Soviet Dissidents on the Russian Intelligentsia, 1956-1985: The Search for a Usable Past

Abstract

M any Western scholars have noticed similarities between the Soviet dissidents of the Brezhnev years and the revolutionary intelligentsia of tsarist Russia.* Both groups criticized the existing political order in moral terms, recognized the value of the individual personality and the absolute inviolability of individual conscience, believed that individual liberation required the establishment of social justice, and universalized individual personal grievances into a broader political and philosophical critique of the world around them.1 One Western historian even claimed that the intelligentsia and the dissidents were the product of similar historical circumstances: both were the consequence of a paternalistic state that, for reasons of economic modernization, required an educated elite. But because this paternalistic state claimed a monopoly of political power, wisdom, and initiative, it had to limit the freedom and authority of this elite. However, the nature of the elite, the work it performed, and the privileges it enjoyed as a reward for this work all created a sense of individual sovereignty that caused many members of the elite to demand, on moral grounds, a larger measure of freedom and autonomy than the state was prepared to allow. When the state predictably demurred, dissent and, in the case of tsarist Russia, revolutionary opposition resulted.2 There is little to disagree with in such an analysis of the origins of Soviet dissidence. The similarities between the dissidents and the intelligentsia were real