{"product_id":"to-the-success-of-our-hopeless-cause-pulitzer-prize-winner-the-many-lives-of-the-soviet-dissident-movement-paperback","title":"To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause (Pulitzer Prize Winner): The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement","description":"\u003cdiv data-a-expander-name=\"book_description_expander\" data-a-expander-collapsed-height=\"280\" class=\"a-expander-collapsed-height a-row a-expander-container a-spacing-base a-expander-partial-collapse-container\" style=\"max-height: none; height: 280px;\"\u003e \u003cdiv data-expanded=\"false\" class=\"a-expander-content a-expander-partial-collapse-content\" style=\"padding-bottom: 20px;\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003eWINNER OF THE 2025 PULITZER PRIZE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA \"riveting history\" (\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e) of the Soviet dissident movement, which hastened the end of the USSR and still provides a model of opposition in Putin’s Russia—and beyond\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A book about a past time that is very much a book for our time. . . . A story from which we all stand to learn as we face a new wave of authoritarianism.”—\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBeginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was unexpectedly confronted by a dissident movement that captured the world’s imagination. Demanding that the Kremlin obey its own laws, an improbable band of Soviet citizens held unauthorized public gatherings, petitioned in support of arrested intellectuals, and circulated banned samizdat texts. Soviet authorities arrested dissidents, subjected them to bogus trials and vicious press campaigns, sentenced them to psychiatric hospitals and labor camps, sent them into exile—and transformed them into martyred heroes. Against all odds, the dissident movement undermined the Soviet system and hastened its collapse. Taking its title from a toast made at dissident gatherings, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eTo the Success of Our Hopeless Cause\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is a definitive history of a remarkable group of people who helped change the twentieth century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBenjamin Nathans’s vivid narrative tells the dramatic story of the men and women who became dissidents—from Nobel laureates Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn to many others who are virtually unknown today. Drawing on diaries, memoirs, personal letters, interviews, and KGB interrogation records, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eTo the Success of Our Hopeless Cause\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e reveals how dissidents decided to use Soviet law to contain the power of the Soviet state. This strategy, as one of them put it, was “simple to the point of genius: in an unfree country, they began to conduct themselves like free people.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn extraordinary account of the Soviet dissident movement, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eTo the Success of Our Hopeless Cause \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eshows how dissidents spearheaded the struggle to break free of the USSR’s totalitarian past, a struggle that continues in Putin’s Russia—and that illuminates other struggles between hopelessness and perseverance today.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003c\/div\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"a-expander-header a-expander-partial-collapse-header\" style=\"opacity: 1; display: block;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"a-expander-content-fade\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"javascript:void(0)\" role=\"button\" data-action=\"a-expander-toggle\" class=\"a-declarative\" data-a-expandev\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50318839709981,"sku":"9780691255583","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0901\/5692\/5213\/files\/9780691255583.jpg?v=1757016713","url":"https:\/\/bookdelico.com\/products\/to-the-success-of-our-hopeless-cause-pulitzer-prize-winner-the-many-lives-of-the-soviet-dissident-movement-paperback","provider":"Book Delico ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}