"The Solzhenitsyn Effect": East European Dissidents and the Demise of the Revolutionary Privilege

Abstract

For much of the modern era, revolution served as a justification for gross violations of human rights. The sources of this "revolutionary privilege" are to be found in the historical experience of the Western world. Both the Jacobin tradition and Marxism contributed to the readiness of many Western intellectuals concerned with human rights to turn a blind eye to the atrocities of the Bolshevik revolution, its Stalinist aftermath, and a variety of Third World regimes. During the 1970s, East European dissidents, citizens of revolutionary societies, challenged this double-standard. The ensuing "Solzhenitsyn Effect" contributed not merely to the "human rights boom" of the era, but also to the emergence of a new, radical humanitarianism.