This important book argues that the dissident movement between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s had profound repercussions for Gorbachev's reforms and for the post-Soviet order. It shows how certain ideas crystallized in the dissident milieu, and then went on to influence significantly the debates of the reform and post-Soviet years. In particular it shows how Glasnost, the emphasis on legality, human rights and the state being subject to the rule of law, the idea that Lenin and revolutionary violence were as discreditable as Stalin, and radical Russian nationalism, all had their origins in dissident thought before being adopted by the prevailing administrations.