Wolfgang Eichwede

"Soviet Dissidents and Human Rights"

Already in the 1960s a culture of dialogic resistance developed in the USSR. In their criticism of Soviet policy, the first human rights activists referred to the existing constitution and appealed to the leadership of the country in the name of Soviet norms or socialist principles. Existing laws should be observed, in the best interests of the system (which had created these laws in the first place): more liberty as a way to a more efficient system. In the course of the permanent conflict with the authorities, the dissidents' programmatic demands broke away from the sole (or dominant) reference to the Soviet order and became a plea for human and civil rights. At the same time, in 1968 the dissidents appealed to world public opinion for the first time – the discovery of a new sounding board.
We cannot imagine the incubational phase of Soviet dissent without either the US civil rights movement or the Prague Spring (as a possibility of reform within the system). The chronologically parallel development to the worldwide protest movement of intellectual or academic classes is striking. The first beginnings of the relationship between "East and West" continued to have an effect as well. Theories of convergence were in vogue among critical thinkers on both sides of the Iron Curtain. However, within the Soviet Union a contradictory, even contrary development occurred. The pressure to further cooperation between the blocs grew with the crushing of the reform movement in one’s own "camp" and after the suppression of dissent in one’s own country. Innovation that was not permitted at home was supposed to be introduced into the system via the import of technical know-how from outside.
The Helsinki Conference gave the dissident movement in all of Eastern Europe (as this conference shows) a new impetus.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s the civil rights groups in the Soviet Union were once again repressed with all possible harshness. The deterioration of the international situation and the Polish crisis (Solidarnosc) contributed to this repression. Often, 1982, the year of the end of the "Chronicle of Current Events", is seen as the end of the dissident movement in the Soviet Union, this is however an oversimplification. Political currents and alternative cultures beyond the reach of censorship continued to exist. More importantly, though, more and more, and more and more distinctly, critical voices within the system and the academic institutions could be heard. Dissent underwent a further metamorphosis.
Dissent in the Soviet Union is not confined to civil rights’ activism. Soviet dissent also has a national or national Russian variant which often enough contradicts human rights imperatives. Russia’s salvation is not seen in the institutionalisation of law but in Russian inwardness and depth. The West does not appear as a model but as temptation. Within the broader context of Russian history, this current has lasting effects up to the present day.