From Analyzing Dissent to Analyzing the Dissident
Thirty years after Communism collapsed in Europe in a relatively peaceful way and through the expression of “people power” (at least so it seemed on the TV screens), it is hard to imagine that for decades between the end of World War II and the symbolic fall of the Berlin Wall, societal opposition in Eastern Europe was not an important subject of scholarly attention. The focus of scholarship was, by and large, on the decision makers. There was a reason for that; namely, for many years after the end of World War II, there was little significant opposition to speak of. Another reason was politics. Anti-communist observers, especially on the Right, tended to depict the Soviet system as totalitarian and thus did not leave much space for dissent, even if, in their view, most people in these societies were deeply against Marxist-Leninist ideology (Friedrich and Brzezinski 1957). Left-wing scholars, conversely, often had a hard time acknowledging societal dissent in the Eastern Bloc and later were more eager to focus on ideological nuances (Fischer-Galati 1963; Bauman 1971; Rakovski 1978; Szymanski 1984). The former would dismiss dissent as weak in the face of the totalitarian state apparatus and the latter a result of atavisms, class tensions, or structural reasons. In both cases, there was a tendency to downplay the differences between particular societies and speak rather of the “Soviet model.”
Barbara Falk’s excellent review essay on the historiography of resistance and dissent in Central and Eastern Europe goes into much finer detail than this section is able to. She points out that admitting that “the picture of world communism as monolithic was not accurate” (H. Gordon Skilling’s observation) coincided with the nascent interest in dissent (Falk 2011, 322). As examples of independent initiatives multiplied in the 1970s, that interest intensified. An important contributing factor was the large-scale migration, including scholars with backgrounds in political and social sciences and with direct experience of state socialist realities who suddenly appeared in the West en masse, eager to share their perspectives, and popularize the activities of their colleagues back home. This is also the time when the word “dissident” became popular. Instead of overarching systemic analyses of “Soviet societies,” case studies of particular countries and social movements began to appear (Kende and Pomian 1978; Kusin 1978; Chiama and Soulet 1982; Summerscale 1982; Curry 1983; Rubenstein 1985; Bugajski 1987). Along these lines, the interest in dissident ideas, later framed as theories of civil society, spread (Skilling 1981, 1989; Garton Ash 1983). Analyses, such as those contained in the remarkable volume edited by Jane Leftwich Curry, were well informed and argued convincingly about the (possible) impact of different opposition forces on domestic politics (Korboński 1983). A significant shift came with the Polish trade union Solidarity, which emerged in 1980 (Garton Ash 1983; Weschler 1984). At that moment, observers realized that bottom-up societal change in the Eastern Bloc was not wishful thinking, but that it was within the realm of the possible, and that the “opposition” or the “dissident movements” did indeed possess political power (Misztal 1985). Closer to 1989 and especially shortly after the fall of Communism, “civil society” became the buzzword, and in a sense, the attention of scholars was again drawn away from concrete examples to a new catch-all term (Keane 1988; Tismaneanu 1990; Rau 1991; Skilling and Wilson 1991; Cohen and Arato 1994).
All the time, however, there was little reflection on the word “dissident” itself. Arguably, the first scholarly attempt to tackle the dissident as a concept, a category, and thus, a form of representation was the work by Walter Parchomenko on how Soviet dissidents were perceived by the domestic authorities and the public (Parchomenko 1986). However, before scholars took notice of the issue, it was reflected upon by the “dissidents” themselves. In Chapter 8, I go through that debate in some detail. Here let me just call up the best early analysis of the “dissident” as a label and as a figure—Václav Havel’s famous essay “Power of the Powerless.” Havel’s key point was that the term was misleading and useless—he resisted it, as did many other oppositionists bundled together by the “dissident” category.
It took academics a while to put their finger on the peculiar quality of the “dissident.” An early trace of that move can be found, mentioned only in passing, in a text analyzing the evolving political line of the famous French periodical Tel Quel . François Hourmant writes of the impact of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the intellectual imaginary of the late 1970s: “In him the heroic gesture of an intellectual struggling against the false mirages of temptation and betrayal is condensed. He incarnates to perfection that exemplary figure: the figure of the dissident” (Hourmant 1996, 122). 1 Much later, Robert Horvath, focusing on the same period and studying especially the Soviet dissidents, noted that the “persona of ‘the dissident’ gradually supplanted that of the revolutionary, the guerrilla and the terrorist, as the ideal advocate of human liberation in the imaginations of a coterie of anti-totalitarian thinkers” (Horvath 2007). As did Havel’s essay, both these authors point to the appearance of a relatively stable image of a “dissident” that is abstracted from reality. What Hourmant does not say is where that image came from. Horvath suggests a “Solzhenitsyn effect,” which is of course a slight oversimplification, and it would be misleading to see only one oppositionist (or even all Soviet dissenters) as the “source” of the dissident figure .
What the two works also do not tackle is: What were the characteristics as well as the impact of the dissident figure on those who were described with the word? The sociologist Jeffrey Goldfarb noted two different characteristics of the “dissident persona”—its link to fame and the fact that the imposition of such a label tends to blur the actual content. Such a “dissident-celebrity persona … however bright is a negative reflection of the official culture of politics and politics of culture, and is therefore limited in the same way as is satire” (Goldfarb 1989, 98). Goldfarb hints at the mechanism which creates the dissident figure, involving “an individual’s bravery and talent, Western media attention” and the officially promoted Soviet [i.e., domestic] culture.
The elements which are constitutive for dissidentism and enable the dissident figure, in my conceptualization, are three: open, legal, and nonviolent action under a repressive sanction (dissidence), Western attention, as well as domestic recognition. These three elements form the “dissident triangle ” on which accents can be put differently, and this has implications for the empowerment and nature of legitimacy that people operating under the dissident label receive. But to analyze this, one has to break with an inward-looking national approach to history—as this will not only disable any useful comparisons across cases, but also fail to capture the transnational dynamics.
The Importance of a Transnational Approach
The concept of the transnational, as opposed to the international, was propagated in the social sciences by international relations scholars, in the face of the visibly growing importance of non-state actors (who are not captured by the internationalist paradigm) and an apparent decline in the significance of nation-states (Risse-Kappen 1995). An idea that is seemingly self-explanatory in fact goes against the grain of both the humanities and social sciences, which tend to see the world in terms of its most important dividing categories of post-Westphalian practice: discrete entities like (nation) states and (national) societies. Nationally written histories of opposition still dominate, and most renowned historians of the opposition are very often unaware of research done in other countries, unless it directly relates to their own backyard. Muriel Blaive targeted this problem, pointing out one important consequence: “if you don’t know what historians are writing in other countries, you risk thinking your own situation is unique whereas it is not, and you fail to learn from their lessons and their progress” (Blaive 2019).
Only recently has dissent studies realized that while the Iron Curtain and the interstate borders of the Eastern Bloc were quite tight, they were not hermetic (Brier 2013b; Kind-Kovács 2014). This means that transborder exchanges, influences, inspirations, and dialogues existed, and single-country case studies are insufficient to understand the influence of dissent. Comparative studies, which use the same theoretical framework to discuss several cases, are an important step in the transnational direction, comparing the significance of the same turning points, like 1968 (Klimke and Scharloth 2008), or certain ideas and processes (Renwick 2011; Blokker 2011). Barbara Falk’s influential comparative endeavor crossed that important border:
Much has been written by and about each of the former dissidents individually. However, my purpose is to examine their herculean collective effort … Through literary and personal connections, the smuggling of samizdat across borders, and the dynamic playe...