Soviet Dissidence and the Public during De- and Re-Stalinization

Authoritarian tendencies in Hungary and Slovakia, dictatorial regimes in Belarus and the Russian Federation, the appropriation of symbols and figures of protest from state-socialist times by nationalist and right-wing movements and parties in Germany: in light of these challenges in the Eastern parts of Europe, it is more crucial than ever to explore forms and practices of dissidence. What did it mean in Socialism to articulate and live criticism, protest, resistance, and refusal? How is dissidence shaped today?

Starting from these questions, the pop-up exhibition “What is dissidence?” is being developed together with the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) in Leipzig. The project is funded by the Leibniz Lab Disruptions and Transformations. The exhibition, which will be shown at highly frequented places such as public libraries, town halls, churches, community colleges, district centers, and sports clubs in Berlin-Brandenburg and Saxony, has three goals:

1. Through the exemplary depiction of important historical events, actors, and concepts, the exhibition educates visitors about dissidence in Eastern Europe and its importance for societal upheavals and transformations.
2. By addressing differences and similarities between historical and contemporary uses of the concept of “dissidence,” and by exploring the role of the individual in society, as well as forms of engagement and assimilation, the exhibition facilitates a more precise understanding of (civil) societal engagement.
3. Analog and digital exchange formats invite the visitors to contribute their own experiences, criticism, (dissenting) opinions, and open questions. There will be pinboards where they can leave questions and comments. There will also be a digital platform as well as accompanying film screenings and discussions where visitors can directly engage with the project’s researchers.

The Dissident Library aims to intervene in the academic discourse on the Soviet movement of dissidents and strives to make their methodological objectives and results available to a broader public. The project consists of a series of online seminars conceived by the now-liquidated human rights organization International Memorial. It connects scholars from around the world. The seminar also features smaller formats with individual authors. Discussions with contemporary witnesses (especially dissidents and authors of the first monographs on dissidence from the 1970s and 1980s) focus on the contextualization and historicization of earlier research. This will result in a digital library of dissidence that—while taking into account different research perspectives and understandings of concepts—collects audio and video materials as well as contemporary documents.      

This project is based on my interviews with Pavel Litvinov (recorded since 2019), one of the key figures in the Moscow dissident circle of the late 1960s. Pavel Litvinov’s name consistently appears in works on the dissident movement in the USSR, a movement that focused on a moral, symbolic protest rather than a political opposition, especially in connection with the demonstration of the Eight on Moscow’s Red Square in August 1968 against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Litvinov compiled collections of trial documents as an alternative to the reports of state institutions and the press; he communicated with Western politicians and journalists, and he established contacts with other dissident groups in other cities and republics of the USSR.

Drawing on this material and my interviews with Litvinov, the project aims to clarify the program of the Moscow dissidents—a program that focused on rejecting both political activity as “dirty” and party discipline in favor of a society based on Western values as seen from Moscow without normal access to Western press and political documents. This revolves primarily around the notion of “public” which Litvinov and Larisa Bogoraz problematized in their open letter “To World Public Opinion” (1968).

The project will bring forth a commented edition of selected interviews with Pavel Litvinov supported by the publication of archival material as well as interviews I have conducted with other individuals active in the dissident movement. These interviews try to reflect on the memoirs of other participants in the dissident movement that have been published over the last forty years. Through these interviews, the project will analyze the social influence of the Moscow circle of dissidents inside and outside the USSR and its characteristics without applying these characteristics to “Soviet dissidents” as a whole.

The project will examine the trial against author Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) who, in 1964, was sentenced to five years in exile on charges of “social parasitism,” but soon thereafter, in 1965, returned to Leningrad after an intervention by Soviet and Western intellectuals. In post-Stalinist times, the trial was the first in which the audience created and distributed alternative court records. One of these records made it to the West and made the Brodsky case known there as well. Just like the open letters, this record is viewed as a form of journalism and analyzed as a genre oscillating between literature and law, prose and document. The analysis will focus on ways in which the individuals involved (defendants, attorneys, supporters) developed their own juridical rhetoric, discursive strategies, and forms of communication as a result of an intense engagement with institutions and representatives of Soviet law. They did this to redefine their place in society and force the state to engage with the opposition’s arguments and accusations.

The archive seminar compiles comments on open letters by Soviet dissidents. In an authoritarian, enclosed society, open letters create accessible public spaces for debates on socially important questions banned from official media. E.g., Soviet dissidents reported on human rights violations in open letters that were quoted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Today, many of these letters can be found in the Archiv Samizdata, a collection of unofficial, self-published documents spread across different institutions worldwide. Thanks to its online format, the archive seminar enables collaboration among participants of students from different universities and countries.