Talk:Soviet dissidents

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 August 2021 and 18 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): DinosaurpOwer.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:53, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

List
This is a first crack at this list. It is important to remember those who died. Please help. Thank you. --MILH 22:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The article must be turned into the history of the dissident movement. I removed the list because no one bothers to maintain it and currently the category:Soviet dissidents is 10x larger than the list. `'Míkka 20:03, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

There needs to be a discussion of how some dissidents were tolerated and even encouraged as a means of legitimizing the Soviets because it gave a veneer of legitimacy to the system. By having dissidents the it was believed that the Soviets could claim a level of intellectual diversity that did not actually exist.`'JGHitzert 12:12, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point.

Dissidents who stayed to continue the fight for freedom, and the dissidents who were forced to go
There must be a paragraph about this split. Dissidents who stayed to continue the fight for freedom, and the dissidents who were forced to go.

Reasons for such a splin are still unexplained. I've known several dissidents, some of them are very well known names, but they are all very shy about explanations...

Trauma of the Soviet purges and harrassment - this is the first thing that comes to mind when one is trying to analyze the fate of Russian dissidents.

Brodsky, Bryi, Solzhenitsyn, Rostropovich, Visnevskaya, Nureyev, Tarkovsky, Baryshnikov, Shemyakin, Makarova, and some others are the ones who were forced to leave the USSR.

Vysotsky and many others desided to stay and continued fighting for FREEDOM. 64.183.42.97 (talk) 20:59, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Vysotsky is the one to be studied seriously. He and other dissidents who stayed were censored and abused by the Soviet authorities. They were not really free, they did not have many choices, like dissidents in other countries.

Dissidents in Soviet dictatorial regime and dissidents in other countries were under different conditions
Soviet dictatorship totally controlled population like in a prison-camp. Soviet restrictions were more harsh that in the rest of the world at that time. Soviet-style dictatorship is best understood today by studying North Korea. Among Soviet dissidents there possibly were collaborators with the KGB, so their living was not as terrible, as lives of those millions who were exiled, then killed and perished in numerous GULAG prison-camps. After the death of Stalin, over FIVE MILLION political prisoners were liberated from various prisons across the Soviet Union, mainly in Siberia and rural Northern Russia.

However, some dissidents became famous and had stellar careers during the Soviet regime. Vysotsky is the one to be studied seriously. He and other dissidents who stayed and ignored many abuses by the Soviet authorities, and at the same time enjoyed popularity and financial success that was way above that of the official Soviet celebrities.Although they were not really free and did not have many choices, like dissidents in other countries, they were privileged in comparison to regular Soviet citizens. 64.183.42.97 (talk) 22:57, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:32, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Scope of the term 'dissidents'
I have added an overview of dissenting movements in the USSR, modeled after Lyudmila Alexeyeva's monograph Soviet Dissent. I am unsure whether these are also implied by the common usage of the term 'dissident'. For example, are campaigning refuseniks or religious figures automatically what is described as 'Soviet dissidents'? So if this widens the scope of the article too much, it might be useful to list such dissenting groups in a separate article.-- Nkrita (talk)
 * Campaigning refuseniks or religious figures are automatically considered what is described as 'Soviet dissidents' because refuseniks such as Natan Sharansky and Vladimir Slepak campaigned for the right to emigrate from the Soviet Union to freer countries including Israel and are often denied the right, religious figures campaigned for the right to choose religious beliefs beyond the range of Orthodox Christianity in Russia, a single state religion that was permitted and promoted in the Soviet Union to control all religious figures. Psychiatrick (talk) 16:49, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

attributed to the view?
This sentence under "Dissidents and the Cold War" makes no sense: "US President Ronald Reagan attributed [sic] to the view that the "brutal treatment of Soviet dissidents was due to bureaucratic inertia." Perhaps "contributed" is meant, but that's only a guess. 850 C (talk) 17:46, 22 July 2019 (UTC)