Socialist Dissidents: Last True Believers

Abstract

Today we know that the romantic revolutionary passions which we recalled so many times with such sweet sorrow degenerated. …Our dreams and ideals of that time turned gradually into dismal doctrine or shameless falsification. But still I think that the time was alive and bursting with youth. Not only with my own tender youth [but also] with the youth of the century. … [It was] the morning of an era. …Still young were the hopes of millions of people. … Young, too, were the poets, artists and musicians who proclaimed the beginning of new times ans new words (Kopelev 1978:ix)

성냥곽의 문구까지도 검열한다는 소련의 문화정책에 맞서 사상과 표현의 자유를 찾고자 1950년대부터 시작된 불법지하출판운동은 초기에 문학적 내용이 주를 이루었으나 소련정부의 탄압이 심혜짐에 따라 점차 정치적 색체를 띠게 되었다.