'To the Success of our Hopeless Cause'

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F. Ichiro Gifford is an energy analyst and a former civil servant, having worked in electric utilities as a planning-economist integrated resource planner. He is going through a very Soviet period in his life and recently read To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause (2024) by Benjamin Nathans, whom Jordan has interviewed on ChinaTalk! Ichiro thinks that the story of late-Soviet dissidents (and of the Russia they lived in) offers some guidance for how we should approach the 2020s in the United States. Ichiro’s Russification has also motivated snippets of fiction written in the style of a Russian-language screenplay translated into English.A core challenge with writing a history of the Russian dissident movement is that they didn’t do much. There was a transparency meeting митинг гласности, some international contacts that went nowhere for years, a 1968 demonstration on Red Square that served as a peak of direct action (although that was only eight people)… but little more.The Soviet dissident movement kickass books though.KGB Agent: Good afternoon. Your name is--Aleksei Blagoslavovich Nepobedimov, right?A.N.: Alyosha Blagovich is fine. And you are?KGB Agent: Andrei Il’ich.A.N.: Quite pleasant to meet you. You--you want some tea?KGB Agent: No. But I have heard you’ve picked up some new reading material.A.N.: Well--I like reading.KGB Agent: Do you like your job?A.N.: Yes. It’s good work.KGB Agent: TETs-20,1 correct?A.N.: That’s the one.KGB Agent: Do you prefer reading more than doing your job?A.N.: The reading is just for fun. The work--that’s what helps people.KGB Agent: So why …