Soviet Dissidents - Essay Example

SOVIET DISSIDENTS From 1917 - 1991, the citizens of Soviet Union who protested against the wrong policies and actions of their government were called " Soviet Dissidents". Though they were mostly non violent, they themselves were subjected to harassment, persecution and imprisonment by soviet authorities such as KGB or NKVD. The power of dissidents mostly came from their own willpower and idea and they refused to participate in the obligatory ideological play in the Soviet Union. They became the symbols of oppression of freedom of civilization and attracted widespread attention from Western media. During the cold war , the dissidents by their sheer presence were able to bring out the hollowness of Soviet claims that theirs was also a form of democracy and they had the unanimous support of people behind them. Thus historically, the dissidents have played a very important part in how the Western countries have viewed Soviet Union as a country. Because of the oppressive nature in which these dissidents were handled, the democratic faade of Soviet Union crashed and the differences between East and West became hugely apparent. The dissidents managed to reveal the actual manner of political repression in Soviet Union. Those who disagreed with the government's policies were arrested and sent to labor camps. Rather than acting as a deterrent to others, such actions prompted other dissidents to publicize these arrests using western media. When the government tried to arrest more people, more information started coming out from these camps - the stories about labor camps and psychiatric hospitals where prisoners were treated inhumanly and subjected to mental and physical torture. All this information caused a huge uproar against the government both within and outside the Soviet Union. By gathering and circulating information, they were able to draw attention to the plights of Jews and other minorities, non-Russians seeking to emigrate, and many others-whose situation had been little noticed. In 1965, two young writes -- Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel were sentenced to long labor camp sentences for publishing their works abroad. The international reaction was immediate and harsh and this seriously damaged the image of the Soviet Union. But government refused to budge and both Sinyavsky and Daniel had to serve their labor camp terms, but the Soviet Union never again imprisoned a writer for his writing. Later other dissident writers such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn were forcibly exiled while Vladimir Voinovich, Vasily Aksyonov, and Georgy Vladimov emigrated under pressure. But by then, these dissidents had been fairly successful in bring out in open the conflict in the Russian society. Their efforts also gained them some relief such as freedom of expression ( to a certain extent), allowing of mass emigration from Soviet Union. Before the 1970s, it was virtually impossible to leave the Soviet Union legally. Finally the decision was made to allow Jews to emigrate under a formula - that they were returning to their "historic homeland". And finally, they influenced the government's treatment of dissenters themselves. Earlier, one of the dissidents -- Yuri Galanskov died while serving his sentence in a Soviet labor camp. But later on, Soviet authorities kept the well-known dissidents alive. They could afford to let them die because of fear of reprisal from western countries. They also started reducing and avoiding the arrests of prominent dissidents and allowed them to continue their activities. Of course, they were kept under tight surveillance. Although some section of western media thinks that soviet dissidents were paid more than the due attention, but the fact remains that had these people not made their voices heard, the Soviet Union we see today having more liberal attitude would not have emerged. Let us take a look at some of the dissidents and how they helped in influencing the government attitudes. One of the main dissidents Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a prominent novelist and dramatist. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literarure in 1970 for his in depth account of GULAG - a brutal communist concentration camp. He used his own experience in writing this novel since he also served a sentence in labor camps. He was exiled from Soviet Union in 1974. Another prominent dissident was Podrabinek who got convicted at the early age of 24. He was accused of slandering the Soviet state in documents he smuggled abroad and was sent into Siberian exile. His writings exposed the psychiatric abuses, political dissidents had to undergo. He wrote about the widespread use of psychiatric imprisonment to punish and discredit dissenters. In 1978 he was exiled to northeastern Siberia, for sending his book manuscript, "Punitive Medicine." Outside Soviet Union where was it subsequently published. Another important figure in the history of Soviet dissidents -- Bogoraz began her human rights activism after her husband got arrested. In August 1968, she took part in a demonstration on Red Square with a handful of other dissidents, to protest against the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. She was sentenced to a four-year exile to Siberia. She became actively involved in creating awareness regarding the rights abuses going in Soviet Russia. She began a campaign on behalf of Soviet political prisoners. Andrei Sakharov was a physicist who was finally exiled due to his anti-soviet activities. His crime was to speak against oppression of freedom and human rights by Soviet police. The memos of KGB show that he was kept under surveillance for a long time before being exiled. Thus in conclusion we can say that Soviet dissidents have exposed unfair practices in human rights in Soviet Russia. They were the people who dared to disagree with policies and actions of their motherland, and actively protested against these practices. They were harassed and imprisoned by the Soviet government. Though they used non-violent means such as demonstrations or writings, they were still sentenced to labor camps where they were given harsh treatments or send to mental institutions and discredited as mentally unsound people. They were considered as enemies of the state simply because they refused to be intimidated or silenced. In the end, because of their untiring efforts, there were positive changes in the lives of people in Soviet Union. SOURCES Hoover Archives : Soviet Dissent and the Cold War. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_dissidents Read More