Thedissident ■ovement andthelliddleelass ln theUSSB GABOR TAMAS RITTERSPORN (*) The sudden appearance of the dissident movement in the USSR cannot be separated from the contradictory social and political evolution of that country and is one the most tangible manifestations of the clashes and interna! contradictions developing within its social and political system. Obviously a study of the abrupt appearance, development, setbacks and recoveries of the dissident movement cannot be divorced from a rigorous empirical analysis of the social and political transformations of the post-war Soviet Union based on a systematic, complex and critical examination of original Soviet sources. But even the relatively minute quantity of known facts permits the formulation of some hypotheses concerning the social and political nature of the dissident movement. Although these hypotheses will certainly have to evolve, change or be transformed in the course of empirical research they may, nevertheless, serve as a starting point. By the term « dissident movement » we understand throughout this article the ensemble of the various efforts made to formulate coherent demands which encroach on issues settled exclusively by those people who, thanks to their occupancy of key positions in, and at the head of, agencies of the State apparatus, exercise effective control over all economic, administrative, scientific, cultural and political activities in the country; by it we understand the ensemble of individual or collective attemps to challenge this monopoly by the formulation of critical propositions or the adoption of critical stances. This article seeks to reinstate the dissidents within the social struc- (*) Hungarian, researcher at the C.N.R.S., Paris. 29
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