Dissident Historian
From an allegedly Marxist viewpoint, Medvedev criticized former Russian General Secretary Joseph Stalin, and Stalinism in general, during the Soviet era. In the early 1960s, Medvedev was engaged in samizdat publications. He was critical of the unscientific nature of Lysenkoism.
In 1969, Medvedev was expelled from the Communist Party after the publication of his book Let History Judge, which criticized Stalin and Stalinism at a time when official Soviet propagandists were trying to partially rehabilitate the former dictator. Let History Judge reflected the dissident thinking that emerged in the 1960s among Soviet intellectuals who, like Medvedev, sought a reformed, democratic socialism and a return to Leninism. He announced his position, along with Andrei Sakharov and others, in an open letter to the Soviet leadership in 1970.
Medvedev was often subject to house arrest and KGB harassment under Leonid Brezhnev, but managed to publish numerous critical writings on Soviet history and politics abroad. Medvedev was oppressed for his active support of democracy after he successfully published Let History Judge abroad in the late 1960s.
In a book co-authored with his identical twin brother, Zhores, A Question of Madness, Medvedev describes Zhores' involuntary commitment in the Kaluga Psychiatric Hospital. Zhores, a dissident biologist, was questioned at the Kaluga psychiatric facilities about his involvement with samizdat, and about the book he had written, The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko; Zhores was exiled to Britain in the 1970s.
Medvedev returned to the ruling party in 1989, after Mikhail Gorbachev launched his perestroika and glasnost program of gradual political and economic reforms. He was elected to the Soviet Union's Congress of People's Deputies and was named as member of the Supreme Soviet, the permanent working body of the Congress. After the collapse of the Soviet government, Medvedev joined with dozens of other former communist deputies of the Soviet and Russian parliaments to found the Socialist Party of Working People, becoming a co-chair of the party.
Medvedev supports the current President of Russia and former Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Read more about this topic: Roy Medvedev
Famous quotes containing the words dissident and/or historian:
“The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public, he offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin—and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost.”
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“To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.”
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