Assess the influence and importance of dissidents in Brezhnev era Russia.

The aims and activities of the dissidents were diverse, but the active members and silent sympathisers of the human rights movement were united by one aim: to persuade the authorities to respect and protect the rights of the individual Soviet citizen. They were united by their demand for civil liberties and hoped to achieve a tolerable life for themselves and others within the Soviet system. 

However, within the movement itself, there was a great deal of fragmentation, which seems to have become more apparent as time went by. By the early 1970s, three main strands of opinion had emerged among the dissidents, which can loosely be described as neo-Leninism, liberalism and liberal Russian nationalism. Of these, the last two are the most important and were viewed as the most dangerous by the authorities.

The liberals, whose best-known representative is Andrei Sakharov, would perhaps have described themselves as “apolitical supporters of human decency”. They were considered to be the most important group within the human rights movement, and stressed the need for observance of civil rights and legality. Among their demands were an end to censorship, the ending of political imprisonment and the use of camps and psychiatric hospitals as instruments of repression, and increased freedom of information and speech. This group attracted considerable attention in the West but never had a mass following within the USSR.

The liberal Russian nationalists, the term ‘liberal’ being added to emphasise their concerns as to the observance of civil liberties, included Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The dissidents who fell into this group were particularly concerned with the moral state of Russia and the need for greater acknowledgement of spiritual values and a moral regeneration of the Russian nation. They envisaged an authoritarian state, yet one with freedom of speech and respect for human rights, and an increased role for the Orthodox Church. Their emphasis on Russian nationalism and on the importance of the Church meant that, despite their limited numbers, they could potentially gain support from the masses, which was obviously very worrying to the authorities.

Despite the small numbers of active dissidents, their activities were extremely varied. Those who lived in Moscow met regularly to exchange information and to seek the help and advice of other members, and also provided practical support to political prisoners and their families. More formalized group activity took place from 1969 onwards with the formation of the Initiative Group for the Defence of Human Rights, and in 1970 Sakharov and other dissidents established the Human Rights Committee. In addition, from 1975 onwards Helsinki Watch Groups were set up around the country to monitor to what extent the Soviet regime was complying with the requirements of the Helsinki Accords signed in that year, which included respect for human rights. Such groups did not attempt to hide their existence, although the downside of this was that members were easier to identify and arrest. The formation of such groups was an important step in terms of the organisation of the dissidents. 

The other major activity of the dissidents was that of samizdat, or ‘self-publishing’. Typed copies of writings would be produced by people involved in the movement, and these would then be circulated. This was the most effective way of circulating writings which would not have passed the censorship process, such as literature, articles and documents. Many samizdat publications found their way to the West and were subsequently published, or broadcast by Western Russian-language radio stations such as Radio Liberty to listeners in the Soviet Union. It is not clear how many people in the USSR read samizdat but the number of occasional readers would probably have included a significant proportion of the educated elite, a group which had grown in both size and importance since the Stalin years due to the expansion of secondary and higher education. 

One of the most important samizdat publications, which appeared regularly from 1968 until the 1980s, was the Chronicle of Current Events.  This journal aimed to provide factual and accurate information about what was happening in the Soviet Unions, specifically with regard to political repression and imprisonment. It published information about events which would not have appeared in the official press, such as mass arrests and illegal demonstrations, and gave information about the camps and psychiatric hospitals and those interned in them for political reasons. Considering the circumstances in which it was published, the Chronicle remained impressively accurate and was published regularly. The Chronicle also provided an invaluable source of information to those outside the USSR who received smuggled copies – and articles published in it were often subsequently broadcast back to the USSR through Western radio stations.

While the dissident movement of the ‘stagnation period’ may have failed to fulfil its aims during the years in which it was most active, its achievements were considerable when the difficult circumstances in which the dissidents were operating are taken into account.

Firstly, the movement developed the issues raised by Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’, with further exposure of the camp system through works by writers such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Evgenia Ginzburg, and also through factual writings such as those found in the Chronicle of Current Events. Admittedly, both samizdat and Western Russian-language radio stations reached a limited audience but those who had read or listened to such work often told others about it and so word spread. The importance of these radio stations and their work in broadcasting samizdat material back to the Soviet Union is emphasised by many historians. Ultimately, so much samizdat was circulated that it was either impossible for the authorities to completely stop it, or it was in their interests not to; the fact remains that it survived well into the 1980s. Such activities generally helped to raise awareness both within the USSR and in the West about the injustices perpetrated by the Soviet system and also provided a model for other dissenting groups in society to base their activities on. 

The influence of the dissidents and their ideas seems to be disproportionate to their size. However, it must be stressed that the dissident movement influenced the Soviet educated elite and Western opinion far more than the Soviet masses, who identified less with the dissidents’ causes and were less open to alternative ways of thinking.

The publicity gained in the West by the most prominent dissidents such as Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn and Roy Medvedev, certainly influenced their punishment by the authorities. In the case of well-known dissidents such as these, the regime had to choose its reprisals carefully and had to consider the effect on the USSR’s international reputation. Thus Solzhenitsyn, viewed by the regime as possibly the most dangerous writer in the Soviet Union but also the best known abroad, could not simply be interned in a psychiatric hospital, like many less well-known writers were. Instead, he was the victim of a campaign of harassment by the authorities until he was eventually deported to West Germany in 1974. Sakharov, in a semi-protected position due to his scientific expertise and his status as an Academician, lost many of his former privileges and was also subject to harassment, but was only exiled to Gorky in 1980, admittedly a city closed to foreigners but one of the largest in the USSR. Strong reprisals against him could have affected US-Soviet scientific relations. Thus the authorities had to consider not only how successful actions taken against better known dissidents would be in suppressing their activities, but also the effect they would have on Soviet-Western relations. 

It is debatable as to whether the ‘loyal oppositionists’ who kept on the right side of the authorities ultimately had more influence than the dissidents. Robert Service argues that those who worked within the system ultimately had more influence in bringing about perestroika and reform than those who remained outside it. However, Medvedev considers that the concept of popularly formed organisations such as the Helsinki Watch Groups was very important, and it seems that these perhaps served as a pretext for the informal groups that began to appear during the glasnost years. Mark Sandle argues that the activities of the dissidents ultimately inspired popular protest in a way that the loyal oppositionists never did, having never broken from the regime. It seems that the dissidents probably did have more influence on public opinion than those who continued to work within the Party, despite the fact that they did not directly bring about change or influence the reform process.

There are many explanations for the limited achievements and influence of the dissidents, but the most important reason is that the regime viewed them as dangerous and considered that they promoted principles which could pose a direct threat to the Party’s power monopoly. It seems that the Party believed that any allowances made to the dissidents would unleash a phenomenon they would not be able to control. In a society where so much was officially hidden, allowing exposure of such institutions as the camps posed a challenge to the legitimacy of the regime itself. Hence why Solzhenitsyn’s writings were seen as particularly dangerous, for they did not support the official line that a handful of individuals were responsible for the repressions of the Stalinist years: they implicated the whole system and everyone within it, which included many of those in power in the 1960s and 1970s. 

Moreover, the arbitrary nature of repression against those involved in the democratic movement meant that the number of known dissidents would always remain small, for the potential consequences of active involvement ensured that few were willing to declare sympathy for the dissident movement. The crackdowns of the late 1960s and 1970s and the lack of international protest reduced numbers even further, and the continued reprisals meant that by the early 1980s the movement’s few remaining supporters were disillusioned with Soviet life and tired of the constant reprisals and setbacks. 

The small numbers of dissidents also emphasised the lack of mass support for the dissident movement, which was never representative of Soviet society as a whole and thus never targeted the masses, nor attempted to gain their support. The Soviet regime was terrified of dissident groups somehow joining forces with the masses, which would have posed a real threat to the regime. In order to avoid this, the authorities exploited the traditional anti-Western, anti-intelligentsia sentiments of the majority of workers and peasants by portraying the dissidents as intellectuals and traitors paid by the West to undermine the Soviet system. Concepts such as democracy and freedom of speech were not familiar to most of the Soviet population, who lacked exposure to such ideas (they were less likely than the educated elite to seek out samizdat materials or to listen to foreign radio stations).  

Fragmentation also weakened the movement’s strength. The broad aim of defending civil liberties and constitutional rights initially united many people of different beliefs, but these differences became more obvious by the 1970s, and the setting up of different groups perhaps further diluted the movement’s limited strength. By the early 1980s, the numbers of dissidents had dwindled to a few dozen, and in 1982 Elena Bonner announced that the few remaining Helsinki Watch Groups would be disbanded, which was viewed by many as the symbolic end of the dissident movement. By this time, many felt that working within the system was the only way forward, and indeed there were many supporters of reform within the Party by this stage. 

Finally, despite Western interest in the activities of the dissident movement and sympathy for its aims, the West provided little actual support to the dissidents and rarely protested to the Soviet authorities about its suppression of dissent. Western governments remained silent with regard to human rights abuses within the Soviet Union. Intervention only occurred in the cases of the most famous dissidents, for example during the media and government campaign against Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn in 1973, and with offers of asylum to those deprived of their Soviet citizenship. Overall, the West did very little to support the dissidents.

In conclusion, it appears that despite their small numbers, the dissidents did indeed have a considerable influence on both Western public opinion and on many members of the Soviet middle classes, particularly those belonging to the ‘educated elite’. However, during the ‘stagnation period’ the movement made no attempt to appeal to the masses and as a result received virtually no support from the workers and peasants.

The dissident movement may be classed as a failure in that, during the period of its existence, it failed to fulfil its aim of bringing about peaceful change and working within the system: all attempts ended in increased repression on the part of the authorities.

However, taking into account the circumstances in which the dissidents were operating, their achievements were considerable: the samizdat industry and the Chronicle of Current Events survived throughout the Brezhnev period and beyond, and associations such as the Helsinki Watch Groups did survive for some years, which is impressive considering they were operating in what was effectively a police state. Most importantly, the dissidents provided an alternative voice to that of the state: even if it was a voice which was not heard by many, it was a voice which was heard by those with the most influence, and it was a voice which survived over twenty years of repressions. Within just a few years of Gorbachev’s rise to power, some of their ideals would become reality and would be enshrined and respected in law.

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