Left-Wing Dissent, Reformist and Internationalist Cultures, and the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, 1977-1982

• In Event: Late-Soviet International Entanglements in Medicine, Academic Institutes, and Publishing

Abstract

This presentation will consider how the intellectual worldviews of the largest left-wing dissident circle of the Brezhnev years, the Young Socialists, were shaped by the reformist and internationalist cultures of their workplace, Moscow’s premier foreign policy thinktank, the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO). It traces how the circle’s members, as junior researchers at IMEMO who came to specialise in Southern and Western Europe, Latin America, and the Third World, applied the Marxist analytical thinking, knowledge of left-wing movements abroad, and reading of restricted literature that was part of their academic training to their samizdat project of Soviet reform. It also focuses on the broader social milieu of IMEMO and the transmission of lived experience from its senior researchers, whose proximity as carriers of reform socialist and internationalist ideas to the younger dissidents played a vital role in the circle’s dissent.

Author

• Natasha Wilson, U of Melbourne (Australia)