To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause (Pulitzer Prize Winner): The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement

(Paperback)

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WINNER OF THE 2025 PULITZER 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.

Reviews

"Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction"
"Shortlisted for the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize"
"Shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize, Lionel Gelber Foundation"
"Finalist for the Literary Award, Athenaeum of Philadelphia"
"A Stevereads History Book of the Year"
"A book about a past time that is very much a book for our time. . . . The story of the Soviet dissidents is a story from which we all stand to learn as we face a new wave of authoritarianism."---Jeffrey C. Isaac, Los Angeles Review of Books
"[A] thoughtful, superbly researched and gracefully written study of the Russian dissident movement. . . . When we Americans are ready for our own glasnost, Mr. Nathans's riveting history of those who returned to authenticity may inspire us to do the same."---Gary Saul Morson, Wall Street Journal
"It is widely held that the beginning of the end of Soviet totalitarianism arrived in the 1980s. . . . But as the historian Benjamin Nathans makes plain in To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause, an exhaustive chronicle of the Soviet dissident movement (based on more than two decades of research into a mountain of K.G.B. case files, unpublished diaries and private correspondence), the fire that would ultimately incinerate the U.S.S.R. was lit much earlier, in the 50s."---David Kortava, New York Times
"To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause sheds light on how this seemingly marginal protest movement, largely rejected by much of the society from which it sprang, nonetheless reinvented itself at key junctures and eventually to great effect. It also sheds light on the risk-takers themselves: an extraordinary cast of characters. . . . [A] magnum opus."---Michael David-Fox, The Nation
"[A] magisterial new history. . . . The great strength of Nathanss account is to put the dissidents back in their own time and place."---Stephen Lovell, Times Literary Supplement
"To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause offers refreshingly clear-eyed insights into the idiosyncratic world of those who fought for freedom behind the Iron Curtain. . . . [It] empathetically traces the stories of those who broke the rules by sticking to the law. . . . A host of original insights, shedding light on a remarkable cast of individuals who never succumbed to political apathy at a time when most did."---Katja Hoyer, The Telegraph
"Drawing on extensive new material, including unpublished diaries, private letters, and KGB interrogation transcripts, this insightful history of Soviet dissidents introduces remarkable individuals who courageously and selflessly tried to pursue civil rights from the 1960s through the 1980s."---Maria Lipman, Foreign Affairs
"An outstanding work of synthesis and interpretation, based on a comprehensive knowledge of the sources, [To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause] will be the definitive work on the subject for a long time to come. . . . [The] book is peppered with fascinating and sometimes touching vignettes about leading figures in the dissident movement. . . . An absorbing case study in how a creative minority can challenge the thinking of an authoritarian state."---Philip Boobbyer, Slavonic and East European Review
"Authoritative. . . . An essential addition to the cultural history of the late Soviet era." * Kirkus, starred review *
"An expertly conveyed history of the Soviet dissident movement and the individuals involved. For readers interested in the history of censorship, human rights, international law, or the Soviet Union. Its one not to miss." * Library Journal, starred review *
"Comprehensive and analytical, Benjamin Nathanss To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause vivifies the Soviet intellectuals at the complex heart of the human-rights-oriented dissidence movement in the USSR. . . . A meticulous history of a principled movement, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause addresses efforts to protect human rights within the context of the Soviet Union." * Foreword Reviews *
"[A] rigorous, probing, and highly engaging study." * Choice *
"Clear, scholarly and careful, averse to jargon, shrewd about testimony, subtle in his presentation of the various figures; he has interviewed many of the dissidents himself."---Robert Blaisdell, Russian Life
"Monumental. . . . A remarkable history of protest in Russia." * New Indian Express *
"Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction"
"Shortlisted for the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize"
"Shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize, Lionel Gelber Foundation"
"Finalist for the Literary Award, Athenaeum of Philadelphia"
"A Stevereads History Book of the Year"
"A book about a past time that is very much a book for our time. . . . The story of the Soviet dissidents is a story from which we all stand to learn as we face a new wave of authoritarianism."---Jeffrey C. Isaac, Los Angeles Review of Books
"[A] thoughtful, superbly researched and gracefully written study of the Russian dissident movement. . . . When we Americans are ready for our own glasnost, Mr. Nathans's riveting history of those who returned to authenticity may inspire us to do the same."---Gary Saul Morson, Wall Street Journal
"It is widely held that the beginning of the end of Soviet totalitarianism arrived in the 1980s. . . . But as the historian Benjamin Nathans makes plain in To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause, an exhaustive chronicle of the Soviet dissident movement (based on more than two decades of research into a mountain of K.G.B. case files, unpublished diaries and private correspondence), the fire that would ultimately incinerate the U.S.S.R. was lit much earlier, in the 50s."---David Kortava, New York Times
"To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause sheds light on how this seemingly marginal protest movement, largely rejected by much of the society from which it sprang, nonetheless reinvented itself at key junctures and eventually to great effect. It also sheds light on the risk-takers themselves: an extraordinary cast of characters. . . . [A] magnum opus."---Michael David-Fox, The Nation
"[A] magisterial new history. . . . The great strength of Nathanss account is to put the dissidents back in their own time and place."---Stephen Lovell, Times Literary Supplement
"To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause offers refreshingly clear-eyed insights into the idiosyncratic world of those who fought for freedom behind the Iron Curtain. . . . [It] empathetically traces the stories of those who broke the rules by sticking to the law. . . . A host of original insights, shedding light on a remarkable cast of individuals who never succumbed to political apathy at a time when most did."---Katja Hoyer, The Telegraph
"Drawing on extensive new material, including unpublished diaries, private letters, and KGB interrogation transcripts, this insightful history of Soviet dissidents introduces remarkable individuals who courageously and selflessly tried to pursue civil rights from the 1960s through the 1980s."---Maria Lipman, Foreign Affairs
"An outstanding work of synthesis and interpretation, based on a comprehensive knowledge of the sources, [To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause] will be the definitive work on the subject for a long time to come. . . . [The] book is peppered with fascinating and sometimes touching vignettes about leading figures in the dissident movement. . . . An absorbing case study in how a creative minority can challenge the thinking of an authoritarian state."---Philip Boobbyer, Slavonic and East European Review
"Authoritative. . . . An essential addition to the cultural history of the late Soviet era." * Kirkus, starred review *
"An expertly conveyed history of the Soviet dissident movement and the individuals involved. For readers interested in the history of censorship, human rights, international law, or the Soviet Union. Its one not to miss." * Library Journal, starred review *
"Comprehensive and analytical, Benjamin Nathanss To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause vivifies the Soviet intellectuals at the complex heart of the human-rights-oriented dissidence movement in the USSR. . . . A meticulous history of a principled movement, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause addresses efforts to protect human rights within the context of the Soviet Union." * Foreword Reviews *
"[A] rigorous, probing, and highly engaging study." * Choice *
"Clear, scholarly and careful, averse to jargon, shrewd about testimony, subtle in his presentation of the various figures; he has interviewed many of the dissidents himself."---Robert Blaisdell, Russian Life
"Monumental. . . . A remarkable history of protest in Russia." * New Indian Express *

Author Bio

Benjamin Nathans the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction for To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause. He is also the author of Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia, which was awarded the Koret Jewish Book Award, the Vucinich Book Prize, and the Lincoln Book Prize, and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in History. A frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement, Nathans is the Alan Charles Kors Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.