no illusions about his agent, characterizing him in a telegram in 1938
to Moscow as “a complete racketeer and a blackmailer.” Dickstein
told his Soviet handler that he was also working for Polish intelli-
gence because of the high cost of political campaigning.DISSIDENTS.In the tsarist period, intellectual dissent originated with
Russian military officers who had served in the Napoleonic Wars, as
well as with a small group of nobility exposed to radical French, En-
glish, and German philosophy. This culminated in the Decembrists’
Revoltof 1825. Despite Nicholas I’s repressive regime, some politi-
cal dissent emerged in the 1840s, such as the publication of Alek-
sandr Hetzen’s Kolokol(The Bell), which questioned tsarist author-
ity. In the 1860s a new generation of intellectuals—many the children
of the clergy and the middle class—became more vocal and radical
in opposing autocracy. From these radicals came two streams of po-
litical opinion: populism (narodnichestvo) with it belief in the peas-
ant villages as the engine of change, and Marxism.
The tsarist authorities never understood dissent. The Third Sec-
tionand later the Okhranaonly poorly comprehended their oppo-
nents. They never really understood that the threat to the regime was
not ideas, but the living conditions of the peasantry and the new ur-
ban working class. All too often, moderate liberals were considered
no less dangerous to the regime than anarchists. Vladimir Leninand
the other Bolshevikswere descendants of these dissidents. Lenin’s
older brother, a radical populist, was hung for plotting the death of
tsar Aleksandr III. Lenin was introduced to both populism and Marx-
ism at Kazan University in the late 1880s and early 1890s. One of the
major reasons for the survival and flourishing of dissent in Russia
was its strong base in Europe. Both Marxists and populists lived
abroad with the tolerance of Western governments and the support of
liberal and socialist political parties.
The greatest force for dissent in early 20th-century Russia was the
Bolshevik Party. However, after seizing power, both Vladimir Lenin
and Joseph Stalinwere committed to the annihilation of political di-
versity. Before his death, Lenin demanded the arrest of all potential
dissenters, including fellow socialists in the Menshevik Party and an-
archists. Dissent in Soviet society was harshly punished, and the
archives of the security services bear stark witness to the fate of thoseDISSIDENTS •6906-313 A-G.qxd 7/27/06 7:55 AM Page 69