CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Wilson, Natasha Mary |
|---|---|
| Title | The Neformaly and the Development of Civil Society During Perestroika |
| Summary | This thesis is a study of the neformaly (unofficial clubs) which were active during Perestroika, in particularly, the Federation of Socialist Social Clubs (FSOK) and the Moscow Popular Front (MPF). This study addresses the intellectual origins of this group in the genus of a new generation of left-wing dissidents of the late 1970s and early 1980s and the activity of these groups in mid-1988 in the atmosphere of the Nineteenth All-Union Party Conference. The thesis also addresses the larger conception of alternate discourses in Soviet society in the form of a generational study to compare the ‘new left’ with older generations of critical thinkers. It firstly addresses the shest’desiatniki (men of the 1960s) whose formative experience took place during Khrushchev’s Thaw and the trauma of the liberalisation of the Prague Spring to be followed by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the abandonment of hopes for reform. The shest’desiatniki later became divided into a movement of pravozashchitniki (rights defenders), activists disillusioned by socialism who became preoccupied with power of the rule of law and human rights as a means to improve Soviet socialism and those shest’desiatniki who internalised and betrayed their liberal views in the Brezhnev era, only to emerge as enthusiastic proponents of Perestroika. The thesis contextualises the history of Perestroika as a striving for civil society and the drive towards democratic socialism on behalf of both the older shest’desiatniki represented by Gorbachev and his reformers and the neformaly activists. However, it concludes that the emergent civil society of Perestroika was manipulated by the ruling elite around the figure of Yeltsin, who perceived the benefits of an evolution towards capitalist society and the prospect of private property and used their power to enact this, diminishing the influence of the neformaly at the grassroots and Gorbachev’s reformers to achieve a form of democratic socialism. |
| Supervisor | Professor Marsha Siefert |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/wilson_natasha.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2025, Central European University