title: Soviet Dissidents and the Legacy of the 1917 Revolutions
metadata.name: dc.contributor.author
metadata.value: Martin, Barbara
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.accessioned
metadata.value: 2019-05-23T12:20:19Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.available
metadata.value: 2019-05-23T12:20:19Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.issued
metadata.value: 2019-03
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.citation
metadata.value: Martin B. Soviet Dissidents and the Legacy of the 1917 Revolutions. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. History, 2019, vol. 64, issue 1, рp. 107–119.
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.identifier.other
metadata.value: https://doi.org/10.21638/11701/ spbu02.2019.106
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.uri
metadata.value: http://hdl.handle.net/11701/15515
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.description.abstract
metadata.value: This article seeks to explain why, as the dissident movement burgeoned in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, there was almost no discussion about the October Revolution in samizdat, and it was the anti-Stalinist motif that predominated instead. It argues that at the time anti-Stalinism constituted a unifying language of activism for the “sixtiers” generation for several reasons: their communist upbringing; family ties to repressed communists; and the tacit acceptance of Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization as a reformist framework for their action. As they feared Stalin’s public rehabilitation, anti-Stalinism became the most pressing cause, pushing any deeper reflection on the regime’s legitimacy into the background. However, by the 1970s, as a result of increased repression and the growing isolation of dissidents, the movement had split into several currents. An avowedly non-political current, the human rights movement emerged as a result of the rejection of revolutionary violence. Renouncing the prospect of regime change, it staked instead on a “legalist” strategy, which precluded any questioning of the Revolution as the foundation of the current regime. By contrast, for the more politicized Russophile current represented by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and for the democratic socialist current embodied by Roy Medvedev, it became important to affirm their vision of the Revolution and its place in history in order to affirm their own political programs. While Medvedev sought to offer a demythologized account of the October Revolution to bolster its legitimacy, Solzhenitsyn denounced the February Revolution as a fateful caesura in Russian history.
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.description.sponsorship
metadata.value: This article was written in the framework of a project funded by the Swiss National Foundation for Science. An early version of this article was presented at the conference “Trajectories of October: Origins, Reverberations and Models” in Paris (October 19–21, 2017).
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.language.iso
metadata.value: en
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.publisher
metadata.value: St Petersburg State University
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.relation.ispartofseries
metadata.value: Vestnik of St Petersburg University. History;Volume 64; Issue 1
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: Soviet Union
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: dissidence
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: dissent
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: October Revolution
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: de-Stalinization
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: human rights
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.title
metadata.value: Soviet Dissidents and the Legacy of the 1917 Revolutions
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.type
metadata.value: Article
metadata.lang: en_GB
resources.filename: 06.pdf
resources.url: https://dspace.spbu.ru/bitstream/11701/15515/1/06.pdf
resources.format: Adobe PDF
resources.size: 660,53 kB