Dissidents Without Hope – Nadya Williams

Benjamin Nathans' new book, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement , is out now.

It's a story of human hope and resilience in the face of evil that was at times bureaucratic and banal, other times violent and murderous.

Nathans: The experiences of Soviet dissidents might teach us something about the possibilities for public engagement under circumstances that appeared even more hopeless than our own.

Many of the dissidents were citizens in love with their state, author says.

Author: Dissidents could not exist without the oppressive state against which to use rhetorical talents.

He says they wanted to love their state and form it for freedom, even as they only knew freedom from books they read.

Three decades after the Soviet collapse, the story is not yet over, says Nathans .

Nathans says studying the stories of the Soviet dissidents gives a blueprint for the future.

He concludes the book with a grim look at the past repeating itself in the present: Putin ’s repressive regime.