Beginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was unexpectedly confronted by a dissident movement that captured the world’s imagination. Demanding that the Kremlin obey its own laws, an improbable band of Soviet citizens held unauthorized public gatherings, petitioned in support of arrested intellectuals, and circulated banned samizdat texts. Soviet authorities arrested dissidents, subjected them to bogus trials and vicious press campaigns, sentenced them to psychiatric hospitals and labor camps, sent them into exile—and transformed them into martyred heroes. Against all odds, the dissident movement undermined the Soviet system and unexpectedly hastened its collapse. Taking its title from a toast made at dissident gatherings, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause (Princeton, 2024) is a definitive history of a remarkable group of people who helped change the twentieth century.
This hybrid talk with Benjamin Nathans, with an introduction by Stephen Kotkin, took place in the Shultz Auditorium at the Hoover Institution on the Stanford University campus at 4:30 pm PT.
About the Speakers
Benjamin Nathans
Alan Charles Kors Endowed Term Associate Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania
Stephen Kotkin
Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; Birkelund Professor in History and International Affairs emeritus at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
