THE DISSIDENT MOVEMENT IN U.S.S.R. Generally then, most of the activities of the dissident movement consist in the formulating of proposals which challenge the ruling class's monopoly of decision-making and demand that its strategies of economic, social and political development should obey the interna! logic of the techniques and institutions which reproduce the system. Many of these proposals are floated and discussed openly and publicly not only within the economic, administrative, social, scientific, cultural and political institutions but also in the newspapers, or on television and radio. Even if they can only be formulated and discussed in the concepts and rhetoric of official language they do not fail to mobilise supporters and opponents - and this is exactly the reason for their, often spectacular, publication by competing tendencies of the ruling class and their associa tes. And yet, the best known aspect of the dissident movement's activities is the opposition of a, for the most part rather isolated, minority of its participants to certain methods the ruling class employs in its exercise of power. At first sight this opposition does not seem to have much to do with the movement challenging the ruling class's monopoly of decision-making by demanding respect for the interna! logic of the techniques and institutions in which they are specialists. But, in fact, not only membership of the same social stratum but also representation and defence of the particular interests of the middle layers integrates these people into the movement. Sorne tendencies in the dissident movement oppose the ruling class's monopoly of decision-making by attacking not only discrimina tory, repressive and often overtly violent aspects of that class's methods of exercising power but also the activities and behaviour of members of the intermediary layers who, by virtue of their professional, institutional or sometimes persona! interests, participate in the practice of these methods or tolerate them. But although this opposition is centred on some of the best known and most contradictory techniques and institutions of the social and political system, the critique which the dissidents make of them is only partial. For, although they denounce the discriminatory, repressive and violent aspects of these techniques and institutions, they substitute a critique of these important but not necessarily fundamental aspects of the system for a critique of the social and political relationships of which they are an integral part. Although their indi35
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