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not
all members of the soviet intelligentsia, however, were content to
put up with the officially sanctioned limits of cultural and
intellectual freedom and keep quiet. in particular, many were deeply
concerned that, with the advent of brezhnev, krushchev抯 cultural
and ideological 搕haw?was substantially curtailed. they feared a
return of harsh stalinist practices, and they had the courage to
protest openly against violations of civil liberties. the
authorities used a whole arsenal of repressive measures, short of
killing dissidents, yet were unable to root out dissidence.
in
the 1960s and 1970s dissidents typically expressed their criticisms
in letters of protest and appeals to soviet leaders and
law-enforcement agencies. these were typed and copied by their
supporters and disseminated among like-minded friends. in the soviet
union this free underground press became known as
samizdat
(搒elf-publishing?. through various channels some of this
literature filtered through to the west and was published there as
tamizdat
(搊ver-there publishing?.
two figures in the dissident movement in particular caused constant
trouble for the soviet authorities. one was alexander solzhenitsyn
(b. 1918), a winner of the nobel prize in literature and the author
of such novels as
cancer ward
and
the first circle,
widely circulated in
samizdat
and
tamizdat.
the other was andrei sakharov (1921?9), one of the inventors of the
soviet hydrogen bomb and later a winner of the nobel peace prize.
both rose to personify the soviet dissident movement.
the
writer and the scientist were in opposition to the soviet regime,
but they also disagreed with each other about the path that russia
should follow. their divergent views bring to mind parallels with
the slavophiles versus westernizers controversy, the intellectual
argument that has animated russian social thought ever since the
揼reat debate?of the 1840s. solzhenitsyn, with his nationalist
views, stood in the succession line to the slavophiles, whereas
sakharov抯 ideological preferences were more in tune with the
westernizers?liberal orientation. their ideological differences,
however, were of secondary importance. what mattered was their open
opposition to the soviet regime and their determination to free the
country from communist authoritarianism.
