Book Presentation and Conversation: To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause

Join the Green School for a book presentation and conversation featuring To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Dr. Benjamin Nathans, who will be joined by historians Carlos Eire and Rebecca Friedman.

Beginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was challenged by a dissident movement that captured the world’s imagination. Against all odds, these courageous individuals undermined the fearsome Soviet system and helped hasten its collapse three decades later. Taking its title from a toast offered at dissident gatherings, Dr. Nathans’s book tells the story of a remarkable group of people whose moral courage helped change the world. Their activism inspired movements in other totalitarian regimes, including Castro’s Cuba. Despite the island’s distance from the Soviet Union—geographically and culturally—the parallels between the Soviet and Cuban dissident movements are striking. This event explores a powerful story of hope and the enduring supremacy of human dignity over tyranny.