Benjamin Nathans. Book Presentation

Benjamin Nathans is the Alan Charles Kors Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. His most recent book is To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement, which was awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize (general non-fiction) and the Pushkin House Book Prize.

Half a century ago, the Soviet Union found itself unexpectedly challenged by a group of Soviet citizens who achieved global fame in the longest battle of the Cold War – the battle of ideas. The struggle of Soviet dissidents for the rule of law and human rights made them instant heroes in the West as they pursued the goal of containment of Soviet power from within. Rather than see dissidents as surrogate soldiers of democracy and liberalism beyond the iron curtain, historian Benjamin Nathans begins with the idea that dissidents were Soviet people. How do orthodoxies generate their own heresies? How do people and societies emerge from totalitarian forms of rule? Soviet dissidents did something, as one of them put it, “simple to the point of genius: in an unfree country, they began to conduct themselves like free people.” This was the dissident story inside the drama of Soviet history, and not surprisingly, it turned out to be anything but simple.

The number of seats is limited by the size of our cozy space, so please purchase your tickets in advance. https://whiterabbitsbooks.com/event/benjamin-nathans-book-presentation-meeting-with-the-author-and-pulitzer-prize-winner/

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