Pulitzer Prize General Non Fiction Winner
To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement
by Benjamin Nathans
Summary
A comprehensive history of the Soviet dissident movement from the 1960s through the collapse of communism, told through the lives of both famous dissidents like Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn and many lesser-known activists who demanded the Kremlin obey its own laws.
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Historical Context & Significance
Drawing on KGB interrogation records, diaries, memoirs, and interviews, Nathans reveals how dissidents used Soviet law to challenge state power. The Pulitzer committee praised it as a "prodigiously researched and revealing history" of people fighting for threatened freedoms.