In society

At the expanse of eras. Dissidents

November 13, 2009 Alexander Podrabinek

To understand what happened to us, should I recall the events of those years from episodes? Everyone remembers something of his own, which he himself considers serious and symbolic. But we will have to admit: we did not have the fall of our Berlin wall, as in Germany; The democratic opposition of its conditions did not dictate to the government, as in Poland; We did not defend a new life with weapons in our hands, as in Romania; The former political prisoner, as in Czechoslovakia, did not become our president. In our way, in the wake of public indignation, in some inexplicable way, it flowed from one nomenclature hands to others. The Russian society, which told communism “no” in August 1991 and October 1993, how the hypnotized looked at how yesterday’s fragile freedom and Komsomol leaders took our fragile freedom, and then carefully handed it over to the Chekists.

Now this is a story. But there are outrageously wrong those who consider the understanding of history an empty digging in the past and our national fun. The inability to honestly relate to its history condemns society to repetition of errors. It is so corny that it is a shame to repeat. Of course, it is difficult to write the history of defeats, not the history of victories. But if you write a true story, and not a pleasant myth, you must be able to evaluate the past events. Otherwise, it will turn out the same thing that happened to a number of human rights activists who decided to historically comprehend the events of the recent past and their place in history - with their characteristic modesty, they called the collection of their memoirs “Knights without fear and reproach”. Or what happens to the so -called sixties - fronting Soviet intellectuals, pocket fig holders, creating a romantic halo of their mythical kitchen freedom.

The main political issue of the last 20 years can be formulated as follows: “How did it happen that we do not have an effective democratic opposition that can oppose the authorities and, in the end, change it?” I will not particularly spread about everyone. Everyone will find his guilty in this. I will say about those with whom he was near, whom he knew well, who was in the country with an actual opposition, when legal political activity was still prohibited - about dissidents.

Why did they not become an opposition, the center of crystallization of democratic forces? At the end of the USSR, it looked for granted. Why didn’t this happen, as in Poland or Czechoslovakia, where the dissident movement appeared even later than in the USSR?

The clarity of the struggle

The resistance of the totalitarian dictatorship is, as a rule, on defending simple human values ​​- the opportunity to freely read, write, travel around the country and beyond, confess religion, gather in the circle of their like -minded people and openly express their views. All this is absolutely unacceptable for totalitarian power, striving to subordinate to its influence all aspects of the social and personal life of citizens. The totalitarian state considers the defending of natural human rights as a political struggle against it.

Objectively speaking, this is so. In a country where the subject of political regulation becomes almost every step of a person who is not agreed with the authorities of the steps really encroach on the political system.

However, the dissident opposition in the communist countries did not recognize itself as an organized political force. The vast majority of oppositionists, sincere supporters of civil freedom and democracy, acted, rather, for moral reasons than from political. During the hopeless confrontation of the cruel and strong regime, they did not hope for the speedy collapse of the totalitarian system, but they felt the inability to continue to live in fear, without freedom of choice and elementary human rights.

The practical hopelessness of dissident resistance gave rise to bewilderment and a lot of issues in the so -called sane people who are used to measuring every step with practical benefits and political expediency. It seemed to them genuine madness to consciously take the risk of imprisonment, and sometimes life, for the sake of such “abstract” values ​​as civic freedom and human dignity.

People came to the dissident movement in various ways, often they pushed various situations and events on this path, but few of them dreamed of real political changes and prepared for them. The confrontation of totalitarianism was an end in itself; It made it possible to maintain human dignity, ideas about good and evil, about law and lawlessness, about dignity and humiliation.

The dissident movement was strong precisely what was based on moral incentives, and not on political calculations. Perhaps that is why, during the years of open confrontation among dissidents, there were relatively few apostates and traitors. After all, to lose in the political struggle is much less catastrophic than to abandon your own moral values. Political players rarely fell into a relatively narrow dissident circle, and if they hit, they felt like a foreign body in it. They were not in demand by the dissident movement and either quickly surrendered under the pressure of repression, or quickly emigrated, or simply stepped aside.

The dissident movement was clear in meaning and motives, individualistic, poorly structured, open and, as a result, almost indestructible. It was a phenomenal response to the challenge of time. The answer of loners who became like -minded people and friends to a formidable challenge of a strong, smug and despised of all the states.

The last page of dissident history

The clarity of the target and idealism of dissident resistance faded as soon as the first crack of a collapsing totalitarian system was heard. Suddenly it turned out that Goliath was no longer as strong as it was not at all as terrible as he was trying to imagine himself to others. The fresh wind of changes blew, and first timid, and then more and more confident hopes for the speedy collapse of the totalitarian regime. It was a wonderful time - the time of liberation of people from fear, from the dominance of lies and propaganda, from the stereotypes of slave life and silent submission to violence. What could be more beautiful than getting to full growth and getting rid of many years of fear! What the dissidents used to do, risking their freedom and life, now the whole country did, without risking almost nothing.

However, before it collapses completely, Goliath made the last efforts to crush his eternal enemy. If earlier only dull power moved them, now, in the anticipation of agony and the soon end, it has become calculating and long -sighted.

The controversial question: in the new conditions could the dissident movement become an organized opposition? The nature of this movement was not the same. It was not aimed at the seizure of power, it was spontaneous and uncontrollable. These qualities are not for political opposition. However, along with time, people themselves, the motives of their actions, and resistance methods, can change the country. The authorities took this into account. She was afraid that the dissident movement would change along with a change in the country. Hoping to stay in power in the new conditions, the communist elite decided in any way to get rid of a possible future opponent - the only at that time existing and reasonably counting on public support. Perhaps the authorities exaggerated the danger of transforming the dissident movement into a political opposition, but it acted in accordance with its fears.

It was not possible to break dissident resistance by repression before. Now, on the new break in Russian history, the power that proclaimed a course on reforms had neither the strength nor determination to launch the mechanism of mass repressions. What was impossible to achieve with a whip, she decided to achieve a gingerbread.

In 1986, after a short, but hard pressure of the political prisoners in camps and prisons, it was decided to free the political prisoners with the smallest damage to the authorities and the greatest losses for the dissident movement. After the death in December 1986 in the Chistopol prison of the legendary and implacable dissident Anatoly Marchenko and the return from the illegal Gorky exile of Academician Sakharov (by order of the Secretary General of the CPSU Mikhail Gorbachev), the political prisoners were proposed to be released on petitions for pardon. The presentation of such a petition has always been considered ethically unacceptable in the dissident environment, since it implied guilty. The senior employees of the KGB of the USSR traveled to political camps and persuaded the political prisoners to submit to the Supreme Council a petition for pardon. They did not offer neither a revision of court cases, nor rehabilitation, nor even amnesty. In these cases, the political prisoners would not need a plead of guilt and the manifestation of humiliating initiative. It was possible to free itself only by the request submitted to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In any form, it does not matter with what text, but so that it was a personal appeal to power.

Academician Sakharov, who had already made a public promise never to engage in political activities again, persuaded the political prisoners to submit petitions. He was supported by some authoritative dissidents, but the authorities tried most of all. Its representatives convinced everyone that in the new conditions it was stupid and pointless, that the time of change has come and they needed only a formal reason for liberation.

Changes were really felt, everyone was full of hopes for softening the regime and changing the political system. By the spring of 1987, almost all political prisoners, about 200 people were freed from political camps, prisons, and special psychics to pardon. Only 10-15 people refused to submit petitions for pardon, they were released a year later without any conditions.

This successful operation KGB turned the last page in the history of the dissident movement in the USSR. And although the next year and a half in the country there were still bursts of repression in some places, the dissident movement itself ended on this. Unfortunately, not on your most beautiful page, not in the most victorious way. The country was no longer needed by the dissident movement - it was from another time, from another life. A public policy has appeared in the country. The time of open discussions and legal political organizations began. The remnants of the Communist Party, trying to adapt to a new life, had to be opposed to a political opposition. It was a challenge to the new time.

Lost battle

Could former dissidents answer this challenge? Of course, they could. The dissident movement with its moral imperatives, sacrifice, political non -calculation and fearlessness in conditions of even illusory and parody democracy could not be in demand. But the dissidents themselves, with their rich experience in open confrontation and understanding of the mechanisms of the work of state institutions, could take a niche of a political opposition in a country, hastened to be called democratic.

Of course, the transition to a different plane of social activity was not acceptable for all dissidents. With the collapse of the communist system, some of them rightly considered their mission to be fulfilled and moved away from any activity. However, many dissidents decided to continue their activities as political figures.

Fatal for the democratic opposition was the inability or, possibly, the unwillingness of former dissidents to create independent political power. The collapse of the communist structures was accompanied by a hasty flight from the Communist Party of its most visionary figures, who realized that in the new conditions they would not be able to remain in power, operating with old communist slogans and preserving the commitment of a dying communist ideology. During the transformation of the state, they became the most noisy critics of the communist system, quickly gaining popularity in a society tired of the communist dogmas. Their leader was Boris Yeltsin, a high -ranking apparatus of the CPSU, who relied on a formal anti -communist position. He was surrounded by people from the middle link of the former party and state elite. Yeltsin was supported by many ordinary people who believed his promises to end communism and bring Russia to democracy. In the wake of these sentiments, Yeltsin, supported by many thousands of anti -communist demonstrations, became the first president of Russia.

At the first steps in the destruction of communism, the new political elite needed people who, with their moral authority, could reinforce the undertakings of the new government. Such people were some famous dissidents. Following the Academician Sakharov, they took part in the Supreme Council, the elections in which were bulky and undemocratic. This pseudo-parliamentary structure dreamed more than the future, but could be used as a stand for performances. The opportunity to speak and be heard, obviously, was the main reason why some dissidents decided to take part in the work of this rudiment of the Soviet regime. This in a great way coincided with the desire of the new political elite, recruited from the old nomenclature, to demonstrate its new democratic appearance to the whole world. In the end, the Supreme Council was waiting for an inglorious end, when in 1993 he was dispersed after trying to raise a red rebellion and return Russia to the old development path.

The dissidents, seduced by the opportunity to take places in parliament, and then in the presidential structures, missed the possibility of creating a truly democratic opposition, which was so needed by the country in an unstable time of political changes and choosing the path. Their voices drowned in the choir of demagogues, political rogues, old apparatchiks who have mastered democratic vocabulary, new fortune -players no matter what slogans no matter. They dissolved in a completely ordinary political broth, never becoming either a banner of democracy or an influential political force. The new government only used their names and the preserved authority until she needed it.

Fatal for today's Russia, the lack of effective democratic opposition has, of course, many reasons. One of them is the possibilities missed by dissidents. Of course, the role in this was played by the fatigue from a constant stay in the role of outsiders, and naive hopes to change the political structure from the inside, and the unjustified trust in political hypocrites, and a blessed attitude towards compromises and the “art of the possible”, and the neglect of someone else's and their own reputation, and undemanding to political fellow companions. It was obviously affected by demoralization caused by the mass consent of the recent political prisoners to pardon.

Today, looking back at two decades of past years, you begin to understand how rare a chance has been lost - a chance to turn the country to a democratic structure. It is completely unknown whether Russia will fall out in our lifetime another such chance. But if it falls out, and we will have new dissidents, they should not repeat our mistakes.

Photo by RIA Novosti