In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Benjamin Nathans about the Soviet dissident movement. They discuss how he complied all of the narratives together, why the Soviet dissident movement matters and how the Soviet legal system was used. They discuss civil disobedience vs. civil obedience, Alexander Volpin, Sinyavsky-Daniel affair, and what rights looked like in the Soviet Union. They talked about the makeup of the dissident movement, the Red Square demonstration, Initiative group, fifth directorate, Solzhenitsyn, other civil rights movements, legacy, and many more topics.

Benjamin Nathans is Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. His main focus areas are on Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, modern European Jewish history, history of human rights. He is the author of numerous books including the most recent, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement.

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