue their struggle so that perestroika can begin in their country. The Chinese leadership did not support the student movement, brutally suppressed the demonstration and ... made the greatest mistake. If there were an end to communism in China, it would be easier for the world to move on the path of harmony and justice.

I intended to keep the USSR within the then existing borders, but under a new name, reflecting the essence of the democratic transformations that had taken place. I didn't succeed. Yeltsin was terribly eager for power, having no idea what a democratic state is. It was he who destroyed the USSR, which led to political chaos and all the ensuing difficulties that the peoples of all the former republics of the Soviet Union are experiencing today.

Russia cannot be a great power without Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the Caucasian republics. But they have already gone their own way, and their mechanical unification does not make sense, since it would lead to constitutional chaos. Independent states can unite only on the basis of a common political idea, market economy, democracy, equal rights for all peoples.

When Yeltsin destroyed the USSR, I left the Kremlin, and some journalists suggested that I would cry at the same time. But I did not cry, for I had done away with communism in Europe. But it must also be put an end to in Asia, because it is the main obstacle to the achievement by mankind of the ideals of universal peace and harmony.

The collapse of the USSR does not bring any benefit to the United States. They now do not have an appropriate partner in the world, which could only be a democratic USSR (and in order to preserve the former abbreviation "USSR", it could be understood as the Union of Free Sovereign Republics - the USSR). But I failed to do this. In the absence of an equal partner, the United States is naturally tempted to assume the role of the only world leader who may disregard the interests of others (and especially small states). This is a mistake fraught with many dangers both for the US itself and for the whole world.

The path of the peoples to real freedom is difficult and long, but it will certainly be successful. Only for this the whole world must be freed from communism.

http://www.voskres.ru/articles/vdovin1.htm

Time of poets

The Cultural Revolution of the Thaw started on July 28, 1957, when the World Festival of Democratic Youth and Students began. Moscow was filled with young and socializing foreigners, art exhibitions were opened, through which the avant-garde broke into the USSR, at the fashion parade one could join the bright clothes of almost all countries of the world. Soviet culture had something to answer. Moscow impressed guests with a grandiose ballet show at the Luzhniki stadium, colorful processions through the streets of Moscow, and the architectural and propaganda façade of the Soviet system. The momentum of the Festival led to irreversible consequences for the lyricists. The guests departed, but the atmosphere remained - singing with a guitar, the "dude" fashion that got out of control, an artistic underground that violated the norms of "socialist realism", poetic evenings.

The new generation usually asserts itself in confrontation with the former. The “thaw” policy, which was based on criticism of the previous government, greatly contributed to this. New literary heroes - skeptics or truth-seekers, but in any case distrustful of the older generation, who knelt before Stalin - aroused delight among young readers and fears and misunderstanding of most of the "older comrades".

In September 1956, "Youth" published "Chronicle of the Times of Viktor Podgursky", which laid the foundation for frank "confessional" youth prose. If at first its authors studied the psychology of youth, then soon they moved on to the "truth-womb" in the style of critical realism. Vigilant censors were shocked, for example, by the description of Gorky Street in A. Gladilin's story "Smoke in the Eyes". The center of Moscow is "Broadway", "an exhibition of vanity", "a bunch of well-dressed dudes and dudes". The censor understood that there is some truth in this, but Gladilin does not denounce negative phenomena and, as it were, legalizes them. His hero, as is customary in confessional prose, frankly spits on communist ideals: “It is a terrible thing when you are among millions ... A terrible thing is our life. In order to somehow break through, to be a little noticeable, you need to work like hell for 20-30 years, with sweat and blood. And only then will you achieve fame. Now such an opinion about Soviet society sounds like a compliment. This society is fair. But a young man wants fast ways, and he begins to dislike a society where you have to work hard to achieve something. Despite all these revelations, Gladilin did not fall victim to persecution, and his story was published in Youth at the end of 1959 - just the places indicated by the censor had to be removed. But the "smell" remained.

One part of the youth, like Doctor Zhivago, demanded one thing from the authorities - "leave me alone." And the other, on the contrary, grabbed (like the hero of V. Rozov from "In Search of Joy") her father's checker in order to remind the secularized ancestors of the ideals of the revolution. And it is not known what was worse for the authorities.

On January 22, 1960, the head of the Glavlit, P. Romanov, wrote indignantly to the Central Committee about E. Yevtushenko's poem "Consider me a communist." Listing the shortcomings of Soviet society, the young poet claims that they pose a threat to the legacy of the October Revolution. Soviet officials remembered well how the Trotskyists spoke of the degeneration of the revolution.

But most of all, P. Romanov was outraged by something else. Yevtushenko’s poem was published in No. 2 for 1960, and, unlike the case with Gladilin, “after the comments of the censorship, the editors, instead of suggesting that the author radically revise the poem, made only partial corrections that do not change its ideological orientation ". A new degree of "thaw" - it became possible to circumvent censorship.

The forefront of the fight against the new scourge was held by defensive criticism. E. Yevtushenko was awarded by critics with the title of the spiritual leader of dudes, V. Aksenov - cynics, and the authors of the film "Ilyich's Outpost" - parasites. All this youth trend, as the guards claimed, “drives a wedge” between fathers and children.

In 1959–1960 literary youth for some time became the main problem of censorship. The head of Glavlit writes with horror about the portrait of youth that Voznesensky paints in the poem "The Last Train". “Boys with finches, girls with fixies” ride in it, “guitars and thieves are buzzing around like in a camp.” This is an "insulting attack on all our youth." But Voznesensky does not just pay tribute to thieves' lyrics as one of the manifestations of Soviet critical realism, he offers a way out - his own poems, which will heal social ulcers that turned out to be too tough for the state. Here is the fallen girl who has fallen:

Worth - traits experienced.

On the blouse sees the look

All fingerprinting

Malakhov's guys.

The younger "nihilists" who formed the generation of the "sixties" received from time to time the support of older progressives. When Yevtushenko found himself under fire from criticism, Shostakovich, who had previously been disgraced, extended a hand of support to him, setting fragments of the "disgraced" poem "Babi Yar" to his music.

At the same time, it is known that there was some chill between Tvardovsky and young writers, caused at first by aesthetic reasons. Tvardovsky believed, for example, that Yevtushenko was talented, but careless and "self-indulgent". Later, political ones were added to Tvardovsky's aesthetic claims: “For kind people, such a phenomenon as Solzhenitsyn is a manifesto. But for people like our young people, this is like water off a duck's back…” They had their own manifestos.

Civic lyrics were more popular than ever since the 1920s, resurrecting romantic revolutionary myths. Poets E. Yevtushenko, A. Voznesensky and R. Rozhdestvensky were leaders of youthful thoughts. Childhood passion for writing poetry has become a factor in social life. Young unrecognized poets were looking for their audience and found it on the square.

On July 29, 1958, a monument to Mayakovsky was opened in Moscow on the square named after him. The poets recited poems at the ceremony. But when the official part ended, an unknown hero from the audience stepped up to the microphone and began to read Mayakovsky. The audience liked it, and a queue lined up at the microphone. As a result, we agreed to get together and read poetry - not only Mayakovsky. At this time poetry evenings were generally in vogue, but for the first time they took place outside the control of official structures in the open air. But the Soviet people did not see anything seditious in this. And not only the youth who gathered at the monument, but also the "senior comrades". "Moskovsky Komsomolets" on August 13 praised the undertaking. Meanwhile, the youth at the Mayak turned to reading their own poems, a controversy broke out - as if about poetry, but also about their social content.

In the fall, the initiative died out, 1959 passed quietly, but in 1960 readings at Mayakovka (or briefly, Mayak) resumed on weekends. The content of the poems of some poets has become much more radical - yet two more years of the "thaw" have passed. Up to 15 thousand people gathered. On the sidelines, they were already arguing about politics. Khrushchev commented on this situation: “They say there were some good ones. They were good, but the audience was on the side of those who oppose us.” Accordingly, the attitude of the authorities has changed.

Detentions of radical readers began. But the employees of the “organs” had a poor idea of ​​which verses were permitted and which were not. Then it was decided to close the "hotbed". And it didn't close.

So that the fight against young poets does not look like new repressions, a police operation, Komsomol operational detachments, including young workers, were involved in it. They were told that they would have to fight against idlers and anti-Soviet people, and the factory guys acted tough. But the guards met with resistance.

Now the young organizers stood behind the poets, protecting the event from the vigilantes. The backbone of the group consisted of members of underground political and literary associations, many of whom would later take part in the dissident movement (A. Ivanov ("Rakhmetov"), A. Ivanov ("New Year"), V. Osipov, E. Kuznetsov, V. Khaustov, Yu. Galanskov, V. Bukovsky, I. Bokshtein and others). “These people constantly came to the monument, invited and brought their acquaintances, protected poets and readers from drunk hard workers and Komsomol operative detachments. In a word, they "kept" the place.

Quite quickly, in this motley company, a division into two groups became noticeable - “politicians” and “poets”. The politicians wanted to organize the people from “Mayakovsky Square” into some kind of opposition movement, the “poets” preferred to engage in pure art.

The ideological base of the "politics" was chosen as "anarcho-syndicalism". In the same Historical Library, Ivanov and Osipov found freely available books by Asher Deleon "Workers' Councils in Yugoslavia", the French anarcho-syndicalist Georges Sorel "Reflections on Violence", Bakunin's "Statehood and Anarchy", Kautsky's "Against Soviet Russia". This ideological baggage Ivanov ("Novogodny") and Osipov propagandized on the Mayakovites' "kvartirniks". On June 28, 1961, Osipov presented to his comrades the platform of the underground organization (see Chapter VIII).

On the anniversary of Mayakovsky's death on April 14, 1961, a massacre took place. The square was crowded with people walking in honor of Gagarin's flight. There were many drunk people. And the vigilantes tried to arrange another dispersal. The young defenders of Mayak began to fight back, and a fight broke out with the participation of bystanders.

The pressure on radical poets intensified. The area was cordoned off, searches were carried out at the apartments of the Mayak organizers, one of them, the bully V. Bukovsky, was guarded and beaten by the operative detachments.

At the same time, Bukovsky contacted the Komsomol structures, discussed the possibilities of its transformation (later Bukovsky's theses on this issue were presented as an anti-Soviet document), organized an alternative art exhibition with the help of Komsomol channels. This activity was reminiscent of the work of political informals in the mid-80s, but in the 60s. the authorities eventually stopped this movement. As the party congress approached, they acted more and more harshly. If at first they were awarded a "day", then in October several participants who carried on anti-Soviet conversations were arrested (including those who were considered terrorist - see Chapter VIII).

“On October 9, Mayak gave the last battle - in the evening we held readings throughout Moscow,” recalls V. Bukovsky.

Three active organizers of readings - I. Bokshtein, who "campaigned against the Soviet authorities of anyone who agreed to listen to him - even the fighters of the Komsomol operational detachments", the future "airplane pilot" E. Kuznetsov and the future publisher of the national-Christian magazine "Veche", and now an anarchist syndicalist V. Osipov, accused of anti-Soviet propaganda, learned 5-7 years in the camps.

Later, several more Mayak organizers were arrested, including Bukovsky, they preferred to qualify him as paranoid and send him to a special hospital.

At first, Bukovsky and other dissidents were even pleased that instead of a camp they would face a “fool”, but it turned out that a psychiatric hospital is a cruel test no better than a prison. Despite this, as we shall see, some opponents of the regime continued to prefer to be there rather than in the camp.

Mayakovka also gave a new impetus to samizdat. Political texts and literary works were reprinted and distributed separately, and the organizers of "Mayakovka" began to make collections - on the model of thick literary magazines popular at that time. A young journalist A. Ginzburg, a participant in the readings at the monument, collected poems by unrecognized poets and published them in the Syntax almanac. The collection was illustrated by a prominent alternative artist from the "Lianozovo group" E. Krapivnitsky. In 1959–1960 three issues were published with poems by B. Okudzhava, I. Brodsky, N. Gorbanevskaya. The circulation reached 300 copies, which is a lot for a typewritten edition, which is distributed from a single center (in the mid-60s, a network of samizdat reprints was formed, which would pick up and multiply texts for years).

In July 1960, Ginzburg was arrested, but they decided not to make a political case for him, he was imprisoned for forging documents for two years in labor camps - “the maximum term, despite the insignificance of the crime (forgery of a certificate for passing an exam for a friend) and the complete absence of mercenary motives in his actions.

The Mayak members also released the collections Cocktail and Boomerang. Yu. Galanskov published in 1961 a thick (200 pages) almanac "Phoenix". After the Mayak dispersal, its participants published two issues of the Sirena magazine in 1962.

When the "Mayak" was destroyed, public poetry readings continued, but already under the roof. Their symbol was the evenings at the Polytechnic Museum, which were organized by the Gorky Film Studio for the filming of M. Khutsiev's film "Ilyich's Outpost". Officially organized readings with discussion were a sensation, tickets were distributed by the Komsomol, but lovers of new poetry tried to sneak in from the street. Yevtushenko told from the high party platform what an embarrassment came out: the hall was half empty, and on the street there was a crowd of thousands eager to enter the Polytechnic. The bureaucracy again did everything "as always." They were waiting for the arrival of some more young workers who had not arrived. To proposals to fill the hall with the public, Komsomol officials replied: "It is not known what kind of people they are." Mayak taught officials to be vigilant. So the readings went on in a half-empty hall, but in the film everything turned out as it should. From the same podium, V. Aksyonov told what a stunning impression the scene of the film about poetry readings made abroad, showing the intense spiritual life of the country. Appeal to foreign opinions is a dangerous argument, and Aksyonov continues with pathos: “Any attempts to present our literature as leveled, dogmatic literature must be shattered by facts. Any attempts to present our literature as revisionist literature must also be shattered by facts... Our unity lies in our Marxist philosophy, in our historical optimism, in our loyalty to the ideas of the 20th and 22nd Congresses. In vain are the attempts of some unscrupulous critics to present us as nihilists and dudes... I am grateful to the party and to Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev that I can talk to him, that I can consult with him. We want to talk to the fathers, and argue with them, and agree on various issues, but we also want to say that the fathers do not think that we have stones in our pockets, but know that we have clean hands. (Applause.)".

Cinema left, venerable young poets, too, but the Polytechnic site remained and for some time there were readings and discussions.

Young poets, whose talent was officially recognized, tried to stand up for street readers.

Defending "Mayak" in the face of party leaders, Yevtushenko claimed that the audience itself fought back if someone started reading "libelous verses" (this is an exaggeration, but perhaps Yevtushenko deliberately used the fact that the progressives and the outdoor KGB estimated differently " libelousness"). Accordingly, the dispersal of Mayak was presented by the poet as absurd and harmful for the regime arbitrariness: “So what did the comrades from the district committee, the comrades with red armbands on their sleeves, do? They came for several evenings in a row and cleared the audience, pulled out those who read poetry. One girl was pulled out, who was reading "I Love" Mayakovsky. They decided that she wrote it herself and that we do not need such poems. And in general, evenings stopped on Mayakovsky Square.

Let's be indignant together with the poet - the regime is afraid of a gathering where the poems of Mayakovsky and other, less canonical poets are read. Years passed, the communist regime collapsed. The fetters have fallen, and freedom ... But I do not advise poets to gather at the monument to Mayakovsky to read poetry without the sanction of the city authorities. OMON can crush the bones. And now they will not understand whether we need such verses or not.

Yevtushenko assesses the dispersal of "Mayak" as a capitulation to the "scum", which could be given an ideological rebuff. But the officials understand that both Yevtushenko and the "scum" need the same thing - so that the reading of poetry is also accompanied by a discussion. And in this discussion, progressives and radicals, biting each other for the sake of order, will cling to the bureaucracy.

The arbitrariness of power gave rise to legitimate public indignation. But it was not absurd, since Mayak was indeed a center of consolidation and practical training for young oppositionists, future dissidents.