Soviet Intellectual Dissent as a Political Counter-Culture

Abstract

HIS ESSAY is an attempt to conceptualize and interpret some of the main normative orientations of contemporary intellectual dissenters in the Soviet Union. It is the thesis of this study that a core of common values is emerging among the critical intelligentsia which can be meaningfully conceptualized as a counter-culture. A is a community of shared beliefs, perceptions, attitudes and moral judgments concerning politics.? A political or dissident culture designates a community of deviance in relation to the established value-system within a given social order. At least some of the basic norms of the established value-system are consciously rejected or reinterpreted by the dissidents so as to produce an alternative moral order concerning conduct within the society.2 Dissident attitudes in the U.S.S.R. cannot be studied quantitatively through the field survey technique at the present time, for obvious reasons. This essay is predicated on David Minar's assertion that is at least indicated through the study of social thought.3 The members of the Soviet critical intelligentsia have produced a sizable body of scholarship in the post-Stalin era, particularly during the 1960s. If, out of the impressive diversity of Soviet intellectual thought, one is able to identify some widely shared orientations that challenge some basic beliefs of the established value-system in the U.S.S.R., then it would be appropriate to conclude that the existence of a counter-culture is indicated, even though the numerical significance of that counter-culture may not be quantified. The present study does not undertake a full-scale examination of contemporary intellectual criticism of Soviet politics. Specific policy criticisms of the Brezh-