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7 Fletcher F. 365 (1983)
A Policy Perspective on Dissent and Repression in the Soviet Union

handle is hein.journals/forwa7 and id is 371 raw text is: A Policy Perspective on Dissent and Repression in the Soviet Union ALLEN LYNCH In this commentary, Allen Lynch examines the process of dissent and repression in the Soviet Union from the point of view of American foreign policy. He argues that American human rights policy is doomed to failure as long as it continues to emphasize support for the politically insignificant Soviet dissident intelligentsia. In order to achieve true progress in alleviating Soviet repression, the author argues, the United States must work through organizations considered legitimate by the Soviet government. He concludes that the best way to do this is through a policy of ddtente. Many Americans view Soviet dissidents as outspoken representatives of a disenchanted Soviet populace. According to this theory, the dissident intelligentsia speaks the mind of - and is secretly admired by - the majority of the Soviet citizens. American policy-makers tend to share this perception and have, therefore, based U.S. human rights policy on public support for these intellectuals. Yet the Alexander Solzhenitsyns and Andrei Sakharovs are but a tiny minority. The nature and extent of Soviet dissent must be viewed in the perspective of those citizens who are not dissidents; George Feifer speaks of the 99.9 percent who abstain from dissent.' In fact, he must be speaking of the 99.9 percent of the Soviet intelligentsia who abstain from dissent since the 0. 1 percent of Soviet citizenry remaining would yield a figure of 260,000 dissidents, a number which is universally conceded by Western specialists to be far too high. It is in this context that demonstrations and dissent in the Soviet Union must be viewed. The much-publicized August 1968 demonstration in Red Square, for example, coming after the crushing of the Prague Spring, involved a total of only seven people. The numerical isolation of the dissident intelligentsia is reinforced by that intelligentsia's deep sense of despair over the possibilities for the kind of social and political change which most dissidents feel is consonant with a society responsive to the most rudimentary criteria for the observance of human rights. It is significant that the principal source of the pessimism Allen Lynch is a candidate for a Ph.D at Columbia University's Department of Political Science. He received a Certificate from the Russian Institute at Columbia University in 1979. 1. George Feifer, No Protest: The Case of the Passive Minority, in Dissent in the USSR, ed., Rudolf Tokes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), p. 420.

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