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Regular version of the site

Leonid Luks's Report "Dissident Movement in the Soviet Union as a reaction to unfinished de-Stalinization"

Event ended

On September 24, 2018 at 18.10, the academic supervisor of the of the International Laboratory for the Study of Russian and European Intellectual Dialogue, professor of the Catholic University of Eichstätt, Leonid Luks, is giving the lecture "Dissident movement in the Soviet Union as a reaction to unfinished de-Stalinization".

Abstract: If we talk about the history of the Soviet dissident movement, it should be said: "In the beginning was Khrushchev." "The posthumous overthrow of the tyrant", which was carried out by the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee at the Twentieth Party Congress, was the beginning of a dynamic process of erosion of existing methods of government. This process could not be stopped, despite all the restoration efforts of the ruling oligarchy. After 1956, the thesis that Soviet rulers do not need more mass terror in order to stay in power, was common among Western Sovietologists. The society after so many years of terror became an obedient tool in the hands of rulers. Therefore, the emergence of a dissident movement  (in this, as it seemed then, conquered and pacified society) a few years after the Twentieth Party Congress, was a big surprise, both for the Soviet leadership and for Western observers. The report will be about this movement, that is a kind of prologue to perestroika.
The lecture is going to be in Russian.

Event address: Staraya Basmannaya Ulitsa 21/4, room 505
If you want to get passes to the HSE building, please write to reid@hse.ru and indicate your full name before 6 pm on September 20, 2018.