Voices of Dissent

Abstract

1978 may be a good vantage point from which to survey the development of dissent and opposition in the countries within the Soviet orbit. The blunder the Russians had committed by engineering the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact countries ten years ago produced in the whole of Eastern Europe an effect opposite to that intended. One of the aims of the utterly unimaginative men in the Kremlin was to stamp out once and for all the ferment of ideas which produced the Prague Spring. The shock of the invasion was at first stunning. Then, ostensibly, "normalization" followed, with the old orthodoxy once more imposed from above. And yet the ferment which the Russians had dreaded remained. Moreover, it has spread well beyond Czechoslovakia and has been in various degrees affecting the very depths of post-capitalist societies, now and again sending tremors up to the surface.