dissident movement itself. The opposition in the USSR has in fact been buried in the same coffin as the detente policy. Nonetheless, there has never been such systematic repression in the Brezhnev period as there is today-arrests and sentences are almost daily events.
In the West, the hypocritical tearjerking speeches about the dissidents have been followed quite quickly by indifference. The silence that has now fallen on the oppositionists in the USSR is reveal-
Unofficial Soviet Historian Roy Meduedev (DR) ing of two things: First, it says a lot about Jimmy Carter-type professions of "humanitarian" concern. The chess game between states in which they were pawns, has been dropped. But, most of all, this silence points up a profound inability to analyze the nature of dissidence in Soviet society.
The dissident movement was not simply the appearance of a variable but always limited number of conscious individuals. What it represented was a reflection of real and profound processes at work in Soviet society. In this respect, the dissident movement cannot be crushed for a long period. Without an understanding of this fact, it would be impossible to see and predict that, in the face of repression, the democratic move. ment would inevitably undergo a recomposition that would require other forms of organisation and action. This appeal for solidarity with the Polish workers is a tangible sign of this.
A NEW OPPOSITION CURRENT However, in reading the statement, the clearest break from the past that shows up is on the political level. It puts in perspective the picture of a Soviet opposition that, marked by the experience of fifty years of Stalinism, tended to reject everything connected with the word "socialism." This view was also pro. moted to a considerable extent by the Western press, which played it up. The opposition that fitted this picture was centered either on programs for moral regeneration or activity deliberately kept limited to defending human rights.
Now, it is no longer possible to identify the opposition as a whole with the big names such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov.
It was this one-sided view, moreover, that led to the presentation of a distorted image of "Poland as viewed from the Soviet Union." No alternative current was seen. People talked about either a sympathetic current, but one that seemed to observe the events in Poland through a telescope (Poland is another "planet," it has another history, another sort of working class; therefore, its ex perience has little meaning for the USSR); or a bitterly hostile current, open to nationalist and "stomach-centered" armore).
But these Soviet dissidents not only express their solidarity with the Polish workers but also their "hope and confidence" in them. In this respect, it is important to point up a very significant detail, which represents another break from the past in this appeal. It is deliberately left unsigned.
have become used to general statements by the opposition, almost alsigned by "big names." But here we have a concise, explicit, and committed statement, but a faceless one. And this fact must not be interpreted only as a technical and tactical response to the repression of recent years. It is the reflection of a
All these features, clear difference from the conceptions of
"traditional" dissidents, are worth pointing up precisely because they are new. However, we cannot avoid the conclusion that it would be wrong to think that something unusual is necessarily
It would be wrong to think that the authors of this anonymous statement are exceptional individuals who have miraculously remained exempt from the laws that shape the lives of Soviet citizens, the imprint left by history on them. It would be wrong to think that they are atypical dissidents.
This statement, which indicates the rise of a new opposition current in the Soviet literary figure Andrei Sinyavsky, persecuted for his ideas in the 1960s (DR)
USSR, in fact represents a balance sheet.
And balance sheet means an experience.
If this new current represents a break with the decimated generation of oppositionists from the 1970s, this does not mean that the new current should be counterposed to them. This break could only have taken place on the basis of a balance sheet of the experience and ac tivity of the dissidents in the 1970s.
This balance sheet, which in fact marks a new departure, is not, it should be stressed, a balance sheet of the repres
Such a balance sheet would have served only to bring on repression. It is expression of political reflection,
Which could not have developed without the gains and experience of the democratic movement in the preceding years.
Doubtless, it is still too early this new "post-human rights" generation. It seems possible, however, to see a number of projects related to the start of this new thinking.
This represents a clear decision not to separate economic problems and demands from the question of human
Another is the Moscow magazine which was aimed at bringing together the various democratic currents so as to make it possible to work out a pro-
More generally, there is the development of "associations," such as the Initiative Group for the Defense of the Rights of Invalids, the Federation of Free Trade Unions (SMOT), the almanach Women and Russia in Leningrad. In fact, the logic of these organizations, which no longer have as their goal a "vague" defense of human rights but the defense of certain specific categories of citizens meant the emergence at a certain point of a political alternative, an alternative conception of organizing society.
REFLECTION ON THE PAST It is only now that such reflection is assuming a definite form, a better depolitical form. This is being expressed in several new samizdat journals, the majority of which criticize the Soviet regime from a socialist point of view. The names that might be cited are Po. edinok ("Duel"), Levyi Povorot ("Left turn"), Sotsialism i Budushche ("Socialism and the Future"). mention the Initative Group for People's
But the most important thing is to look at the main lines emerging in this new "Results and Prospects."
In the first place, there is a definite end to the illusions created by the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956 about the government. It took more than a decade to get rid of these illusions, which were given impetus by the so-called return to "Leninist legality" for which the Twentieth Congress was supposed to have opened the road. In this sense, such hopes, illusory as they were, were a poli tical factor, and helped promote the de of opposition Marxist cur-
Later, when the opposition understood that the ending of mass terror did not mean the ending of repression (it simply became more refined and rational) but was designed to provide security for the bureaucratic caste, when they understood that this caste would defend its monopoly of power with teeth and claws,
"oppositionist legalism"-which sought to gain the ear of the government, to "influence, change, warn" in order to change its policy-became a constituthe movement advocated "limiting the struggle to exposing the of the government, its violation of its own laws (1)." In exchange for this self-limitation, it hoped to achieve a certain legality. The results of this effort are
One was repression that forced the human rights movement on arising out of the detente policy, which impelled the movement to direct all its activities and energies toward the West.
It is only now that these "new wave" oppositionists are coming to a clear understanding of the price that had to be paid for such an orientation, and that is what represents a real balance sheet. The legalism that was supposed to be nonpolitical concentrated on talking to the government and made the movement almost totally dependent on the Western press. Most of all, it placed it "hopelessly outside of Soviet society."
This is the analysis in particular of the editors of the magazine Variants (who claim to have a Social Democrat, socialist, and "Eurocommunist" orientation). example, they say: "The fact is, and we can only deplore it, a neighborhood party secretary is incomparably closer to daily reality than Andrei Group to Monitor the Application of the Helsinki Accords."
The dissident movement found that it was largely closed in on itself and almost totally cut off from the masses and their concerns. The masses, bludgeoned by the regime's argument "It's them (the West) or us," lined up almost entirely behind the category "us.
Thus, drawing a critical balance sheet of a weakened, ineffective dissident movement living an enclosed life, that disarmed itself vis-a-vis the government," the new oppositionists lay out the general framework for a new ori-
Their objective is no longer to obtain certain legal rights from the govern-
They have stopped entirely directing their appeals to it. The days of begging are over. They no longer make it their ultimate goal to make an impact in the Western press and gain the support of international public opinion. It is in this
"faceless statement" takes on a political meaning.
Their objective quite clearly is not to orient themselves any longer toward the government and the Western regimes but "toward the masses." of the crisis of the dissident movement is to create "in the near future various political organizations and to direct them to *the people on the bottom' with concrete social programs. " It is on this basis that the new forms of opposition are develop
And this orientation requires in turn breaking with the conception of dis
"martyr enthusiasts, unquestionably puts off the masses (2), breaking with the conception of "professional dissidents" who in daily life and their activity are not integrated into the life of the society.
So, the "new wave" are in favor of reintegrating dissidents into the society but also of a political reintegration, whose terms are still to be defined:
"Of course, we have to grow a lot more to reach the Polish level, but for us the main lesson to be drawn is the following: We have to try to find foundations for our activity in the real needs of society (defined not 'in a general way' but on the basis of precise studies), by putting forward achievable programs.
DECLARATION TO THE POLISH WORKERS
Dear Polish comrades, friends, brothers, and sisters,
Today when your country is passing through a difficult period, we send you this statement expressing our admiration and our solidarity.
we can do to help you; we can only place our hopes and our confidence in you.
Today, after a year and a half of revolution, the gains of the Polish working the Gdansk agreements and consolidated by the consistent struggle of the workers, are threatened
The experience of history teaches us that when reaction suffers a defeat, it is
The terrible threat of military dictatorship hangs quick to resort to military force.
We are with you, friends!
All of us are with you in the public squares of Warsaw and Gdansk, in the factories in Katowice and Lodz, and in the prisons where the KOR socialists and leaders of Solidarnose are languishing.
We are there, where for the first time in history a people has dealt a severe blow to a totalitarian regime, to a puppet regime.
counter the force of bayonets and tanks with the power of their organization and happened in Hungary and in Chile must not be repeated in Poland.
We believe in the Polish working class, in its capacity to defend its gains.
Today you are in the vanguard of the world workers movement, in the first ranks of those fighting for a democratic socialism.
catastrophe for the progressive forces of the entire world.
Social Democrats, and honest millions of people who hope for your victory.
We repeat the prophetic words of Herzen (1): There are no longer frontiers between Russia and Poland. But Europe knows what Poland represents. It is a nation abandoned by all to a fight against impossible odds, which has since shed rivers of blood on every battlefield where peoples have fought for their freedom.
Everyone knows this people.
Poland can be destroyed but it cannot be forced to accept subjection.
-Long live the heroic Polish workers!
-Long live Solidarnosc!
-Long live democratic socialism!
-For your freedom and ours!
SOVIET DISSIDENTS
There is very little that
We believe that the workers can
A defeat for Solidarnose would be a people in Russia join with the
What we need is not a purely moral opposition or a reactionary utopian or communist utopian one. We need an opposition based on concrete social and political questions."
Thus, this emerging current, which "the foundamental task is to bring together all supporters of democracy and socialism" seems to be a promising successor to the dissident movement of the 1970s. This is undoubtedly the way that the "authoritative bodies" of the response from the bureaucracy was not long in coming.
Frightened by the Polish events, mired down in Afghanistan, incapable of remedying the growing economic difficulties, the bureaucracy finds itself obliged to lash out in a clumsy and unwontedly precipitate way. This is amply demonstrated by the recent measures severely restricting communication with the West, as well as by the extent of the police raids and the severity of the charges against those hauled in.
This quotation as well as the following ones are taken from the interview with the ediin issue No. 15 (March-April 1982) of /'Alternative, published in Paris. pare the statement published here with that of "How Shameful It is (January 1981) of l'Alternative.
December 14, 1981
"News From the USSR," edited by Kronid Lyubarski, the Bulletin
(from
Munich, June-July 1982.)
10
1870), Aer in Moscono of the first oppositionist
Polar the
Star, later the Bell populist pan-Slav democrat.
New situation in Mauritius after MMM/PSM election victory
In the last issue of International Viewpoint, we carried a short report on the outcome of the elections in Mauritius on June 11, 1982. Here Claude Gabriel, who was in