Models of Opposition in the late Soviet Union: The Confederacy of Anarcho-Syndicalists (CAS) and its Predecessor Organizations

Finished PhD Project of Evgenyj Kasakov, Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Susanne Schattenberg

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The perestroika period (1986-1991) is increasingly a subject of historical research. However, a „top- down“ perspective dominates the research perspective with focus on decision-makers, governmental and economic structures. On the other hand, analyses of specific opposition groups are still a research desideratum.
The lack of interest is primarily due to the tendency to interpret and analyse the disintegration of the Soviet Union from a “top-down”
perspective. In contrast, the focus of the planned dissertation is primarily the analysis of “bottom-up” processes with a closer look on the interactions between oppositional strategies, practices and the impact of the increasingly delegitimization of the soviet system in perspective of the population.
The dissertation is planned as a contribution to the dissent research by showing the various opportunities and risks of the diverse oppositional groups with different organizational structures.

The analysed protagonists tried different political strategies, from conspirative “cadre parties”, legal and semi-legal student discussion clubs, open civil movements over to revolutionary groups with trade-union approaches.
The dissertation doesn´t concentrate on a specific, single group, furthermore it exams a wide range of organizations that had gone into each other and can be characterized by personnel continuity. In the late 1970s, several left orientated oppositional students formed a union at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute (MGPI) which was active until the El’cin period. The research project wants to investigate the question how a conspiratorial circle in the Brezhnev period became a Union-wide organization with over thousand of members and supporters, and how the protagonists of this organization made their way up into high governmental, political and Union-trade positions.