1) On December 5, 1965, the first Soviet Constitution Day demonstration was held in Moscow, marking the emergence of an official Soviet human rights movement. 2) Seeking to halt human rights violations, the Soviet human rights movement expanded in various areas including freedom of conscience, press, speech, and national self-determination. Religious believers working for religious liberty were an important group within the movement. 3) This dissertation explores the relationship between the emerging Soviet human rights movement and Orthodox and Baptist religious dissidents, and analyzes how the human rights movement influenced the methods and thinking of Orthodox and Baptist dissidents during the Brezhnev era. It finds that Orthodox dissidents adopted methods from the movement,

1. ABSTRACT
Human Rights and Religious Dissidents in the Brezhnev Era:
The Effect of the Human Rights Movement on the Activism of Religious Dissidents
Lauren L. Tapley, Ph.D.
Dissertation Chairperson: Julie K. deGraffenried, Ph.D.
On December 5, 1965, an unprecedented event took the entire world by surprise:
Soviet dissidents held the first Soviet Constitution Day demonstration in Moscow,
making the growing human rights movement in the Soviet Union official. Gaining
ground in the Soviet Union since Nikita Khruschev’s Thaw, a temporary period of less
repression and censorship of Soviet citizens by the Soviet state, the Soviet human rights
movement exploded onto the public scene after the arrest of two prominent Soviet writers
Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky. The movement expanded further after Leonid
Brezhnev’s invasion into Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring in 1968 garnered
harsh criticism by Soviet intellectuals. Seeking to halt the violation of human rights by
the Soviet state, the Soviet human rights movement expanded on all fronts, as movements
pursuing freedom of conscience, press, speech, and national self-determination began to
organize. Religious believers working toward the achievement of religious liberty were
one of the most important groups within the Soviet human rights movement, and yet
remain an understudied topic.

2. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the relationship between the
emerging Soviet human rights movement and Orthodox and Baptist dissidents as well as
to analyze and understand the role the human rights movement played in developing
methods of dissent and activism among Russian Orthodox and Baptist dissidents. The
research question this dissertation seeks to explore is: How did the growing human rights
movement in the Soviet Union influence the methods and thinking of Russian Orthodox
and Baptist dissidents in the Brezhnev era? This dissertation will demonstrate that
Orthodox dissidents adopted methods of dissent and thinking from the Soviet human
rights movement, because the Orthodox possessed no experience in opposition to the
state in their history. Baptist dissidents, by contrast, inherited a strong legacy of dissent
to the state from their predecessors and were not significantly influenced in their methods
of dissent toward the Soviet state.