Dissidence is a human trait found at every level of communities. It's in essence a social phenomenon. At individual level, some persons nurture the habit of opposing facts even if those go in their favour. These cases, however, are found rarely. But a nation, be it rich and content or poor and strife-stricken, cannot remain completely free of their share of dissidence. Normally, it is the oligarchic rulers which are used to dealing with their dissident populations.
A section of social thinkers continues to extol the virtues of dissension. According to them, unless there are protests, the ruling cliques enjoy the leeway of finally dictating every aspect of the lives of people. Although the concept of dissidence began to take root in society in the pre-Christ era, with isolated groups engaged in organised activities, it demonstrated its bold presence in later periods. Thus few kingdoms or emerging modern states were found completely free of their dissident citizens. The conformists have always discouraged activities that go against the ruling sections. To them, the acts of holding views not officially endorsed were anti-people. They would advocate that the monarch or the ruler was the supreme authority. It's only them who are entitled with the task of ruling. Nobody else or groups can pass decrees relating to administration.
Since dissension is an inherent human trend, the apparently happy-looking modern nations, too, cannot extricate themselves from this dread. The people are not wretched there like those in the struggling nations. The state institutions are infallibly in place in these countries. The basic necessities of the people are promptly met. Materialistically the citizens feel fulfilled, with the state offering them occasional rewards and incentives for their behaving as law abiding citizens. Yet, sections of people in these societies identify the signs of misrule. On being influenced by their clandestine campaigns, gullible people start rallying round them. Their leaders at one point make the call for opposing the existing system. In extreme cases, the structures of the states go through jolts. If the ruling cliques of the states emerge as unrelenting and jittery, they hit back at the dissidents. In cases, they are seen being intimidated, interned or crushed ruthlessly. Lots of dissidents have been banished to overseas lands. When the regimes of the alleged despotic rulers fall the rebels are welcomed to their motherland to rousing receptions by the people --- of course, as heroes.
This has been occurring in the modern times in both small and large countries. They include poor but heroically disposed nations, the nations with a large territory peopled by dozens of ethnic groups. Few nations in the continents over the last one century have been without dissidence. The staunch opposition to colonial rules by a few uncompromising leaders leading to people's movement or guerrilla or full-scale war saw the birth of many an independent nation. These were common pictures in Africa, Asia, South America and even in North America, especially the United States.
As time wears on, the activities of dissension are becoming more complicated than the previous times. The days of armed conflicts are gone. This development has made ways for sophisticated methods of indoctrination and recruitment of new dissidents, nowadays online. The rulers also do not remain inactive. To counter the dissidents' campaigns, they put in place sophisticated surveillance and monitoring techniques operated digitally. Groups in a number of technologically advanced nations now call the shots in conducting dissident propaganda against the rival or hostile countries. Since the end of the World War-II, the dissidents' operations conducted in the highly developed countries coalesced into espionage. These days, many people confuse dissension with espionage. The latter term is viewed as derogatory by the politically committed rebels, who deal with theoretical aspects of opposing an oppressive regime. As has been seen around the world, the dissidents comprise mainly writers, ideologues and the intelligentsia.
During the 60-year existence of the now-defunct Soviet Union, hundreds of people were picked up by the state's secret police for their critical views about the country's monolithic administration. Most of them were transported to the gulags (political labour camps) in Siberia and left there to rot psychologically and physically. The gulags were operated from 1930 to 1955. Many prisoners have reportedly died there. After their release from the gulags, many of the prisoners wrote about their experience of internment in Siberia. The most vivid account of the nightmarish gulag days is found in the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn's book. His 'Gulag Archipelago' later became a literary masterpiece depicting his days in the ex-Soviet labour camps. The book sold tens of millions of copies in dozens of major languages around the world. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. The author, however, didn't attend prize-giving ceremony at Stockholm out of the fear that he might not be allowed to return to Russia if he received the award personally from the Nobel Committee.
An almost similar ordeal visited novelist and poet Boris Pasternak. Although the author was close to Joseph Stalin, the Soviet administration did not approve of his dissident views about the system. His fiction 'Doctor Zhivago' (1957) was not allowed to be published in the Soviet Union. In his book, Pasternak gives a scathing account of the time spanning the Russian revolution of 1905 to World War-II. It was mainly the author's independent views of the October Revolution around which the book revolves round.
The year was 1957. The manuscript of 'Doctor Zhivago' was smuggled by train into Milan, Italy, in a saga filled with fear and suspense --- and, of course, KGB's desperate attempt to seize the manuscript. After its publication in Italian, 'Doctor Zhivago' sparked worldwide uproars. It sold millions of copies in translation of a number of European languages. The book's receiving the Nobel Prize (1958) led to both embarrassment and anger in the communist party-ruled Soviet government. A ban was slapped on the publication of the Russian version of 'Doctor Zhivago'. Unable to endure the pressure of ordeals plaguing his life, Pasternak declined to accept the Nobel Prize.
Similar difference with party bosses on the ways of the application of the Soviet system (the New Order) in the country kept troubling Poet Mayakovsky. Out of hopelessness, he committed suicide in 1930. The Soviet authorities at that time interpreted the suicide as one caused by the impact of a doomed love affair. They dismissed the theory of ideological conflict as mere propaganda. But the Western world stuck to their theory of the poet's disillusionment with the socialist regime. Outside the socio-political fold, philosophical movements like existentialism once had broad space for dissent. One of its younger proponents, novelist Albert Camus openly backed the dissent of the proletariat. His dissension was unlike that of Solzhenitsyn, who opposed the dictatorial communism. Camus supported the ideology of 'rebellion', but opposed the adoption of all kinds of violent means to establish a proletariat state. On the other hand, he would love to call himself a 'pacifist'. It enraged his existentialist comrade Jean Paul Sartre, who was in favour of applying violence to achieve a socialistic goal. It was a difference in the application of left ideas in creating an ideal society which had caused a life-long rift between the two. Viewing in a broader perspective, both were dissidents --- in their individual ways though.
The world is now filled with 'freethinkers'. Not all of them are ideologically committed. As democratic societies accommodate dissent, the totalitarian and the regimented ones witness the fertile growth of clandestine groups promoting dissidence. Many of the latter are allegedly planted and patronised by the so-called democratic governments. The bitter truth is there are no purely ideology-based governments in today's world. As a consequence, partisan dissidents are found everywhere. One goal is common to them: expediting a change in the prevalent style of governance.