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The unique trajectory of Soviet dissident twin brothers Roy and Zhores Medvedev takes us through a century of history, from Stalin to Putin. They achieved fame as the first authors of independent research on Stalinism from within the USSR, but their lives were also marked by controversy.
List of contents
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Note on Archives
Introduction
Chapter 1. A Youth in Stalin’s Shadow
Chapter 2. A Crusade in Soviet Biology
Chapter 3. Stalin Is No More
Chapter 4. Making Sense of Stalinism
Chapter 5. Rebellious Intelligentsia
Chapter 6. A Question of Madness
Chapter 7. New Threats
Chapter 8. Into Exile
Chapter 9. Carving a “Third Way” in the Cold War
Chapter 10. Solzhenitsyn: The End of a Friendship
Chapter 11. Finding and Losing Political Allies
Chapter 12. Under the KGB’s Watch
Chapter 13. Andropov’s Protection
Chapter 14. The Nuclear Threat
Chapter 15. The Rise and Fall of Gorbachev’s Socialist Democracy
Chapter 16. The End of the Soviet Order
Chapter 17. Praising the Strong Rulers
About the author
Dr. Barbara Martin is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Her historical research, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, focuses on Soviet dissent and the religious revival in late Soviet Russia. She is the author of
Dissident Histories in the Soviet Union: From De-Stalinization to Perestroika (Bloomsbury, 2019).
Summary
Roy and Zhores Medvedev, two identical twins with a unique fate, not only lived through a whole century of history, from Stalin to Putin, they wrote and made history. Their research on Stalinism, the first to come out of the Soviet Union in the 1960s-1970s, turned them into famous dissidents overnight, but their criticism of the regime always remained loyal to Soviet power. The story of their lives provides a snapshot into the history of Soviet dissent, from psychiatric hospitalization to forced exile, and from KGB interrogations to collaboration with Western news correspondents. Yet their trajectory was also marred by controversy with fellow dissidents, and in the post-Soviet era active support of authoritarian rulers, including Vladimir Putin.
