Aleksandr Daniel: ‘Today’s opposition is much larger than in the Soviet era’ 

16 May 2023 an interview with Aleksandr Daniel - by Zoya SvetovaSource: Perm Centre for Historical Memory [original source: Novaya gazeta] Can we compare present-day dissidents with Soviet dissidents? What…

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Viktor Kogan-Yasny: The West and the responsibility of all Russians for Russia’s sins

16 March 2022 by Viktor Kogan-Yasny, writer, political and civil society activist and commentator, advisor to the chair of the Yabloko party In Soviet times, the collective West proceeded from…

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Simon Cosgrove reviews ‘The Dissidents’ by Peter Reddaway: ‘A profound tribute to the moral imperative to speak out in the name of truth and human rights in a repressive society.’

17 June 2021 By Simon Cosgrove Simon Cosgrove reviews The Dissidents: A Memoir of Working with the Resistance in Russia, 1960-1990, by Peter Reddaway.  Brookings, 337 pp., 2020, ISBN: 9780815737735 The Dissidents is an absorbing memoir…

Continue ReadingSimon Cosgrove reviews ‘The Dissidents’ by Peter Reddaway: ‘A profound tribute to the moral imperative to speak out in the name of truth and human rights in a repressive society.’

Vyacheslav Bakhmin: What is interesting about the experience of Soviet dissidents?

7 February 2021 Co-chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group Vyacheslav Bakhmin (pictured above) has taken part in the project Scale of Values of the School of Civic Education. Source: Moscow…

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Remember the Date: On 13 February 1974 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was deported from the Soviet Union

Aleksandr Solzhentisyn and Heinrich Boell outside Boell's house. Photo by Bert Verhoeff (Wikipedia) On 13 February 1974 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was deported from the Soviet Union to West Germany, where he initially…

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Remember the Date: Anatoly Marchenko, Soviet dissident and human rights campaigner, was born on 23 January 1938

Photo: Wikipedia Anatoly Tikhonovich Marchenko (23 January 1938 – 8 December 1986) was a Soviet dissident, author, and human rights campaigner, who became one of the first two recipients (along with Nelson Mandela) of the Sakharov Prize for…

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Marjorie Farquharson: Kronid Lyubarsky (1935-1996). An obituary (1996)

This piece from 1996 by the late Marjorie Farquharson (1953-2016) has been published on the website Marjorie and is republished here by kind permission. For over 25 years, Kronid Lyubarsky was one of the…

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Remember the Date: 5 December 1965, the ‘Glasnost Rally’ protesting the prosecution of writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel.

Source: Uroki Istorii XX vek On 5 December 1965 the 'Glasnost Rally' was held on Moscow's Pushkin Square in response to the trial of writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel. The first…

Continue ReadingRemember the Date: 5 December 1965, the ‘Glasnost Rally’ protesting the prosecution of writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel.