INTELLECTUAL DISSENT IN THE USSR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85T00875R002000120036-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 26
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 14, 2004
• Sequence Number: 36
• Publication Date: February 22, 1973
• Content Type: MEMO

25X1
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Confidential
O. N. E.
MEMORANDUM
OFFICE OF
NATIONAL ESTIMATES
Intellectual Dissent in the USSR
CIA
DOCUMENT SERVIgES BRANCH
F1tT COPY
001101 DESTROY
Confidential
22 February 1973
Copy No.
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WARNING
This document contains information affecting the national
defense of the United States, within the meaning of Title
18, sections 793 and 794, of the US Code, as amended.
Its transmission or revelation of its contents to or re-
ceipt by an unauthorized person is prohibited by law.
STAT
ILLEGI
B
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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
OFFICE OF NATIONAL ESTIMATES
22 February 1973
INTELLECTUAL DISSENT IN THE USSR
The vigorous and varied efforts that Soviet authorities
have undc taken against intellectual dissent in the Zast few years
have Zeft the dissidents weakened, discouraged, and on the defensive.
Internal political considerations, however, are likely to limit the
degree of repression the regime can impose upon its intellectual
critics. The regime has also shown itself more sensitive than in
the past to foreign opinion about the handling of internal dissent.
In the setting of a policy which looks to the opening of
wider and more diverse contacts with the West, the Soviet leadership
will probably be more anxious than before to maintain internal
discipline but may find it necessary to choose its means more
carefully -- Zest it jeopardize both detente and its own hopes of
acquiring technological and scientific know-how from the West. The
important tong-range question may not be the fate of the existing
dissident movement as such, but whether underlying dissatisfactions
will grow and generate new impetus for change within the system.
This memorandum was prepared in the Office of National Estimates and
discussed with appropriate offices in CIA, which are in agreement with
its principal judgments.
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THE GROWTH AND DECLINE OF DISSENT
1. origins. The protests in the mid-1960s over the arrest and
trial of the dissident writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuly Daniel marked
the beginning of a more active and political phase of intellectual dissent
in the USSR. Criticism through literary symbolism and allegory was over-
taken by r re outspoken forms of protest: occasional public demonstra-
tions by small groups; and publicized letters, petitions, and manifestos.
Dissident documents, which began by a6dressing specific grievances, soon
came to advocate broad programs of political reform. Samizdat ("self-
published") literature proliferated and also became more political, the
most remarkable example being a regularly distributed periodical, the
Chronicle of Current Events, which gathered news of dissent and repression
from various parts of the country, furnishing the dissident movement with
an element of cohesion and continuity.
2. It soon becawe apparent that the writers and artists hoping for
freer expression had been joined by others in the Soviet intelligentsia
wh, fished to raise additional issues: scientists seeking expanded
communication with the non-Soviet world; nationalist groups wanting more
autonomy; members of religious sects advocating the freedom to proselytize;
and radicals espousing structural changes in the political system. The
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regime provided a common target for all these groups, and the fuller
discussion of al'; issues in a liberalized political atmosphere became
a shared goal. The dissenters' explicit appeals for broader civil rights
and democratiza-.ion often rang with a strong moral tone and voiced an
eloquent challonge t1o Party primacy and orthodoxy.
3. At 'times the regime seemed to be taken aback by the dissenters'
boldness and persistence. The clamor over tha Sinyavsky-Daniel affair
probably ca,.,sed second thoughts within the political leadership about
the advisability of holding well publicized trials.* On several occa-
sions the angry outcries of eminent academicians and scientists apparently
influenced the Kremlin to release well-known dissidents from psychiatric
hospitals. Despite its difficulty in deciding how to cope with the
problem, however, the regime remained fundamentally unyielding in its
atti tud :.
4. The Dissidents under Pressure. The regime possesses, of course,
a number of overwhelming advantages in its contest with the dissenters.
In fact, however, it has chosen to deal with the problem on a piecemeal
basis, using indirect measures in many cases, and direct, heavy-handed
Yury Andropov, appointed KGB chief in 1967, is rumored to be against
such triaZa on the ground that they provoke further dissidence.
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actions in a limited number. The degree of tactical success it has
achieved in this way owes much to the inherent weaknesses of the
disparate dissident elements. Most of the intellectual dissenters eschew
the Leninist principles of disciplined, hierarchical organization,
adherence by all members to one dogmatic program, and the single-minded
purpose of seizing political power as incompatible with their aim of
opening up and modernizing Soviet society. Moreover, their movement is
essentially elitist and has only limited popular appeal. (The available
evidence of what might be called blue-collar dissent makes it clear that
ordinary workers tend to resent the privileges of all favored'segments
of Soviet society, including the intelligentsia, and their complaints
and dissatisfactions have little to do with civil and human rights.)
5. Various kinds of harassment (including searches, confiscations,
and interrogations) and warnings of administrative actions (including loss
of job) have served to hamper dissident activities and have probably kept
many sympathizers from becoming actively involved. Some well-known
dissenters have refused to be cowed by indirect pressures, and they have
been removed from circulation. A number, including poet Iosif Brodsky
and mathematician Aleksandr Yesenin-Volpin, have been permitted or
encouraged to emigrate, and physicist Valery Chalidze was recently
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deprived of his Soviet citizenship while on a lecture tour in the.US.*
Others, including former Army general Petr Grigorenko, who provided a
degree of leadership for the dissident movement in the late 1960s, have
been imprisoned or placed in psychiatric institutions. Those whose
terms of imprisonment have expired often do not return to active dissi-
dence (normally they are banished from Moscow or, as in the c?,e of
Sinyavsky, they seek exit visas). Still others'are subjected to a combina-
tion of penalties; Vladimir Bukovsky, a longtime activist, was sentenced
to two years in prison, five in a camp, and five in exile.
6. The Samizdat Journals in Jeopardy. The example made of
Bukovsky certainly bodes ill for Petr Yakir, a leading dissenter arrested
last June. Yakir's fate is of particular importance because his arrest
came in the midst of an intensive KGB campaign ("Case 24") against the
surprisingly successful and long-lived Chronicle of Current Events. Yakir,
the son of a prominent general shot by Stalin and rehabilitated by
Khrushchev, has long been a key figure in the journal's underground net-
work. Reports that he has weakened under the pressure of alcohol
Novelist AZeksandr SoZzhenitsyn, fearing a similar fate, refused to
go abroad in 1970 to receive his Nobel Prize. Biologist Zhores
Medvedev, whose book The Medvedev Papers critically examined Soviet
censorship practices, departed Zast month with his family for a
year's stay in Britain, knowing that he may not be permitted to
return to the USSR.
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deprivation and has revealed the names of his associates have under-
standably distressed dissident circles in Moscow.*
7. "Case 24," according to the Chronicle, was launched about a
year ago by a decree of the Central Committee, an action that testified
to the grave concern of the Party leadership. The journal managed --
with some interruption of its regular bimonthly schedule -- to survive
through 1972, publishing five numbers. Perhaps its network is now fairly
broadly based and compartmented, and perhaps its publishers already have
taken precautions to protect the journal from Yakir's possible revela-
tions. But the arrests of Yakir, Viktor Krasin, and other important
individuals, plus the threats of further reprisals against others, have
apparently taken their toll. The last issue appeared in the fall, and
the next is long overdue.
8. Other samizdat journals with different interests and purposes
have appeared in recent years, but they too have had a rough go of it.
The radical Democrat, for example, asserts the necessity of forming
clandestine political organizations in active opposition to the regime.
Several reports indicate that "Case 24" may be winding up its
investigative phase prior to a trial focused on Yakir. So far,
accused dissidents have defended their actions in court, but Yakir
may make a public "confession."
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It advocates the escalation of dissent beyond the usual tactics of
"legalist" actions, theoretical discussions, and the dissemination of
uncensored news. By contrast, ventures like the Chronicle, though
clearly underground activities requiring secrecy and precaution, are not
aimed at open political opposition to or forcible displacement of the
Party.
9. But the most interesting of the other periodicals has been the
Political Diary, a monthly that began publishing shortly after
Khrushchev's fall in 1964 (more than three years earlier than the
Chronicle) but -- for reasons that are not clear -- was made known to
the West less than two years ago. It was indicated at that time that
publication of the journal was being suspended or stopped. This journal
has served as a forum for relatively candid discussions of domestic and
foreign political questions, such as shifts among Kreniin leaders,
cultural controls, Sino-Soviet relations, and disarmament. The tenor of
the articles in the representative issues seen in the West is clearly
Marxist, albeit critically and liberally so, and its small circle of
writers and readers probably has included Party members.
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CONTINUING SOURCES OF DISSENT
10. The Specter of Nationalism. Several other samizdat
journals that have appeared in the 1970s reflect strong national feelings.
The Ukrainian Herald is similar to the Chronicle but concentrates on
events in the Ukraine, and Exodus has provided a means of expression for
the active Jewish nationalists. Both journals find the struggle for civil
rights and political liberalization congenial to their political prefer-
ences and useful in furthering specifically national concerns. This
mingling of nationalism with the civil rights movement has heightened
anxiety in the Kremlin about both problems.
11. Ukrainian nationalism has been the target of the most severe
blows in the regime's recent crackdown. Last year scores of Ukrainians,
including Vyacheslav Chornovil, a journalist who had written about the
trials of Ukrainian intellectuals in the 1960s, were arrested, and a
number of long sentences (up to 15 years) have been meted out. Petr
Shelest, the republican Party chief ousted last spring, among his other
sins evidently tolerated a degree of local nationalism that did not sit
well with his Politburo colleagues. Since his removal authorities have
cracked a sterner whip over Ukrainian dissidents and curbed expressions
of Ukrainian nationalism.
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12. Expressions of nationalism have sometimes led to antagonism
between dissenters. Certain exponents of Russian nationalism, for
example, have used their own samizdat journals to give vent to anti-
democratic, anti-Ukrainian, and anti-semitic feelings. But there have
also been instances of mutual sympathies and cooperation, as when
Grigorenko, a Ukrainian, sought to help the Crimean Tatars return to their
homeland from exile in Central Asia. Nationalism remains a strong force
in the USSR and could provide an important link between dissenting
intellectuals and other elements of the population that might otherwise
remain indifferent.
13. Exodus. Jewish nationalism poses a unique problem for the
regime, and the Kremlin seems to be having trouble getting a firm grip
on a force whose growth and direction apparently took the Party leaders
by surprise. Individual Jews have always made up a substantial portion
of the dissident movement. But the revival of Jewish national conscious-
ness and pride, which gained impetus from the Israeli military victory
in 1967, brought about an increase in underground activities and attention
focused on Israel. In the wake of a government crackdown beginning in
1970 many Jews began to concentrate their efforts on a new aim: emigra-
tion. In 1972 alone more than 30,000 Jews left the Soviet Union for
Israel.
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14. The regime allowed this migration to develop and continue
largely because it hoped to defuse Jewish dissidence without resorting
to increased internal repression and to avoid further tarnishing of
the Soviet image abroad, which. could retard the momentum of d6tente.
Still, the Kremlin has attempted to control the flow in several ways..
Jews who apply for exit visas often face immediate loss of job. Invita-
tions from relatives abroad are needed to leave the country (the rationale
of family reunions being more acceptable to the Soviet government than
other reasons). The disillusionment of the relatively few Jews who seek
reentry into the USSR from Israel has received recent attention in
official propaganda. And last August a tax reimbursing the state for
the educational expenses of emigrants was decreed (the fee involved for
a highly educated specialist reportedly runs into tens of thousands of
rubles). In practice, however, this obstacle is frequently overcome by
one means or another, and the number of Jewish emigrants in 1973 may well
match last year's figure.
15. Soviet dissenters have long supported emigration -- by Jews
and others -- on the ground that it is a basic human right. But the
Jewish exodus has contributed to the enervation of the dissident movement.
The departure of activists has the immediate adverse effect of reducing
the dissenters' ranks, and many of those who remain shift their interest
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from improving their lot in the USSR to efforts aimed at getting
16. The relative success,, of the Jews at forcing the Kremlin's
hand could encourage other national groups to behave militantly. But
the Jews are something of a special case. Other national groups do not
enjoy the foreign resources available to th> Jews, and most of them do
not have a homeland outside the USSR to draw their populations.*
17. The Scientific Elite -- Privileged but Discontented. Another
group that creates special problems for the regime is the scientists.
Within the new technical elite, educated under Soviet rule and pampered
by material advantages, there have developed political attitudes every
bit as tainted as those of the liberal writers -- and perhaps more
threatening politically. Certain prominent scientists have extended
their concern beyond pleas for freer international exchanges and
communication to active and public protests regarding civil liberties.
A bold sense of social responsibility has led a few to devote more
energy to this political struggle than to their scientific labors.
* Some Central Asians have alluded to the prospect of Chinese help
from across the border in an eventual showdown with the Russians.
Some Soviet Armenians have talked of going to Turkey, and a number
of ethnic Germans have been permitted to leave the USSR for Germany.
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18. Although the size of the scientific elite has grown rapidly
because of the Soviet stress on technical education, the importance of
the scientists lies less in their numbers than in their potential influ-
ence. They are often concentrated in major cities or "academic towns"
and have ties with intellectuals in other fields. The scientists are
also among the most sophisticated members of Soviet society, and the
political leadership of the country is not a faceless "they" to the top
academicians, who are in some cases personally acquainted with high Party
officials. All Soviet citizens are educated virtually to idolize
science, and if intellectuals regard certain writers as speaking for
the conscience of the nation, an equally widespread feeling is that
scientists speak for its future.
19. Perhaps the clearest and most renowned voice of political
dissent in the USSR is that of Andrei Sakharov, the brilliant nuclear
physicist generally regarded as the "father" of the Soviet hydrogen
bomb, who with two colleagues formed a Committee on Human Rights in
1970. Sakharov insists that he aspires to a dialogue with the Kremlin
leadership, and he has addressed several appeals to Soviet leaders
advocating democratization of domestic politics and rationalization
of the economy. But lack of regime response led him in 1972 to
publicize abroad a memorandum he had sent to Brezhnev on the eve of
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the 24th Party Congress. The program of reform hat Sakharov sets
forth in this document is more detailed and demanding than the ideas he
expressed in his 1968 essay on peaceful coexistence and intellectual
freedom, and it probably resulted from his growing frustration.
20. The Committee -- which specifically excludes Party members --
still meets to discuss and act on civil rights problems, and Sakharov
continues to protest silently in Moscow's Pushkin Square each year on
Soviet Constitution Day. But Sakharov has found that his influence is
negligible, and his less well-known dissident colleagues have not shared
his immunity from arrest. His actions could not prevent the trial and
five-year prison sentence last fall of Kronid Lyubarsky, a dissident
astrophysicist, or deter Moscow State University from suspending his
own stepdaughter. A recent attack on Sakharov himself, the first to
appear in the Soviet press, portrays him as a politically naive utopian
playing into the hands of anti-Soviet elements in the West. It may be
a warning that Sakharov's reputation will no longer protect him from
personal harassment, or even arrest, if he continues to publicize his
complaints.
21. Another physicist, Valery Chalidze, also a charter member
of the Committee, has been a leading advocate of the "legalist" approach
in political dissent. He has collected information about instances of
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illegality in Soviet Judicial practices and tried to use existing
Soviet law and the outspoken exposure of injustices to moderate regime
behavior. He edited the academically styled samizdat journal Social
Problems and signed his name to each issue to symbolize the claim that
his actions were neither anti-Soviet nor illegal. But about a year ago
Chalidze ceased publication of the Journal, and last fall he quit the
Committee after several KGB warnings about his activities and amid
rumors of tactical squabbles with his fellow dissidents about his deci-
sion to go abroad.*
22. Despite the theoretical nature of much of their dissent
and the ineffectiveness of their efforts to arouse citizen interest in
asserting civil rights, the actions and attitudes of the scientists are
taken seriously by the regime. At the 24th Party Congress the power of
Party organizations to supervise the ac,ninistration of research institutes
The other co-founder of the Committee, physicist Andrei
TverdokhZebov, has also quit. But additional members of the
intellectual elite (including Igor Shafarevich, a widely respected
mathematician) have joined the Committee. Sotzhenitsyn has asso-
ciated himself with its work, and cellist Mstis:.av Rostropovioh has
signed Committee-sponsored appeals such as the petition prepared
last fall supporting amnesty for political prisoners.
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and cultural establishments was broadened.) But the scientists are
likely to remain a particularly bothersome thorn in the side of the
leadership. Among younger scientists (and probably, as Sakharov
claims, throughout the entire intellectual elite) there are many who
sympathize with Sakharov and regard parts of the official ideology
with contempt. In the 1972 elections to the Academy of Sciences, a
body which antedates the Bolsheviks by more than a century, the members
refused to fill vacancies rather than accept nominees whose principal
reconnendation was the backing of the Party.
23. The Western Connection. Soviet dissent is basically home-
grown. But the dissidents find little encouragement for their ideas in
the USSR, and they turn where they can for intellectual, moral, and
material support. Like past generations of Russian dissenters they have
used ideas and documents from the West to criticize government thought
and practice at home./ Chal i dze and others have used the UN's Universal
Declaration of Human Rights as an expression of "civilized norms" to
which they would like to see Soviet law and practice conform, and the
In the months before the congress the Party committee at the
Lebedev Institute, where Sakharov used to work and still consults
weekly, was taken to task for ideological shortcomings.
1 The positive feeling toward and interest in the West, particularly
the US, shared by most dissenters stands in contrast to their
basic fear and distrust of China.
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Committee on Human Rights has affiliated with the International League
for the Rights of Man. The West also provides u channel for publicizing
news of dissident activities and regime repression both to sympathizers
abroad and, through feedback via Western radio stations, to a sizable
domestic audience. Such publicity embarrasses the Kremlin and, according
to some reports, at times affords the dissidents a degree of protection
from regime actions.
24. The dissenters run considerable risks in maintaining their
ties with the West, and the regime demonstrates its appreciation of the
relationship by energetically trying to break it. Dissidents have
complained about interference with international mail by Soviet authorities
attempting to prevent the receipt of items such as UN documents. The
Jamming of Western radio broadcasts, renewed in 1968, has continued (Radio
Israel was added to the list of jammed stations last year), telephone
restrictions have increased, and the USSR last fall sponsored a UN
General Assembly resolution opposing direct television broadcasts from
space satellites into countries that do not want them. The Soviet leaders
remember well the importance of foreign support to their revolutionary
antecedents. They try as hard to isolate the intellectual nonconformists
from the West as from Soviet society.
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25. Moscow has felt it necessary to permit some increase in
dealings between Western and Soviet scholars and scientists as a means
of gaining information and other practical benefits. But such contacts
are viewed by the Kremlin as potential sources of political infection.
They expose to Western influence persons particularly susceptible to
unorthodox attitudes, and the Party leaders feel they must take steps to
inoculate the intelligentsia against this danger. The stricter internal
policy of recent years is, in effect, a substitute for the physical
isolation of Stalin's day.
A LOOK AHEAD
26. Problems Posed by Detente. But in the 20 years since Stalin's
death Soviet domestic needs have altered and the outside world has
changed. Both of these conditions figure in Moscow's pursuit of detente.
The anticipated expansion of East-West intercourse will, of course, expose
many more members of the Soviet intelligentsia to Western contacts. The
Kremlin may hope that the West wants trade and detente with the USSR badly
enough to overlook its internal campaign for conformity. But Moscow's
de-ire for trade, Joint projects, and expanded exchanges of information
to keep pace with advancing technology and to boost its economy is
certainly strong, and the Soviet leaders have already felt obliged because
of Western pressures to moderate certain of their domestic actions.
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27. The Kremlin's handling of the Leningrad hijacking trial
in 1970 and its bureaucratic obstacles to Jewish emigration have come
under heavy international criticism. Partial blockage of Soviet-
American trade in retaliation for the "brain drain" tax has become
a real threat in the US Congress. In all likelihood the Party leaders
genuinely feel that their rules governing emigration are, as they claim,
purely an internal matter. They retain the option to restrict the flow
whenever they wish (for example, by requiring closer kinship between
prospective emigrants and their relatives abroad). But they also do
not want to Jeopardize the fruits of d6tente. Moscow's somewhat uneven
enforcement of the decree last year and regularization of certain
exemptions and of amortized repayment obligations early this year betray
Soviet sensitivity to these foreign pressures.
28. Suppression of dissent and advocacy of d6tente appear to be
locked in mutual contradiction. It is true that in recent years the
regime has intensified its efforts in both matters simultaneously. But
in doing so it has found that each imposes certain limits on the other.
If dissent ever became an actual political threat to the regime, no
doubt the leaders would move to meet the threat regardless of the con-
sequences for d6tentc. But so long as intellectual dissent remains
more eloquent than effective the interplay is likely to continue. In
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this context, although the basic internal controls over the intelli-
gentsia will remain in force, the regime's considerable commitment
to gaining foreign assistance for internal economic development will
render it vulnerable in some cases to external influences on its internal
policies.
29. Continuing Intozmal Conatrainto. The Kremlin must also take
into account various internal limits on its freedom to tighten the screws
on nonconformists -- limits that Stalin was not obliged to reckon with.
The Party leadership can ill afford increased alienation within the
intelligentsia, especially among the technical elite upon whom it relies
for economic progress. And a greatly expanded role for the internal
security organs, which would be bound to accompany a policy of extreme
repression, could well have far-reaching repercussions within the
political system, including the highest levels, that most Party leaders
probably wish to avoid. The combination of both foreign and domestic
pressures will provide numerous opportunities for contention within the
Soviet political leadership over the methods to be used in quieting
intellectual dissent, and the Kremlin's campaign against dissidence will
probably continue to show signs of improvisation.
30. It can be argued that to some extent the post-Khrushchev
leaders themselves have added to the dimensions of the problem by their
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conservative attitudes gnerally. Yet Soviet intellectual dissent
today is nun merely a reaction to the clampdown after Khrushchev.
The sweeping criticisms of the entire Soviet system by leading dissident
spokesmen like Sakharov and historian Roy Medvedev plead for more basic
changes than Khrushchev ever contemplated. There is little chance that
the myth of Party infallibility can be restored, and the dissatisfactions
growing out of the frustration of hopes aroused in the last two decades
seem both deep and widespread.
31. Many of the current intellectual dissidents started out
seeking to be constructive critics working within the system. But the
regime has consistently denied them such a role and thereby has blocked
the most logical and direct path for intellectual dissent to take in
trying to influence the political leadership to adopt more liberalized
policies. Instead, the Kremlin has been hard on to ose few people of
liberal persuasion who had achieved positions of some influence within
the establishment. (The most notable casualties were A. M. Rumyantsev,
a chief editor of Pravda under Khrushchev, who was removed from the
directorship of the Institute for Concrete Social Research, and Aleksandr
Tvardovsky, the longtime chief editor of the literary Journal Novy Mir,
who resigned his post amid a purge of his colleagues shortly before his
death.) The Party since Khrushchev's fall has also reduced the influx
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of the educated intelligentsia into its ranks and has indicated that it
rejects any claim the intelligentsia may have to be the most progressive
element in Soviet society.
32, Aotivo Dioaent Managcabte? Diooatiofaation Not? So far
the campaign to check dissent has been successful. The limits on freedom
of expression, which intellectuals managed to push outward somewhat in
the 1960s, have been more and more narrowly defined by the regime in the
1970s. The dissidents profess and exhibit continuing determination in
the face of their acknowledged difficulties. But the prevailing mood
throughout much of the movement is one of frustration and anxiety, and
the dissidents do not see at all clearly "what is to be done" to reinvigo-
rate their movement and bring about political change.
33. Active dissent in the USSR is likely to persist in some form,
but in the future it may consist of more muted and isolated outbursts
of protest and be limited to very small groups of intellectuals. Frustra-
tion on the part of the dissenters could lead to the increased radicaliza-
tion of their views, and the continuation of the regime campaign against
activists could drive the dissenters further underground and force them
to employ more conspiratorial methods of operation and more devious means
of communication.
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34. But the principal moving force for political change in
the USSR will probably be a variety of pragmatists within the establish-
ment, such as Party officials and economic managers who become convinced
of the need for change in order to meet the demands of economic efficiency
and modernization. There is some evidence that elements of the intelli-
gentsia, official as well as academic, are taking an increasingly realistic
approach to various problems. Greater flexibility and less attention
to satisfying the demands of orthodoxy have been manifested in the past
few years in a number of disciplines such as sociology. The regime's
general restrictions on freedom of expression are clearly aimed at this
broader target as well as at the active dissident movement -- and are
probably considerably less effective in this larger sphere.
35. So far the more forward-looking elements within the Soviet
establishment have had little apparent'influence on the topmost leaders.
Even a high-ranking government or Party figure who might be sympathetic
to change and experimentation would now have a hard time battling the
inertia of his conservative colleagues and the entrenched bureaucracy.
But disaffection is likely to grow if the regime persists in its refusal
to accept political change, and the dissenters have already posed the
basic question at the root of the underlying dissatisfaction: how can
rationality and freedom of thought be permitted in the drive for
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scientific, technological, and economic progress, but denied in
political, social, and cultural affairs?
36. Indeed, some of the ideas already advanced by dissident
groups may be increasingly accepted by figures within the system --
perhaps more or 'iess unconsciously -- simply because so much of the
existing method of management and administration works so poorly. In
the long run, especially if such a process gains momentum, it will be
difficult for the regime to reconcile its resistance to political change
with its commitment to modernization. Underlying dissatisfactions and
a willingness to experiment may grow even while overt dissent is stifled.
The regime, faced with increasing constraints on its freedom of action,
may find that its toughest choices in attempting to impose orthodoxy
lie ahead.
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