Authors
Polly Jones1; 1 University of Oxford, UK Discussion
This paper considers an under-researched aspect of the Soviet dissident movement: namely, how restrictions on urban residency for former political prisoners forced many dissidents (including Vladimir Osipov, author of the samizdat sketch that gives this paper its title) to reside, often for many years, in small towns in the Russian provinces. Dissidents were one of the last population groups to have the ‘101st kilometer’ residency restrictions lifted from them in the late 1980s. On the basis of analysis of dissident memoirs of the 1960s-80s, the paper considers how these spatial restrictions shaped dissident thinking, activity and community. It argues that dissidents’ experience of navigating this invisible, yet powerful, ‘border’ around major Soviet cities had an important influence on their evolving thought about the Soviet system, as did their exposure, through provincial housing and employment, to economic and social marginality. Dissident migration around the 101st kilometer also throws into sharper relief the importance of dissident knowledge-sharing and mutual assistance on practical but existentially important issues. Finally, the paper considers the distinctive forms of metropolitan-provincial networking and communication that developed as a result of these restrictions. 
