Dissident movement: causes and consequences

In the sixties of the last century, the word "dissidents", forgotten a couple of centuries ago, was again in use. This is how people who spoke openly and publicly criticized the Soviet government began to be called. How and why did the dissident movement emerge, and what did its representatives seek to achieve?

How it all began

Let's start with the history of the term. He appeared in the era of the Reformation - then in Rzecz Pospolita began to be called dissidents (in Latin - "dissenters") people who did not belong to the mainstream Catholic church. Hardly anyone then thought that the term would be reborn in a different meaning in another country.

After the death of Stalin in the history of the USSR came a period known as the Khrushchev thaw. In public life, it really "warmed up": youth creative associations appeared, writers and poets began to touch forbidden themes in their works, artists became more free in their creative search. The chilling fear of reprisals no longer held people together, and more and more often voices were heard from among the intelligentsia criticizing the policies of the "party and government." These authorities did not want to hear these dissenters, but they all declared themselves more loudly - letters, articles, books, protest actions. So in the USSR, a dissident movement began to emerge.

Conditionally it can be divided into three areas: national liberation, human rights and religious. The first was characteristic of the national republics (the Baltic States, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, etc.). Its representatives opposed the oppression of national languages, for their free use on an equal footing with the Russian, and in the future - for the expansion of the rights of the Union republics or their withdrawal from the Union. The human rights direction was spread in various republics, most characteristic of it for Russia. Its representatives fought for freedom of speech and against the infringement of human rights. Those who represented the dissident movement in the field of religion, tried to protect the rights of believers, fought against the closure of churches.

Forms of struggle

Despite the fact that the term "dissidents" unites representatives of the most diverse currents, they also have one common feature. Those who represented the dissident movement in the USSR chose peaceful forms of protest. These could be appeals to authorities and international organizations about human rights violations, rallies about any political events (for example, against the invasion of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia in 1968). But the most popular form of protest was the so-called samizdat - the publication of leaflets, articles, illegal periodicals, books criticizing power and telling about the situation in the country. These include the all-Union edition of the Chronicle of Current Events (1968-1983), The Ukrainian Herald (published by Ukrainian dissidents in 1970-1972). As for books or articles, their number is difficult to even calculate.

The dissident movement often did not have clear organizational forms. It could be clandestine groups, circles, associations, but often the dissidents simply contacted each other without forming any organizations. Dissident movement in Ukraine was represented by such figures as Vyacheslav Chornovil, Levko Lukyanenko, Ivan Dzyuba, in Russia - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, Vladimir Bukovsky, Mustafa Dzhemilev was known among the Crimean Tatars.

In the late 60's, dissidents began to seek to legalize their activities. The first public organization that openly declared itself is the initiative group for the protection of human rights in the USSR, created in May 1968. It consisted of 15 people. In 1975 the USSR signed and published the Final Act of the Helsinki Accords, one of the points of which was observance of human rights. This event spurred dissidents to create a new type of public organizations - groups to promote the implementation of the Helsinki Accords. The first such group was established in May 1976 in Moscow, followed by similar organizations in Ukraine, Armenia, Lithuania, and Georgia. Members of the groups were engaged in publishing information on human rights violations in the Soviet Union, reported cases of violation of the Helsinki agreements in the Soviet authorities and international organizations.

The struggle of power with dissidents

The authorities responded to the dissidents' protests with various forms of repression. The softest were dismissal from work and an informal ban on the profession, because of which yesterday's intellectuals often had to work as porters or stokers. So, for example, they came with those who signed various letters with protests in the 60s. For more active actions - protests, the creation of underground organizations - sentenced to various terms of imprisonment and exile. The development of such a direction of repression as punitive medicine, when dissidents were recognized as mentally ill and sent to compulsory treatment. In relation to members of the Helsinki groups, the fabrication of criminal cases was also used to discredit them in the eyes of the international community.

By the mid-1980s, the dissident movement was virtually defeated. Most of its most active members ended up in camps or exile, many simply withdrew from active work. Yet the existence of dissidents was not in vain. Their works became an alternative source of information for Soviet citizens, in many ways they prepared the collapse of the totalitarian regime. In the era of perestroika, their social experience was useful in the creation of new, quite legal organizations, made it possible to organize a struggle for the withdrawal of the republics from the Union and the formation of independent states.