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long read August 2025

A definitive history of the Soviet dissident movement

By Lucy Jeffery
Samizdat documents laid out neatly on a table. On top of the document stash in the middle there are a number of camera film containers.
Lucy Jeffery’s in-depth review of Benjamin Nathans’ Pulitzer Prize-winning book, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement (Princeton University Press, 2024), praises not only the treasure trove of information the book contains, but also notes that the parallels with Russia today will not be lost on contemporary readers.
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