In the 60s of the last century, the word "dissidents", forgotten a couple of centuries ago, came into use again. So began to call people who spoke openly and publicly criticized the Soviet government. How and why did the dissident movement arise , and what did its representatives strive to achieve?
How it all began
Let's start with the history of the term. He appeared in the era of the Reformation - it was then in the Commonwealth that people began to call the dissidents (in Latin - “disagree”) people who did not belong to the dominant Catholic church. It was unlikely that someone then thought that the term would be reborn in a different meaning and in another country.
After the death of I. Stalin, a period began in the history of the USSR, known as the Khrushchev thaw. It really got “warmer” in public life : youth creative associations appeared, writers and poets began to touch forbidden topics in their works, artists became more free in their creative search. The chilling fear of reprisals no longer fettered people, and more and more voices were heard from the intelligentsia criticizing the policy of the “party and government”. The authorities did not want to hear these disagreements, but they declared themselves louder - letters, articles, books, protests. So in the USSR the dissident movement began to emerge.
Conventionally, 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 Russian, and in the future - for the expansion of the rights of the Union republics or their withdrawal from the Union. The human rights area was widespread in various republics; it is most typical for Russia. Its representatives fought for freedom of speech and against the violation 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 under the term “dissidents” they unite representatives of the most diverse movements, they have one thing in common. Those who represented the dissident movement in the USSR chose peaceful forms of protest. These could be appeals to authorities and international organizations about the violation of human rights, 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 the authorities and telling about the situation in the country. These include the all-Union publication Chronicle of Current Events (1968-1983), 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 underground groups, circles, associations, but often dissidents simply contacted each other without forming any organizations. The dissident movement in Ukraine was represented by such figures as Vyacheslav Chornovil, Levko Lukyanenko, Ivan Dzyuba, in Russia by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Andrey Sakharov, Vladimir Bukovsky, Mustafa Dzhemilev was known among the Crimean Tatars .
In the late 60s, dissidents began to strive to legalize their activities. The first public organization to openly declare itself, consider 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 Agreements, one of the points of which was the observance of human rights. This event spurred the dissidents to create a new type of public organization - groups to facilitate the implementation of the Helsinki Accords. The first such group was created in May 1976 in Moscow, followed by similar organizations in Ukraine, Armenia, Lithuania, and Georgia. Members of the groups published information on human rights violations in the Soviet Union, and reported cases of violation of the Helsinki agreements to Soviet authorities and international organizations.
Power struggle with dissidents
The authorities responded to the protests of dissidents by various forms of repression. The softest were the dismissal from work and an informal ban on the profession, which is why yesterday's intellectuals often had to work as loaders or stokers. So, for example, they dealt with those who signed various letters of protest in the 60s. For more active actions - protests, the creation of clandestine organizations - were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment and exile. The direction of repression as punitive medicine developed when dissidents were recognized as mentally ill and sent for compulsory treatment. The fabrication of criminal cases was also applied to members of the Helsinki groups in order to discredit them in the eyes of the international community.
By the mid-80s, the dissident movement was almost defeated. Most of its most active members ended up in camps or exile, many simply moved away from vigorous activity. Yet the existence of dissidents was not in vain. Their works became an alternative source of information for Soviet citizens, and in many ways prepared the collapse of the totalitarian regime. In the era of perestroika, their social experience came in handy in creating new, completely legal organizations, and made it possible to organize a struggle for the republics to leave the Union and the formation of independent states.