Table Of ContentSOVIET
DISSENT
Contemporary Movements for
National, Religious, and Human Rights
LUDMILLA ALEXEYEVA
Copyright© 1985, 1987 by Ludmilla Alexeyeva
All rights reserved.
Originally published in the United States in the Russian language and in some
what different form under the title HCTOPIUI HHAKOMhICnHSI B CCCP
(History of Dissent in the USSR), copyright © 1984 by Khronika Press.
Excerpts from Letter to the Soviet Leaders by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, translated
from the Russian by Hilary Sternberg, copyright © 1974 by Aleksandr I. Sol
zhenitsyn (English translation copyright © 1974 by Writers and Scholars Interna
tional Ltd.) reprinted by permission of Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.
The following photographs are used by permission: Yuri Badzio © SMOLOSKYP,
Organization for Defense of Human Rights in Ukraine; Victor Rtskheladze and
Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Boris Talantov, and Andrey Tverdokhlebov, copyright ©
Peter Reddaway; Yakov Skornyakov, copyright© Open Doors; Anatoly Yakobson,
copyright © A.C.E.R. All photographs other than the above, copyright © 1985
by Ludmilla Alexeyeva.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Alekseeva, Liudmila, 1927-
Soviet dissent.
Rev. translation of: Istoriia inakomysliia v SSSR.
Includes index.
1. Social movements-Soviet Union-History. 2. Dissenters-Soviet Union-His
tory. 3. Civil rights-Soviet Union-History. 4. Soviet Union-Social conditions-
1945- . I. Title.
HN527.A4713 1985 303.4'84 84-11811
ISBN 0-8195-6176-2
All inquiries and permissions resquests should be addressed to the Publisher,
Wesleyan University Press, 110 Mt. Vernon St., Middletown, Connecticut, 06457.
Distributed by Harper & Row Publishers, Keystone Industrial Park, Scranton,
Pennsylvania, 18512.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing, 1985
Wesleyan Paperback, 1987
SOVIET DISSENT
Translated by Carol Pearce and John Glad
~ WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS
~ Middletown, Connecticut
To my husband, Nikolay Williams,
withoui whom this book could not have been written
Preface
This book is a mixture of my observations and understanding from in
side the dissident movement in the USSR as well as my study of the
movement from the outside. I view my work on the movement pre
cisely as research, not as sketches based on mere personal impressions,
although I am not a bystander, and I have an enthusiastic attitude to
ward it. For fifteen years, I was constantly occupied with typing
samizdat; I took part in creating the mechanism for the distribution of
samizdat and the collection of information for the Chronicle of Current
Events. For ten years I was also engaged in aiding political prisoners
and their families. I developed many friends and acquaintances, not
only among human rights activists, but also among participants of
other movements, thereby obtaining a direct knowledge of these other
movements. The circle of my acquaintances was greatly widened during
my work with the Moscow Helsinki Group-all sorts of people came to
us with their problems from all over the Soviet Union.
I have attempted in this book to describe systematically the inde
pendent movements of dissent in the Soviet Union. Each movement is
described separately, because each has its own shape and pursues its
own purposes. My goal was to show the great variety of Soviet dissent
and, at the same time, to demonstrate its internal unity-a unity evi
dent in the application of peaceful means in the pursuit of human
rights, which are now more and more coming into the foreground.
Personal experience, however, is not enough for a systematic descrip
tion and history of all the dissident movements in the USSR from their
inception to the present time. Samizdat completed the data necessary
for this book. The source of essential information is the Chronicle of
Current Events, which the academician Sakharov has called the prin
cipal achievement of the human rights movement. The anonymous edi
torial board that publishes CCE is renewed approximately every two
years, generally because of the arrests of its editors. Since 1968, sixty-
vii
v111 .rretace
four issues of Chronicle have appeared; they contain an immense
amount of material about the violation of human rights throughout the
USSR and about the continuing struggle against these abuses. The ex
cellent quality of the information from Chronicle has withstood inves
tigation. At the trials for those involved in Chronicle, usually on
charges of "slander," teams of KGB agents seeking grounds for these
accusations on several occasions checked the reliability of the informa
tion of human rights activists. But even these diligent inspectors were
able to find only a few inaccuracies.
CCE has been my major-although far from my only-source of in
formation. In the thirty years of their existence, samizdat publications
have grown into a huge library. In preparing this book I read through
the entire library of samizdat that has reached the West. Samizdat is
for the most part preserved in the Samizdat Archive of Radio Liberty
in Munich, the archive of Khronika Press in New York, and in the files
of Keston College in London.
My most valuable sources were:
1) The numerous information publications of various dissident
movements and groups: Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church;
Ukrainian Herald; information bulletins of the Ukrainian Helsinki
Group and the Council of Relatives of Evangelical Christian Baptists;
the independent trade union group SMOT; the Initiative Group for
the Defense of the Rights of the Handicapped in the USSR; the Work
ing Commission to Investigate the Abuse of Psychiatry for Political
Purposes; the Right to Emigration group and others; the information
publications of the Crimean Tartars and the German movements, of
the Pentecostalists, and Adventists.
2) The documents of independent public associations-the Initiative
Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR; the Committee
for Human Rights, the Helsinki groups, the Christian and Catholic
Committees to Defend the Rights of Believers; the Free Trade Union,
and many others.
3) Samizdat documents of appeals, open letters, and statements by
Soviet citizens (collective and individual) to various Soviet and inter
national bodies, usually complaints or protests against violations of
the rights of individuals or groups. These documents contain a large
amount of factual material and evaluations important for the study of
the development of independent public opinion in Soviet society and
for people's awareness of their own rights.
4) Works of samizdat authors and memoirs of participants in the
various dissident movements, which are important sources for the
study of the history of dissent and the evolution of its ideology.
Preface ix
5) Official documents distributed in samizdat-court sentences for
political cases, as well as answers from officials to complaints and in
quiries from Soviet citizens, and also unpublicized directives and in
structions of various Soviet official agencies.
6) Interviews with well-known participants of the dissident move
ment, records of their statements at press conferences for foreign cor
respondents, and so on.
The study of all the documents of this rich archive became possible
only after I had emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1977, under pres
sure from authorities and the possibility of arrest. The many years of
contact with samizdat in my homeland did not give me, or my col
leagues who are historians, the opportunity for traditional and exhaus
tive scholarly study. A complete collection of samizdat materials from
the USSR does not exist, I imagine, even in the appropriate depart
ments of the KGB, which cannot manage to find and confiscate every
thing. And dissidents in the Soviet Union can only acquaint themselves
with current documents, since they cannot collect a huge archive,
----~which would be difficult to keep from exposure and confiscation. It is
this reason that I, having come to the West and having access to
samizdat archives, consider it my duty toward participants in dissent
in the Soviet Union to study and publicize their collective experience,
so dearly paid for.
My research work took six years. The first year, during the Carter
Administration, I worked on a grant from the U.S. Department of
State, compiling a handbook record on dissent in the USSR. My special
thanks are due to the State Department and especially to Eric Willenz
for the supporting grant that allowed me to begin the research on
which this book was based.
My particular thanks are due to John Glad and Carol Pearce for
translating the bulk of this book into English; to Cathy Cosman for
translating the chapters on the Latvian National-Democratic Move
ment, the Socialists, and my conclusion; to Cathy Fitzpatrick for trans
lating my introduction, and the chapters on the Estonian National
Democratic Movement, the concluding part of "The Movement for
Human Rights," and for her work on the English publication of this
book; to Peter Dornan, chairman of the samizdat department of Radio
Liberty for allowing me to peruse materials and indices in his depart
ment; and to participants and experts in the movements described with
whom I consulted: Nadia Svitlychna and Nina Strokata ("The Ukrain
ian National Movement"), Tomas Venclova ("The Lithuanian Na
tional Movement"), the late Aleksandr Malakhazyan ("The Armenian
National Movement"), Ayshe Seytmuratova ("The Crimean Tartar
