The origins of the dissident movement
In December 1937, the Plenum of the Central Committee made the following decision by means of a solicitation of opinions: "The Plenum of the Central Committee of the Central Committee, on the basis of conclusive information, deems it necessary to expel the following persons from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Brazzaville and arrest them as enemies of the people: Bauman, Bubnov, Brin, Mezhlauk, Ruhimovich and Chernov, all of whom were German spies and spies of the Tsarist security apparatus: Mikhailov, who was implicated in Yakovlev's counter-revolutionary activities; Lenkin, who was implicated in the counter-revolutionary activities of Rykov and Sulimov. Stalin added here in his own handwriting: 'All these men confess their guilt'. ”
However, Khrushchev attributed all this mainly to Stalin's personality flaws and personal qualities. Stalin was convinced that this was necessary to defend the interests of the working class against the enemy's machinations and the offensive of the imperialist camp.
He also looked at the problem from the interests of the working class, the interests of the working people, and the position of being conducive to the victory of socialism and communism. We cannot say that these are the actions of a tyrant with a muddy mind.
In his view, all this was necessary for the interests of the Party, for the interests of the working masses and for the sake of defending the gains of the revolution. Is it true that a godly leader should commit such atrocities, as Khrushchev said? In the face of shocking facts, people have to start thinking about the problems that exist in the political system.
As Siniavsky, a well-known Soviet dissident, pointed out: "If there is too much trust in the system, the revolution will have bloody and brutal consequences."
Marxist-Leninists try to reshape the world, but it is difficult for those who have experienced the revolution and know the cost of it to accept this goal, so dissidents believe that words are more important than deeds. They are back to their old intellectual profession: thinking, debating, and writing. ”
At the same time, in 1956, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union began a comprehensive investigation of the mountain of unjust, false and wrongful convictions, and released political prisoners on a large scale.
Many were reintegrated from the camps, and thousands of innocent people were rehabilitated after their deaths. The tragic plight of these people has aroused widespread concern and has undoubtedly played a huge role in giving impetus to the thaw that has already begun.
Embryonic period 1956-1965
From 1956 to 1965, the phenomenon of "dissidents" began to appear in Soviet society, however, the dissidents at this stage were basically only a trend of thought and a single person, and had not yet appeared in the form of a "movement", so the period from 1956 to 1965 was the embryonic period of "Soviet dissidents", or the gestation period.
A landmark political event of this period was the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 and the critique of Stalin's personality cult.
Stalin's death led to the loosening of the authoritarian and centralized system established by violent means, and the undercurrent of safeguarding individual rights and freedom of mind and thought, which had long been suppressed under the ice by Stalin's "mystical habit of uniformity and uniformity," began to sprout, and the masses of the people longed to escape from the living conditions in which everyone was in danger and did not have the slightest sense of security.
On the one hand, the thaw policy pursued by Khrushchev and the criticism of Stalin's personal superstition at the 20th National Congress emancipated people's minds to a great extent, the process of pluralism began in society, and there were some signs of de-sacralization of the supreme power, and the idea that the leader's thinking and behavior were always correct was diluted. On the other hand, the ruthless exposure of Stalin changed the image of Stalin from a loving father of the people to a tyrant who killed innocents indiscriminately, and the drastic changes led to general chaos in society, and people were at a loss for a while.
Akhmatova, the famous Russian poetess who suffered persecution and whose son was only released from prison in 1956, pointed out: "There are two kinds of Russians who look at each other angrily – those who have been in prison and those who have sent them to prison. ”
It was in this context that some of the people who had been persecuted by the concentration camps and some young people who were not willing to live like their parents began to think about history, and ideas that were different from the official ideology gradually germinated, in which the thaw ideology played an important role.
These people seem to have suddenly stepped out of the opaque dark room, as if they were in the sunlight, carefully testing and adapting.
They wrote memoirs, founded private publications, collected and disseminated the works of banned and repressed people, rallied on Mayakovsky Square, formed various hobby groups, and what began as an exploration of historical truth gradually developed into a trend of thought reflecting on Stalinism.
This trend of thought did not initially challenge the Soviet system, but only criticized Stalin's personality cult in the hope of freely expressing his wishes and ascertaining the historical truth.
"In those years, articles on Stalinism never directly questioned the power of the authorities...... The vast majority of writers and poets did not recognize the issue of defending civil rights at the time, and simply buried themselves in books and then managed to publish their own novels and poems.
Nevertheless, from the outset, their work promoted the civil rights movement "because they did not adhere to the official principles of socialist realist creation."
Even the various groups punished by the government are overwhelmingly not opposed to the socialist system itself, but are simply dissatisfied with a particular policy of the government.
Origin and Development Period (1965-1968)
December 5, 1965 is Constitution Day in the Soviet Union. In protest against the arrest and persecution of the writers Danielle and Siniavsky by the Soviet state security organs, the famous poet A.A. Yesenin Volpin organized a demonstration demanding compliance with the Constitution, a public trial of the two writers, and the return of Bukovsky to freedom.
It was the first demonstration in the Soviet Union since the 20th century, and this march is considered the beginning of the Soviet movement to defend rights, as it first raised the slogan of defending human rights.
This period was characterized by the launch of the "Letters Campaign", the "Petition Signature Campaign" in defense of the rights of Soviet citizens.
In particular, in the early stages of the movement, its main form was the publication of individual or collective open letters. Yuri Danielle's wife, Larissa Bogolaz, pioneered and greatly contributed to the development of the "Epistolary Movement".
She wrote to the Attorney General questioning the fairness of the arrest and trial of the writer: "Are we going back to the era of repression? "It also strongly condemns the use of threats and inducements during interrogation, and the practice of sentencing the person being tried without pleading guilty.
Since then, letters, requests for help, and names have become the main means of dissident struggle at this stage, and some have called this phenomenon a revolution in the subject matter of letters.
High Tide (1969-1971)
This stage was the first peak of the dissident movement in the USSR. The first groups and groups to defend rights began to emerge, and the movement entered an organized period. At the same time, the dissident movement, with the defense of rights at its core, put forward its own complete and unambiguous political proposition.
In 1969, the first openly association, the Initiating Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR, was founded, "whose activities were no longer limited to the protection of rights, and under the banner of the protection of rights, each faction set its own goals and tasks." Participants also learn to use various means and tools to defend their rights and interests. ”
During this period, dissident movement groups appeared in Moscow, Leningrad, Tula, Vladimir, Omsk, Kazan, Tyumen, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Belarusian Moldavia, Kazakhstan, Transcaucasia, etc.
The movement was attended by all strata of society: workers, soldiers, writers, artists, scientific and technological workers, and even the usually politically conservative peasants – workers on state farms.
The links between the local movements have been markedly strengthened, and the organization for the defense of rights has basically been formed with Moscow as the center.
In addition, the objectives of the rights movement have been further deepened, involving both national and local or unofficial issues, and the dimensions of rights protection have been expanded.
Issues such as the rights of peoples, the development and protection of national cultures, and the right of peoples to self-determination, the rights of residence and immigration, and religious belief and freedom have all become the focus of the movement.
Helsinki period (1975-1979)
In 1975, at the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Soviet Union and Western countries signed the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. At the same time, the Helsinki period of the Soviet dissident movement began.
The Helsinki period was another peak of the dissident movement in the Soviet Union. During this period, the independent and open "Soviet Assistance Group for the Completion of the Helsinki Agreement" (referred to as the "Moscow Helsinki Group") headed by Orrov was established in the Soviet Union.
The main activity of the group was to collect and analyse the information available to them about the violation of the terms of the Helsinki Accords by the Soviet Union and the reports of the signatory countries about it, and to inform it to the West. This was an extremely important group, and its creation forced the Soviet government to take into account the attitude of the West in dealing with dissidents and to take more cautious measures.
More importantly, the Moscow Helsinki Group established links with initially disparate ethno-religious movements, and on the basis of a common right to defend rights, the Helsinki Group was established in Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia and Armenia in late 1976 and early 1977.
In 1977, the "Workers' Committee for the Study of the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes" was also established under the Helsinki Group in Moscow, and even the first group for the protection of the rights of persons with disabilities was established in the Soviet Union. Almost all of the groups have issued their own communiqués, and the number of participants is increasing, and there is a tendency towards some union.
"The Helsinki Group, which was established in four non-Russian republics at about the same time, has opened up the prospect of solving the problems of Soviet society that was suffering from the disease. ”
Decline period (1980-1984)
After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the Soviet government once again stepped up its efforts to suppress the dissident movement. Sakharov was exiled to the isolated city of Gorky for publishing an open letter opposing the Soviet war in Afghanistan, expecting the released dissidents to be thrown into prison again.
At the same time, the government has imposed harsher sentences on dissidents, with the average sentence being around 10 to 15 years. In addition, the K.G.B. has tightened surveillance of dissidents, with severe restrictions on their every move, including correspondence, meetings with family and friends, and even their daily lives.
The Government's draconian measures paid off, and within a short period of time, the dissident movement was left without a leader as more than 500 activists of the dissident movement were arrested. In addition, many dissidents were forced to emigrate, and the intellectual circles, which had replenished the movement, gradually lost their former passions, and the dissident movement declined significantly. The KGB learned from experience how to deal effectively with dissidents.
The decline in the motivation of dissidents is generally considered to be the result of repression, "but when the real statistics of convictions under the political provisions of the Criminal Code are available from 1979 to 1984, it is found that there was no significant increase in the number of political prisoners punished by the courts during this period. The KGB eventually learned to find and weaken those people, who were key figures in dissidents in various fields.
After the same thing that had happened before, a new person would soon take his place, but in 1980 the dissident movement was shrinking and no one was free to contact them as before. ”