Dissidents and Resistance

The people who resisted communist rule — writers, workers, clergy and ordinary citizens, from Solzhenitsyn and Solidarity to Tiananmen Square.

• The Stasi: How East Germany Spied on Its Own People

  How East Germany's Stasi used 91,000 officers, 189,000 informants, secret prisons and 'quiet terror' to control a nation — and what its files revealed.

• The Hundred Flowers Campaign: Mao's Invitation and Purge

  In 1957 Mao invited China's intellectuals to criticize the Party, then purged them: about 550,000 branded 'rightists'. He called it an 'overt scheme'.

See all topics or every article.