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1. The Analytical Framework

1.1. Soviet dissent and opposition

To write that there has been controversy over the definition of Soviet dissent as distinct from opposition would be an understatement. A brief review of the meanings attached to these concepts, with particular reference to Marxist-Leninist systems, is therefore worthwhile.

Ghita Ionescu once suggested that opposition in “sovereign oppositionless states” was reduced to “inferior forms” because it was not institutionalized. He called those forms “political checks” and “political dissent”—the former “originating from the conflicts of interest” and the latter “originating from the conflicts of values.”[1] Studying opposition in East Europe, H. Gordon Skilling developed a fourfold typology: (1) “integral opposition” involved a total rejection of the political system; (2) “factional opposition” referred to elite infighting; (3) “fundamental opposition” entailed a stand against certain basic policies of the regime and signalled partial rejection of the political system; and (4) “specific opposition” concerned loyal, legitimacy-supportive disagreement with particular policies.[2]

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Frederick Barghoorn defined opposition in the Soviet Union as “the persistent—and from the official point of view—objectionable advocacy of policies differing from or contrary to those which the dominant group in the supreme CPSU control and decision making bodies … adopt,”[3] and discerned three forms of it: (1) “factional,” connoting internecine battles among the highest policymakers; (2) “sectoral,” meaning loyal interest group politicking; and (3) “subversive,” referring to activity that promotes the radical change in, or abolition of, the established order.[4] This last form of opposition appears for Barghoorn to be equivalent to Soviet dissent, which he has called “the deliberate and purposive behavior, manifested in the articulation, orally or in writing of opinions critical of, or protesting against, established ideological, cultural, and political norms and arrangements, and the authorities who maintain the existing regime and enforce its rules and policies.”[5]

Rudolf Tökés has noted that both Skilling’s and Barghoorn’s definitions are presented as landmarks on a “seamless continuum” from “harmless and loyal disagreements about the regime’s policies (‘specific’ and ‘sectoral’ opposition) … to the end of the spectrum labelled ‘integral’ and ‘subversive’ opposition.”[6] Tökés does not suggest that the “continuum” may itself be multidimensional; he proceeds, however, to remark:

What neither [Skilling nor Barghoorn] appears to consider is the basic epistemological difference between “within-system” and “system-rejective” kinds of opposition. The first is aimed at effecting changes in the system and the second at change of the system. The difference between the two is in fact a difference between reform and revolution as methods of effecting a political change.[7]

Trying to distinguish opposition in the USSR from Soviet dissent, Tökés once suggested that those in opposition “must have the ‘will to power’ and must be prepared to act,” whereas dissenters “have no direct designs on power.”[8] Later, however, he recognized that opposition is a more encompassing category, in fact subsuming Soviet dissent.[9] Soviet dissent, Tökés concluded, could be “viewed as a type of within-system opposition loyal to some aspects of the status quo … and critical of others,” that is, “as a form of interest articulation with a normative content.”[10] He also took the peculiar, but peculiarly operationalizable, view that even system-rejective ideologies in the Soviet Union are not oppositional because a “lack of resources prevents them from qualifying as revolutionary in any practical sense.”[11]

There are two problems with Tökés’s conceptualization of Soviet dissent: first, it is not clearly different from Skilling’s notion of fundamental opposition, although it is more rigorous; and second, it risks becoming a universally inclusive category; nevertheless, Tökés’s summary of Soviet dissent is the best analytical description available. Soviet dissent, he writes, is “a culturally conditioned political reform movement seeking to ameliorate and ultimately to eliminate the

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perceived illegitimacy of the posttotalitarian Communist-party leadership’s authoritarian rule into authoritative domination through (1) structural, administrative, and political reforms; (2) ideological purification ant cultural modernization; and (3) the replacement of scientifically unverifiable normative referents with empirical (nonideological) criteria as political guidelines and developmental success indicators.”[12] Tökés has further determined, through content analysis of samizdat documents, that all dissident currents

have a set of shared interests in advocating reforms in the areas of political democracy, nationality rights, socialist equality [read: legality] and human rights. These are supplemented by and, in certain instances, subordinated to demands by specific groups focusing on “constituency-specific” grievances such as religious persecution, violations of artistic freedoms, and critical arguments about economic problems and the quality of life in the USSR.[13]

Tökés’s definition of Soviet dissent accords very well with Connor’s view of Soviet dissent as “both product and symptom of the confrontation of two phenomena in the contemporary Soviet system—on the one hand, the structural complexity of a society at a rather high level of development; and, on the other, the persistence of a centralist-command mode of integrating the increasingly differentiated segments of that society.”[14] But let us give this insight additional rigor.

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[Note 1]. Ghita lonescu, The Politics of the European Communist States (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967), pp. 2–5, esp. p. 3.

[Note 2]. H. Gordon Skilling, “Opposition in Communist East Europe,” in Robert A. Dahl, ed. Regimes and Oppositions (New Haven, [Conn.], 1973), esp. pp. 92–94.

[Note 3]. Frederick C. Barghoorn, “Soviet Political Doctrine and the Problem of Opposition,” Bucknell Review, 12 (May 1964), 4–5. “CPSU” is a standard abbreviation for Communist Party of the Soviet Union and is used as such in the present article.

[Note 4]. Barghoorn, “Factional, Sectoral and Subversive Opposition in Soviet Politics,” in Dahl, pp. 27–87.

[Note 5]. Barghoorn, “The General Pattern of Soviet Dissent,” paper prepared for the Conference on Soviet Dissent, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, 22–23 October 1971 (Research Institute on Communist Affairs, Columbia University: [New York, 1972]), p. 1.

[Note 6]. Rudolf L. Tökés, “Varieties of Soviet Dissent: An Overview,” in Tökés, ed. Dissent in the USSR: Politics, Ideology, and People (Baltimore, [Md.], 1975), p. 17.

[Note 7]. Ibid., pp. 17–18. Cf. Leonard Schapiro, “Introduction,” in Schapiro, ed., Political Opposition in One-Party States (London: Macmillan, 1972), pp. 2–10.

[Note 8]. Tökés, “Dissent: The Politics for Change in the USSR,” in Henry W. Morton and Tökés, eds., Soviet Politics and Society in the 1970s (New York, 1974), p. 10. Emphasis in the original.

[Note 9]. Tökés, “Varieties of Soviet Dissent,” p. 17.

[Note 10]. Ibid., pp.18–19.

[Note 11]. Ibid., p.18.

[Note 12]. Tökés, “Dissent: The Politics for Change,” p. 10.

[Note 13]. Tökés, “Varieties of Soviet Dissent,” p. 14 Emphasis in the original.

[Note 14]. Walter D. Connor, “Dissent in a Complex Society: The Soviet Case,” Problems of Communism, 22 (March–April 1973), 40.