Abstract

Soviet dissidents opposed to communism placed great emphasis on ‘conscience’. They saw themselves as involved both in a campaign against state oppression and an existential struggle for moral survival. This lecture will address the origins and nature of this stress on conscience, and explore some of the philosophical and theological issues arising out of it. The ideas and strategies of figures like Vladimir Bukovsky, Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn will be considered. There will also be discussion of the interrogation experiences of Walter Ciszek, a Polish-American Jesuit priest who was imprisoned in the Lubyanka in the early 1940s.

Dr Philip Boobbyer (University of Kent) will deliver the eighth lecture as part of the ‘Resistance in Russia and Eastern Europe’ public lecture series, organised by the Department of Slavonic Studies and the Cambridge Committee for Russian and East European Studies.