Detente and the dissidents: Human rights in United States-Soviet relations, 1968--1980

This dissertation analyzes the roots, emergence, and development of the Soviet human rights movement and its interaction with the U.S. foreign policy establishment, with a primary focus on the period between 1968 and 1980. The purpose of the dissertation is to discern the ways in which the interests of the Soviet dissident movement intersected with the foreign policy interests and goals of three U.S. presidents---Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter---and thereby better to understand how the observance of human rights is supported and achieved in historical settings that do not favor human rights' emergence.; I conclude that support from various U.S. government institutions and non-governmental organizations, as well as individual U.S. citizens, played an essential role in the survival of the Soviet human rights movement. Though the movement developed from Soviet wellsprings and depended on the courage of individual human rights activists, at an early stage in the movement's development, its members turned to the world community for support. The movement's interaction with various American constituencies helped insure the long-term survival of the dissident agenda for political change and citizen empowerment in the Soviet Union. The Soviet human rights movement had an equally important effect on U.S. foreign policy, helping to move human rights to the center of America's international policy objectives. Thus, a primary goal of the dissertation is to analyze the evolution of communications and cooperation between Soviet dissidents and interested U.S. citizens and the gradual development of a U.S.-Soviet human rights network.; Original research included interviews and archival investigation into the Nixon, Ford, and Carter presidencies in the National Archives and the Jimmy Carter Library. In addition, I completed a detailed study of Russian- and English-language sources on the origins and growth of the Soviet human rights movement, including the Khronika Tekushchikh Sobytij (Chronicle of Current Events) and A Chronicle of Human Rights in the USSR, published in New York between 1972 and 1983. I made particular use of the latter source, which has long merited greater attention from scholars as a tool for understanding the evolution of the Soviet human rights movement.