Otherwise-thinking: The Soviet Human Rights Movement and Transnational Network

Abstract

In 1965, a group of Soviet dissidents met at the Pushkin memorial in Moscow to protest ‘socialist legality’ and the return to Stalinist tendencies. A decade later, the Soviet Union signed the Helsinki Accords, publicly committing themselves to implement human rights as a requirement for European security and cooperation. These two events would culminate in a transnational advocacy network spearheaded by the Moscow Helsinki Group. This thesis asks how the Soviet human rights movement used international human rights politics to expand its domestic influence by gaining transnational attention and cooperation. The movement in the periods prior and after the Conference are compared in their use of underground publishing, foreign appeals, and legal rhetoric. Dissident organizations, like the Initiative Group and the Moscow Helsinki Group, are approached as stand-alone organizations as well as part of the movement’s continuity. Archival material from Radio Free Europe and transnational actors confirm that the movement consciously used the Helsinki framework and human rights language in order to attract broader membership and audience. These domestic and foreign allies would pressure the Soviet government in a process established at the first follow-up meeting in 1977-1978.