As a Cambridge University student in the early 1960s, Peter Reddaway traveled across those parts of the Soviet Union open to foreigners and studied at Moscow University. He made many friends on his travels, but safe to say, none held high office in the Soviet government. He was eventually expelled from the country.
The Dissidents is Reddaway’s memoir of his encounters with Russia and his work from abroad on behalf of Soviet citizens who resisted the regime. After becoming an instructor at the London School of Economics (he’s now professor emeritus of international relations at George Washington University), he took a leading role in academia of publicizing the abuses against human dignity that prevailed in the Soviet period. Reddaway had an advantage over many of his colleagues; his PhD topic concerned Soviet literature and he brought cultural understanding to his work in Sovietology.
His memoir is written in strict chronological order (he must have a prodigious memory or have been a prolific diary writer) rather than thematically. However, the theme that emerges is the necessity of scholars (and journalists) to see past propaganda and official obstruction. He didn’t simply write essays but launched letter-writing campaigns to draw attention to the plight of nonconformists imprisoned in Soviet mental hospitals. Unlike Reddaway, some academics apologized for the Soviet Union until the end.
