To The Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement

Benjamin Nathans tells the story of the Soviet dissident movement largely through individual lives, from the trials of the 1960s through samizdat and the Helsinki groups. The title comes from a toast the dissidents actually used, which captures how little any of them expected to win. Nathans is careful about what the movement did and did not achieve, and the book is now the standard account.