A New Faith? Rights Agitation, National Aspirations and Self-Determination in the Soviet Periphery, 1965-1985

Abstract

This thesis investigates the intersection of human rights-talk, national aspirations and their respective origins on the peripheries of the Soviet Empire, 1965-1985. In particular, it challenges the so-called ‘Helsinki Effect’, that a Western discourse of liberalism and human rights was responsible for the demise of the Soviet Empire. Instead, I argue that distinct and organic conceptualisations of human rights existed under developed socialism. These alternative discourses were conceptually divorced from international human rights norms, instead grounded in socialist legality, historical experience, or in regional ideology. With specific reference to the national concerns and political demands of Ukrainians, Poles and Soviet Jews, I trace the ideological and historical lineages of home-grown understandings of the right of self-determination, contextualising dissident thought in these nationalities’ own experiences of identity, independence and subjugation.