To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement

by Benjamin Nathans

🏆 Winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction

To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause by Benjamin Nathans is the story of the Soviet citizens who took on the system from within, using the country’s own laws and constitution to fight for a better future, from the 1950s onwards.

Recommendations from our site

“There were some elements in their personal identity that brought them to the place where they found themselves, where they questioned how the system operated and tried to find ways to change it, to criticize it, and to use whatever ideological and infrastructural means that they had to try to bring change.” Read more...

The Best Nonfiction Books on Russia: The 2025 Pushkin House Prize

Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, Political Scientist