The Volpin framing of making the regime follow its own laws is the load-bearing claim in this piece, and it travels poorly outside the specific Soviet rule-of-law lacuna. Soviet legalism worked as a dissident lever because the gap between written law and KGB practice was wide, public, and embarrassing to the Brezhnev-era image-management apparatus. The defense-of-friends pattern matters here too: the chain reaction from 1965 to 1968 stayed small because the goal was protecting named individuals rather than building a mass political base. Where the analogy breaks for the 2020s United States is that the formal-law gap is narrower and the regime-image cost of ignoring it is lower.
Where to begin if one is interested in understanding more about the dissident strains of cultural thought? I'm so wholly ignorant about the USSR in most ways, but particularly in the period of time this article focuses on.
The Benjamin Nathans book is a good first view on the dissidents particularly. From there, the Chronicle of Current Events has been archived and translated online: https://chronicle-of-current-events.com
Here's a heartbreaking story from AI cross-search: For your freedom and ours
1968: Spirit and the Russia-Ukraine War
Even more noteworthy is that the 1968 Red Square slogan, "For Your Freedom and Our Freedom," was widely reused after the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war:
- Anti-war protesters within Russia often display this slogan
- Russian opposition activists such as Navalny's team also cited this slogan
- The spirit of the eight in 1968 was inherited by a new generation of anti-war activists in Russia—but this time, the few who dared to hold up signs in Red Square still faced arrest
Cruel irony: In 1968, eight people protested the Soviet invasion of another country; Fifty-four years later, the same country, the same Red Square, the same KGB descendant agency (FSB), invaded a neighboring country again, while anti-war activists within Russia still faced the same repression.
Victor Tsoi is probably the most famous Goryo-saram; I saw his mention in an exhibition at the National Museum of Korea a year or two ago.
This is damn Soviet rock—using simple music to resist totalitarian aesthetics. It's not those idiots uploading music on Bilibili to nostalgic Soviet unification, nor just decadence—there's hidden resistance.
History is so coincidental, and China also has a great rock singer named Cui Jian.
Remember the story of using bone scans to hide music? That's not a joke
No one should miss the days of lining up to buy bread, or the days when reading clubs waited for approval~
The Volpin framing of making the regime follow its own laws is the load-bearing claim in this piece, and it travels poorly outside the specific Soviet rule-of-law lacuna. Soviet legalism worked as a dissident lever because the gap between written law and KGB practice was wide, public, and embarrassing to the Brezhnev-era image-management apparatus. The defense-of-friends pattern matters here too: the chain reaction from 1965 to 1968 stayed small because the goal was protecting named individuals rather than building a mass political base. Where the analogy breaks for the 2020s United States is that the formal-law gap is narrower and the regime-image cost of ignoring it is lower.
Where to begin if one is interested in understanding more about the dissident strains of cultural thought? I'm so wholly ignorant about the USSR in most ways, but particularly in the period of time this article focuses on.
The Benjamin Nathans book is a good first view on the dissidents particularly. From there, the Chronicle of Current Events has been archived and translated online: https://chronicle-of-current-events.com
Here's a heartbreaking story from AI cross-search: For your freedom and ours
1968: Spirit and the Russia-Ukraine War
Even more noteworthy is that the 1968 Red Square slogan, "For Your Freedom and Our Freedom," was widely reused after the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war:
- Anti-war protesters within Russia often display this slogan
- Russian opposition activists such as Navalny's team also cited this slogan
- The spirit of the eight in 1968 was inherited by a new generation of anti-war activists in Russia—but this time, the few who dared to hold up signs in Red Square still faced arrest
Cruel irony: In 1968, eight people protested the Soviet invasion of another country; Fifty-four years later, the same country, the same Red Square, the same KGB descendant agency (FSB), invaded a neighboring country again, while anti-war activists within Russia still faced the same repression.
Kino - Summer is ending
Victor Tsoi is probably the most famous Goryo-saram; I saw his mention in an exhibition at the National Museum of Korea a year or two ago.
This is damn Soviet rock—using simple music to resist totalitarian aesthetics. It's not those idiots uploading music on Bilibili to nostalgic Soviet unification, nor just decadence—there's hidden resistance.
History is so coincidental, and China also has a great rock singer named Cui Jian.
Remember the story of using bone scans to hide music? That's not a joke
No one should miss the days of lining up to buy bread, or the days when reading clubs waited for approval~
Super interesting. I still remember the SU as it was in the 1980s. How does it differ from Russia today? How from China today?
I wouldn’t know—more to read