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from To the Success of our Hopeless Cause: interestingly, a big tension in the Soviet dissident movement was between people who believed in being 100% virtuous, embracing martyrdom, signing their names and addresses onto their dissenting samizdat texts, protesting to be arrested 5 minutes later and sent to jail, pretending that the letter of the Soviet law actually mattered, etc, vs people who believed in being more strategic and openly illegal and trying to avoid being caught. the former fades in importance because they keep getting arrested (the 1968 red square protest being tbe turning point).
there is a samizdat journal that publishes on bad stuff the USSR does. after the arrests and confessions of Krasin and Yakir, the KGB basically threatens, like, the arrests will continue until The Chronicle stops publishing. the editors put out new issues anyways, saying something to the effect of we believe it is important to broadcast this info about human rights abuses in the Soviet Union to the world. staying silent would be accepting the hostage taking and go against human dignity. therefore we will keep publishing.
after all the principled people get arrested and put in jail, the remaining people are much more into being "strategic". Krasin and Yakir are two dissidents who become leading figures of the dissident movement. they adopt a move fast break things attitude, doing things like issuing statements and putting signatures on without getting the consent of the people involved. for context, unlike the petitions of today where signing has almost no negative consequences, at that time and place, the people who signed these things often got arrested and sentenced to many years in prison. it's a successful tactic - a bunch of people are outraged but also they're afraid of creating fractures in the movement, and also they'd look cowardly if they backed out, so they don't take their grievances further. Krasin at some point brags about being one of the leaders of the dissident movement. anyways uh later on in 1972 the KGB captures Krasin and Yakir, threatens them until they break down and agree to collaborate, and then use their testimony to incriminate dozens of dissidents, force them to talk to people in the movement to sow dissent, and put on a press conference to have them tell the world that actually the USSR is super good with human rights actually, they don't actually lock dissidents in psychiatric hospitals, all the stuff we said earlier was misguided fake news, we are totally not just saying this because they will lock us and our families away in jail for a long time if we don't say this.
it's unclear whether there is a common factor behind all of these things or if most would have caved in these interrogations. we know many other people were captured and refused to say anything. but it's suggestive of a certain kind of person.
6leogao
i feel very lucky never to have been in an environment like this. i don't think someone like me would have survived. not only have i never ever felt my life or liberty at any threat due to things i say, i'm lucky enough to not even have felt strong pressure to not say true things (obviously within reason, eg no leaking IP) in order to preserve my job or social standing. like maybe i don't get invited to the cool parties or whatever, but that's absolutely trivial compared to the prices that some people have been willing to pay to exercise their right to speak.