Once again, in Eastern Europe and beyond, a pressing question has emerged: how can individuals or communities effectively resist an authoritarian system? In many post-Soviet–and global–contexts, such as Belarus or Iran, this question has never lost its urgency. Yet for a long time, scholars appeared to pay it rather a marginal attention.

In light of contemporary developments–repressions, war, and violence–the history of Soviet dissidence is often treated as the primary reference point for understanding practices of oppression and resistance. Scholars, journalists, and commentators frequently turn to this past in an effort to interpret the present. However, precisely because of the perceived proximity of the Soviet past, lines of continuity are often drawn too hastily and without sufficient critical reflection. Western scholarship and media continue to rely on the “history of Soviet dissidence” as a central interpretive framework for understanding contemporary Russia, while often conflating “Soviet dissidence” with “Russian dissidence.” As a result, observers search for echoes of the Moscow dissident movement in present-day Russian society–frequently without success. The reason is the narrative, shaped during the Cold War, and persisted in historical memory until present day. To a considerable extent, this narrative also shapes broader perceptions of Russian society and, by extension, those of its neighbors.

Thus, while the figure of approximately 1,300 political prisoners in Russia is widely cited, the situation in Belarus is often overlooked. Although 1,300 political prisoners is a significant number in any context, the meaning of this figure differs dramatically between Russia and Belarus, considering the difference in the population – 146 and 8.9 million people as on the state of 2025 respectively.  Paradoxically, even scholars who have long studied the Soviet repressive system fail to recognize this distinction.

The Cold War legacy

Such limitations are part of the complex legacy of the Cold War, with its entrenched polarities and epistemic frameworks formed in the second half of the twentieth century. As is well known, national cultures within the USSR were subject to Russification and homogenization, while abroad they were often represented and perceived as Russian. Paradoxically, Moscow dissidents, Soviet authorities, and Western policymakers alike shared a certain skepticism toward, and misunderstanding of, the national aspirations of non-Russian peoples within the USSR–particularly their desire for sovereignty. The reasons for this are complex. In simplified terms, none of these actors fundamentally desired the dissolution of the Soviet Union and thus tended to regard nationalism with suspicion. This attitude was shaped, in part, by the traumatic history of the twentieth century and the catastrophic consequences of radical nationalisms in Europe. Even today, Western European academic discourse lacks a shared understanding of the ambivalent role of nationalism in Eastern and Central Europe, often disregarding its emancipatory potential, as well as of the multiplicity of meanings encompassed by the term itself.

There is also a pressing need to reconsider the relationship between center and periphery. In dominant interpretations, dissidence and samizdat are understood as phenomena that spread from the center to the margins. A paradigmatic example is Ludmilla Alexeyeva’s seminal study Soviet Dissent (1985, originally appeared in English, last published in 2012 in the Russian language),[1] which remains one of the few comprehensive overviews of the subject and continues to be widely cited. Alexeyeva emphasizes the primacy of Russian dissidents, asserting, for example, that “Ukrainians were the first among the non-Russian republics to support the initiatives of Russian dissidents” (p. 28). Similarly, in discussing the movement for Jewish emigration, she argues that it drew on the experience and methods of Moscow-based human rights activists (p. 131). This notion of continuity, where the periphery follows and “catches up” with the center (a paradigm that might be termed “catch-up dissidence”), runs throughout the whole work. Notably, this perspective mirrors the imagined geography of the Soviet state as constructed under Joseph Stalin, particularly during the period of the “cultural revolution.”

It is important to stress that the consequences of such distortions continue to shape scholarship and public discourse today.

There were, of course, exceptions. Already in the 1970s, Vladimir Bukovsky and Andrei Amalrik, following their emigration, called for support of national movements within the Soviet Union.[2] Amalrik, even before emigrating, famously reflected in 1969 on the potential disintegration of the USSR. While Amalrik did not live to see the rise of Vladimir Putin’s regime, Bukovsky remained one of the most consistent critics of this regime.

Rethinking Soviet dissent: new scholarship and its limits. 

Since the 2010s, Western academia has begun to develop a more nuanced perspective on Soviet dissidence. Scholars such as Ann Komaromi[3] and Josephine von Zitzewitz[4] have explored the materiality and everyday practices of samizdat. Sergei Oushakine,[5] Frederike Kind-Kovács, Jessy Labov,[6] and Benjamin Nathans have examined the multiplicity of dissident practices and the blurred boundaries between uncensored and official print, as well as between samizdat and tamizdat. Yasha Klots has investigated the continuity of underground publishing before, during, and after late socialism.[7] New reference works and collective volumes have also appeared, including The Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Cultures (Lipovetsky et al., eds., 2024) and the Russian translation of the two-volume Encyclopedia of Dissidence: Eastern Europe and Soviet Union, 1956–1989 (New literary review, 2021 and 2024).[8] Additional recent publications include Samizdat: Publications clandestines et autoédition en Europe centrale et orientale (années 1950–1990) (Camarade, Galmiche, and Jurgenson, eds., 2023) and The Handbook of Courage: Cultural Opposition and Its Heritage in Eastern Europe (Apor, Apor, and Horváth, eds., 2018). Yet even in these works, Belarus is only occasionally mentioned, if at all. In German-language scholarship, developments have been more limited, with studies such as Manuela Putz’s Kulturraum Lager (2019) representing rare exceptions.[9]

Despite these advances, such studies still largely exclude sources from former national and autonomous republics. When such materials are included, they tend to remain marginal and insufficiently integrated into existing conceptual frameworks. They are often categorized as “peripheral” protest cultures, acknowledged as distinct, yet implicitly treated as less significant or effective.

A particularly illustrative example is Benjamin Nathans’s recent and widely acclaimed book, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement (Princeton University Press, 2024), which has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize of 2025. While the book promises to explore multiple facets of Soviet dissidence, it largely recounts familiar stories of Moscow-based figures   – Aleksandr Esenin-Volpin, Andrei Sakharov, Larisa Bogoraz, Peter Yakir, and Andrei Amalrik among others. Although it briefly addresses the suppression of the dissident movement in Ukraine, which was the strongest in the USSR, this inclusion appears somewhat forced, likely reflecting the post-2022 imperative to incorporate Ukrainian perspectives.

Such conceptual and methodological tensions in the study and memory of Soviet dissidence are deeply troubling. They are problematic not only in themselves but also because they shape understandings of the current political situation. They influence contemporary practices of resistance and, perhaps even more significantly, how these practices are perceived by the outside observers.

Researchers and activists engaged in cultural resistance, particularly in Ukraine and Belarus, and even more so in diaspora communities, too, continue to rely on the conceptual vocabulary and analytical frameworks of the Cold War. Three primary modes of such usage can be identified:

1. The uncritical adoption of this conceptual apparatus, as seen in many activist initiatives (e.g., dissidenty.by).
2. The application of these frameworks while ignoring (often unintentionally) earlier experiences of resistance, as in much of the scholarship on the Belarusian protests of 2020. Although these protests were undoubtedly unique in scale and transformative impact, they were not without precedent. The goal is not to assert an anachronistic narrative of perpetual resistance, but rather to achieve a deeper understanding of these processes. For example, while it is widely acknowledged that infrastructures of support for political prisoners and documentation of state violence, developed since the late 1990s by organizations such as Human Rights Centre “Viasna” (Spring), shaped the dynamics of the 2020 protests, the extent to which this has been studied and understood in Western academia remains limited.
3. The rejection of Cold War frameworks while simultaneously employing their vocabulary, a tendency observable in recent studies of Ukrainian and Belarusian dissidents, particularly the Sixtiers generation.[10] Some of these studies move toward a re-nationalization of the history of cultural resistance. This approach, also partially reflected in my own work on culture and resistance in Soviet Belarus (2018, 2024),[11] seeks to situate national histories within broader contexts. In its most radical form, however, it risks isolating these histories entirely from the Soviet framework. Such re-nationalization may arise from dissatisfaction with existing conceptual frameworks, yet it often remains misunderstood within Western academia.

Toward a new analytical framework

The history of resistance serves here as only one example. The broader question is how to write and construct histories that are both intellectually acclaimed on the global stage and faithful to how we wish to represent ourselves. Since the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian, it has become evident that without a well-grounded, rigorously written, and widely disseminated national history, claims to political agency and sovereignty risk remaining misunderstood and unsupported.

A new epistemological framework should originate from in-depth knowledge of the local context, combining it with an understanding of power techniques and the understanding of the dialectics of resistance and repression, and how it functioned on the level of the Soviet state, putting it in a transnational context of resistance practices of national, ethnic, and social groups across the globe. 

Why, then, do the seemingly “insignificant” or marginal experiences of resistance matter? Their importance lies not only in the imperative to restore historical justice by addressing overlooked histories, but also in their capacity to offer new perspectives and insights. By incorporating these diverse narratives, we can develop a richer and more nuanced understanding of resistance ideas and practices in Belarus and across the region, one that transcends linear and hierarchical models of dissent.

In this view, local and national resistance practices should not merely be studied as appendices to the broader history of Soviet dissent or Soviet history. Rather, they should be recognized as integral components of Eastern European and global movements for emancipation from various forms of colonial and post-colonial rule. These struggles are never linear, reflecting the enduring nature of resistance.

About this publication

This analytical paper was prepared within the project Belarusian Historical Scholarship in Exile: Current State and Challenges, implemented with the financial support of the EU4Belarus: Support to Advanced Learning and Training (SALT II) programme, funded by the European Union.

The paper forms part of a series of analytical publications examining the current state, key challenges and future perspectives of Belarusian historical scholarship in exile. While informed by discussions held during a closed expert seminar, it reflects the analysis and conclusions of the author(s).

The views and opinions expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the European Union, the EU4Belarus: Support to Advanced Learning and Training (SALT II) programme, the International Centre for Ethnic and Linguistic Diversity Studies (ICELDS), or the Belarusian Institute in Prague.