The dissidents : a memoir of working with the resistance in Russia, 1960-1990 / Peter Reddaway.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Reddaway, Peter, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Reddaway, Peter--Friends and associates.

Reddaway, Peter.

Dissenters--Soviet Union--Biography.

Dissenters.

Friends and associates.

Soviet Union.

Human rights--Soviet Union.

Human rights.

Civil rights--Soviet Union.

Civil rights.

Soviet Union--Politics and government--1953-1985.

Politics and government.

Soviet Union--Politics and government--1985-1991.

Friendship.

Genre:

Biographies.

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

vi, 338 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 24 cm

Other Title:

Memoir of working with the resistance in Russia, 1960-1990

Place of Publication:

Washington, DC : Brookings Institution Press, [2020]

Summary:

"It has been nearly three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union--enough time for the role that the courageous dissidents ultimately contributed to the communist system's collapse to have been largely forgotten, especially in the West. This book brings to life, for contemporary readers, the often underground work of the men and women who opposed the regime and authored dissident texts, known as samizdat, that exposed the tyrannies and weaknesses of the Soviet state both inside and outside the country. Peter Reddaway spent decades studying the Soviet Union and got to know these dissidents and their work, publicizing their writings in the West and helping some of them to escape the Soviet Union and settle abroad. In this memoir he captures the human costs of the repression that marked the Soviet state, focusing in particular on Pavel Litvinov, Larisa Bogoraz, General Petro Grigorenko, Anatoly Marchenko, Alexander Podrabinek, Vyacheslav Bakhmin, and Andrei Sinyavsky. His book describes their courage but also puts their work in the context of the power struggles in the Kremlin, where politicians competed with and even succeeded in ousting one another. Reddaway's book takes readers beyond Moscow, describing politics and dissident work in other major Russian cities as well as in the outlying republics"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1958 to 1962 : first steps in Russian and the Soviet Union

Graduate studies : a double miracle

September 1963 to May 1964 : from immersion to expulsion

Writing about Soviet writers and the emerging human rights movement

The other '68 : upheaval in the Soviet Bloc and the chronicle of current events

Two giants of dissent

Confronting the naysayers

1970-1977 : grappling with the political abuse of psychiatry

Dissent among ethnic minorities

Religious dissent

America-based support for dissent, 1968-1986

Publishing samizdat abroa

Dissent and reform under Gorbachev

Developments in psychiatric abuse, 1987-1989

Gorbachev doomed, Yeltsin's rise, Gorbachev departs.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Other Format:

Online version: Reddaway, Peter, The dissidents

ISBN:

9780815737735

0815737734

OCLC:

1086085320