Molding the Dissident Figure

Abstract

The Eastern European opposition quickly noticed the “dissident” label as one imposed on them by the West. But by whom precisely? Drawing on the concept of Orientalism, this chapter describes how Western experts—“Sovietologists” and media correspondents in particular—helped to create the dissident figure and shape it into something not necessarily resembling any real-life political actors. Experts would “make sense” of the East, but some would also “go native” in Central Europe, and later help propagate the dissidents’ own self-narrative of the struggle with Communism. Finally, the chapter discusses the striking absence of women in the pantheon of “prominent dissidents,” even if actual political dissent and human rights activism in the Eastern Bloc relied to a great extent on their blood, sweat, and tears.