Sedition: Everyday Resistance in the Soviet Union Under Khrushchev and Brezhnev (Annals of Communism Series)

This book explores Soviet prosecution records to tell the hidden story of ordinary citizens who were arrested for expressing discontent during the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years. The attitudes of disgruntled common citizens become clear in these documents. Politically unsophisticated, unimpressed by the liberal-minded intelligentsia, resentful that Soviet goods were being exported while people at home were deprived and hungry, the everyday critics were sometimes caught in acts of "sedition." Their crimes were cursing their bosses, desecrating symbols of Soviet power, penning anonymous letters and leaflets, writing naive anti-Soviet treatises, and joining proto-political organizations. This book covers the gamut, from the death of Stalin to elections to individual and group acts of defiance. --Book Jacket Contents 7 Introduction to the english edition. Popular Sedition in the Post-Stalin Soviet Union 11 Introduction to the russian edition. The Meaning of Sedition 35 Chapter 1. Stalin Is Dead! 75 Chapter 2. The Voice of the People 105 Chapter 3. Heretics and Profaners 163 Chapter 4. Get Out the Vote! 177 Chapter 5. Lone Protesters 199 Chapter 6. Leaflets and Anonymous Letters 209 Chapter 7. Authors and Their Suggestions for the Improvement of Life 261 Chapter 8. Underground Groups and Organizations 294 Notes 343 Glossary 395 Name Index 399 Place-Name Index 418 Although dissident Soviet intellectuals in the post-Stalin era received wide international attention, ordinary people who opposed the regime rarely had their voices heard. This book is the first to tell the hidden story of popular discontent during the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years. It draws on an extraordinary collection of arrest and prosecution records from the 1960s and 1970s found in Soviet Procuracy archives