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WINNER OF THE 2025 PULITZER PRIZE

Winner of the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize

A "riveting history" (Wall Street Journal) 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

"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." -- Los Angeles Review of Books

Beginning 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, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause is a definitive history of a remarkable group of people who helped change the twentieth century.

Benjamin 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, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause 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."

An extraordinary account of the Soviet dissident movement, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause shows 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.

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  • We started tracking this book on May 2, 2024.
  • This book was $31.16 when we started tracking it.
  • The price of this book has changed 11 times in the past 451 days.
  • The current price of this book is $22.67 last checked 19 hours ago.
  • The lowest price to date was $22.67 last reached on July 14, 2025.
  • This book has been $22.67 one time since we started tracking it.
  • The highest price to date was $31.16 last reached on August 23, 2024.
  • This book has been $31.16 2 times since we started tracking it.
  • This book is currently at its lowest price since we started tracking it.

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  • Text-to-Speech: Disabled
  • Lending: Disabled
  • Print Length: 794 Pages
  • File Size: 407 KB

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