In summer of 2024, Princeton University Press has published an anticipated book – a monograph by Professor Benjamin Nathans To the success of our hopeless case. The many lives of the Soviet dissident movement. In May 2025, the book received one of the most prestigious literary awards—the Pulitzer Prize in the nonfiction category. And this is no coincidence—the book reflects the culmination of 30 years of work by one of the most meticulous researchers of the dissident era, and at the same time is written for readers who may know nothing about this period. In fact, it is the first generalized work on the intellectual history of Soviet dissidents.

The author focuses on the emergence and evolution of the dissidents’ legalist views, which enabled them to develop a repertoire of tools that made their human rights work possible under the authoritarian control in the late Soviet Union, and which united around their struggle a significant number of supporters, both among Moscow intellectuals and among a wide variety of groups resisting Soviet dictatorship within the USSR – those fighting for national and religious rights, and later groups for social and economic rights.

Benjamin Nathans wrote a book of dissidents’ intellectual history – this explains the author’s concentration on the circle of Moscow human rights activists (and that us why considerably less attention is paid to dissidents in the Soviet republics, representatives of the Jewish movement for the right to emigrate from the USSR, fighters for religious freedoms, or Russian nationalists). It is thanks to the approach taken by Nathans that the history of Soviet human rights defenders seems to be so comprehensively examined in a multitude of historical and cultural contexts that help to discern the specificity of this particular phenomenon in question. Different chapters of the book examine the tradition of resistance in Russia, referring to the history of Alexander Radishchev, Pyotr Chaadaev, Alexander Herzen and Leo Tolstoy, the Decembrists, the Narodniks, and members of the revolutionary generation. Nathans contextualizes dissidence on a transnational level as well, identifying similarities and differences between this phenomenon and resistance to the Nazi dictatorship in occupied Europe, dissidence in Central Europe, and cultural resistance in China. One of the most important parts of the book is the chapter where he observes modes of resistance in the USSR which were different from human rights movement such as, passive non-involvement to the regime order by a part of citizens, their internal emigration, their withdrawal into a parallel culture, and the ways in which dissident activists were safely supported by sympathizers. Thus, dissident strategy is presented as part of late Soviet society – as one possible way of organizing one’s own life under state political hegemony, as an ethical response to the existential challenge of remaining free in an unfree country.

1 Alexeeva Lyudmila, Soviet Dissent : Contemporary Movements for National, Religious, and Human Right (...) 4Part of the narrative story told by Nathans draws on analytical positions developed by Ludmila Alekseeva in her first fundamental work on the history of dissent in the USSR and by a number of subsequent authors1. This applies both to the chronological framework and the choice of nodal moments, as well as to the description of the specifics of the Soviet human rights movement, the development of ways of defense, and the building of ties both within the community, and with various vulnerable groups defending their rights in the USSR as well as groups in the West.

The beginning of the movement is traditionally associated with the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial and the glasnost rally held on Pushkin Square a few weeks before the trial, followed by a chain reaction of public letters in support of the convicted writers, the systematization of court materials, and the arrest of activists who covered the trial (Ginzburg, Galanskov, Lashkova, Dobrovolsky), followed by new waves of protests and arrests. In first halph of the book Nathans systematises and retells well-known phases of the dissident history: appearance of Marchenko’s testimony about contemporary political camps in the USSR; emergence of the first human rights bulletin, the Chronicle of Current Events, aimed to inform about all known cases of human rights violations in the USSR; demonstration of the Eight on Red Square against the Soviet troops’ entry into Czechoslovakia. Connection of dissidents with Western journalists, the emergence of informal human rights groups and committees; the crisis of the movement associated with the arrest of its informal leaders and fallen idols, Pyotr Yakir and Viktor Krasin, who began actively coopetate with the investigation after being arrested, this unrmined the authority of the democratic movement. Nathans examines the phenomenon of Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the human rights law seminar of Valery Chalidze and other initiatives. We see how by the end of the 1970s, dissident activity becomes more professional, and the first international groups appear in this environment. The addressee of human rights work also changes – at the end of 1970s correspondents in the West and international institutions began to play a greater role, and the legal norms appealed to by the movement’s participants go beyond Soviet legislative documents, by that moment dissidents started to appeal to the international legal acts (such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Helsinki Accords).

The most important principle of dissident work was its basement on Soviet law. Nathans thoroughly explores the origins of the dissidents’ legalist approach. It was developed in detail by the mathematician Alexander Esenin-Volpin. Even before the Sinyavsky and Daniel trial, which caused a huge public outcry, Volpin issues his works which search for a scientific expression of the idea of freedom – and concludes that it can be found in reliance on the idea of law and the observance of legal norms. Nathans demonstrates that Volpin’s ideas were completely original and independent – he developed them without reference to the international tradition. The “revolution in the mind” that Volpin hoped to see in his fellow citizens was that free individuals should begin to act completely law-abiding in a socialist society, as if the laws were truly valid, and at the same time to demand respect for rights from state institutions. In this way, as Volpin thought, this shift could transform the social order and contribute to the actual establishment of the rule of law in the country. As Nathans shows, “Alexander Volpin had been waiting for an opportunity to issue ‘a public manifesto of our rights.’” With the arrest of the two writers, he found one” (p. 75). The people who came out in December 1965 for a meeting in support of the arrested writers Sinyavsky and Daniel made demands for the civil rights of the arrested, guaranteed by the constitution – first and foremost, the publicity of the trial. The legalist approach attracted many supporters to the dissident movement and became one of its most important principles.

Another important observation by Natans concerns the contradictory structural organization of the movement. Two tendencies coexisted simultaneously in the Soviet human rights movement. On the one hand, the desire to remain an informal circle of acquaintances, within which many processes were built on trust, where members could alternately fulfill different functions, finding replacements for departed comrades, focusing on personal choice in taking specific actions and filling the work. At the same time, a number of activists made consistent attempts to make the movement more hierarchical, to develop a unified strategy and methods. All the concrete work of the Soviet dissidents was a response to the search for a balance between these two irreconcilable poles – or examples of impulsive actions subordinated to one of the two logics. This tradition of formal organization and simultaneous friendly ties continues to have a serious impact on the development of a number of human rights organizations that have emerged in the post-Soviet space.

One of the most interesting chapters of the book is a study of the mutual influence of Soviet dissidents and international NGO groups, namely, Amnesty International. The later in the 1970s, through interaction with human rights materials from the USSR, was able to clarify the principles of its own work and gained greater visibility and authority on the world public stage. At the same time, through the prism of interaction with Amnesty, Nathans examines the work of Soviet human rights defenders as an experience of building a new independent NGO institution inside the USSR, in a state that did not envision a space for independent public work. This perspective is important for understanding the place of Soviet dissidents and for contextualizing the subsequent development of independent NGOs in Russia and neighboring countries.

The book is distinguished by its clarity of language and suspenseful plot, which leads to the hope that, despite its length, it will be read by the widest possible audience beyond specialists in dissident history, late-Soviet culture, and sociology of law. Through this book dissident history finds its place in the global history of individuals and societies that have struggled to overcome totalitarianism and transform the social order. An intellectual history of the dissidents, freed from the discourse of defense or glorification, is essential for contemporary post-Soviet societies to understand themselves in today’s historical moment. It is also crucial for gaining historical dignity in a future liberal Russia, which is impossible without the efforts of the many people who believe in it.