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

2025年普立茲非小說獎得主

這是一部講述蘇聯異議運動如何加速蘇聯解體，並持續為今日普丁治下的俄羅斯及全球各地的反抗力量提供能量的動人之作。

「一本寫於過去，卻切中當下的書……在我們面對新一波威權主義浪潮時，這是一段所有人都應從中學習的歷史。」—《洛杉磯書評》

從1960年代開始，蘇聯面對一場出乎意料的異議運動，這場運動激發了全球的關注與想像。這群不被看好的蘇聯公民要求克里姆林宮遵守自己的法律，舉辦未經授權的公開集會、為被捕的知識分子請願、流通被禁的地下出版物（samizdat）。蘇聯政府則以逮捕、偽造審判、惡意媒體攻擊、強制送入精神病院與勞改營、甚至流放海外等手段打壓他們——卻也將這些人鍛造成了殉道者與英雄。儘管處境艱難，這場異議運動動搖了蘇聯政權的根基，並加速其解體。書名《致我們絕望事業的成功》來自異議人士聚會中的一則祝酒詞，本書是這群改變二十世紀的傑出人物的權威紀實。

班傑明・納森斯（Benjamin Nathans）以生動筆觸，講述了那些成為異議分子的男女故事——從諾貝爾獎得主安德烈・薩哈羅夫、亞歷山大・索忍尼辛，到今日幾乎默默無聞的無名英雄。他取材自日記、回憶錄、私人書信、訪談及克格勃審訊紀錄，揭示這些人如何巧妙利用蘇聯的法律體系，來對抗蘇聯政權的權力濫用。正如其中一位異議者所言：「這個策略簡單得近乎天才：在一個不自由的國家裡，他們開始像自由人一樣生活。」

《致我們絕望事業的成功》是對蘇聯異議運動的非凡記錄，展現異議者如何帶頭掙脫蘇聯的極權過去——而這場奮鬥，至今仍在普丁治下的俄羅斯延續，同時也照亮了當今世界在絕望與堅持之間的各種抗爭。

WINNER OF THE 2025 PULITZER PRIZE

A "riveting history" (Wall Street Journal) of the Soviet dissident movement, which hastened the end of the USSR and still provides a model of opposition in Putin’s Russia—and beyond

Beginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was unexpectedly confronted by a dissident movement that captured the world’s imagination. Demanding that the Kremlin obey its own laws, an improbable band of Soviet citizens held unauthorized public gatherings, petitioned in support of arrested intellectuals, and circulated banned samizdat texts. Soviet authorities arrested dissidents, subjected them to bogus trials and vicious press campaigns, sentenced them to psychiatric hospitals and labor camps, sent them into exile—and transformed them into martyred heroes. Against all odds, the dissident movement undermined the Soviet system and unexpectedly hastened its collapse. Taking its title from a toast made at dissident gatherings, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause is a definitive history of a remarkable group of people who helped change the twentieth century.

Benjamin Nathans’s vivid narrative tells the dramatic story of the men and women who became dissidents—from Nobel laureates Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn to many others who are virtually unknown today. Drawing on diaries, memoirs, personal letters, interviews, and KGB interrogation records, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause reveals how dissidents decided to use Soviet law to contain the power of the Soviet state. This strategy, as one of them put it, was “simple to the point of genius: in an unfree country, they began to conduct themselves like free people.”

An extraordinary account of the Soviet dissident movement, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause shows how dissidents spearheaded the struggle to break free of the USSR’s totalitarian past, a struggle that continues in Putin’s Russia—and that illuminates other struggles between hopelessness and perseverance today.