Interviews on ethics, conscience and dissent in the USSR

These interviews were conducted by Philip Boobbyer between 1994 and 2003 for a research project on the role of ‘conscience’ in shaping opinion and undermining communism in the late Soviet era. They explored the ethical thinking and experiences of dissidents, intellectuals and Communist Party reformers, and the ways in which moral and spiritual motivations were present in their ideas and activities. They took place face-to-face, in Russian, and were conducted in a semi-structured way. Interviewees were asked questions about how their ideas about morality were formed and how they experienced the influence of conscience in their lives, as well as about the impact on them of moments of crisis or transformation. The interviews were initially used as the basis for Boobbyer's article, 'Truth-telling, conscience and dissent in late Soviet Russia: Evidence from oral histories', European History Quarterly 30 (2000), 553-585. Material from the interviews was then used to inform his book Conscience, Dissent and Reform in Soviet Russia (London: Routledge, 2005), which was published in Russian as Sovest’, dissidentstvo i reformy v Sovetskoi Rossii (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2010).

For a summary and description of the interviews, including brief biographical details about the interviewees, and information about transcripts and summaries, see ‘Summary of interviews’ in the ‘Documentation’ section.