Ben Nathans Public Lecture

Renowned historian Ben Nathans will explore the evolution of the Soviet dissident movement and its broader implications for understanding dissent in authoritarian societies. His lecture will shed light on how Soviet dissidents, shaped by the system they opposed, developed concepts of human rights and legal norms.

A typescript journal, the Chronicle of Current Events (Хроника Текущих Собитии) was produced every 2-4 months in Moscow by the human rights movement in the USSR. It offers a unique, uncensored and continuous account of life inside the Soviet Union from 1968 to 1982. Starting with reports from Moscow and Leningrad the periodical’s network of contacts and sources of information expanded over the following 15 years until it regularly included about human rights violations (the persecution of believers, the identity of those imprisoned for their beliefs in prisons, labour camps and psychiatric hospitals) from Ukraine, Lithuania, Armenia and other parts of the USSR.