The publication of this comprehensive and meticulously-researched book is eerily timely in view of recent events in Russia, and serves as a reminder that history has a tendency to repeat itself. The copious notes and bibliography serve as a testimony to the painstaking work that makes this volume not merely an academic reference, but an engrossing read in its own right, bringing life to the names of both the Western human rights activists involved and the prisoners and persecuted whom they defended. It is essential reading for historians, politicians and anyone with an interest in Russia past and present.

Mark Hurst has produced an excellent record of the main British human rights organisations involved in monitoring and publicising human rights violations in the Soviet Union, tracing their development from the first tentative efforts in the 1960s by such trailblazers as Peter Reddaway, Sidney Bloch, Michael Bourdeaux and Peter Benenson to name just a few who did not shirk from being ‘voices in the wilderness’ in highlighting issues that many would have preferred to sweep under the carpet in the complex international situation of the Cold War years. The author has also provided valuable background information concerning human rights activists on the other side of the Iron Curtain such as Vladimir Bukovsky, whose efforts exposed the widespread abuse of psychiatry to suppress dissidents to the sometimes reluctant attention of the West. Campaigning in support of the unjustly persecuted in the Soviet Union took various forms, and the author sensibly separates them in order to describe their beginnings and strategies. Naturally, there were numerous smaller organisations with a specific and consciously narrow agenda, but it is a matter of record that such groups, large or small, shared information, as ultimately they were bound by a common, passionate dedication to exposing unjust persecution and drawing public attention to the fates of the persecuted.

The early days of organisations that started on the initiative of small groups – or even the vision of one individual – make fascinating reading. For example the Women's Campaign for Soviet Jewry, popularly known as the ‘The 35s’, began when a group of young Jewish women of that age decided to do something about the problems facing Jews in the USSR, and embarked on a vigorous campaign of demonstrations on behalf of the Jewish refuseniks. The 35s became a source of constant headaches and embarrassment for the Soviet embassy and, by extension, the authorities in Moscow. Hurst traces the growth of this organisation from its humble, almost ad hoc beginnings in the homes of its members to the acquisition of proper office premises, gaining acceptance as a serious source of information by Western media, and enjoying the support of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

It is not surprising that as various human rights groups grew and developed, there were periodic differences of opinion in all of them, and the author makes no attempt to gloss over some of the difficulties that arose in their ranks. There were bound to be disagreements regarding future actions or changes in the groups’ campaigning directions – Amnesty International being a case in point, and the author devotes considerable space to this still active body. However the fact is that these organisations continued to function effectively, even on shoestring budgets such as that of Keston College. Outstanding examples of successful, sustained campaigning brought about the release of certain prisoners; the almost political thriller type exchange of Vladimir Bukovsky for Luis Corvalan, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Chilean Communist Party; and the early release of the poet Irina Ratushinskaya after an intense international campaign which centred around Keston College due to the excellent contacts of the college and what might be called its ‘street credibility’ among Soviet dissidents of all persuasions, not just persecuted religious believers. There was also the crowning achievement of the resignation of the All-Union Society of Neuropathologists and Psychiatrists from the World Psychiatric Association on 31 January 1983, a jump ahead of expulsion, but causing the USSR an enormous loss of international prestige none the less.

The author notes the Soviet rhetoric aimed at all the more active human rights organisations, a standard fare of personal attacks and accusations of being agents of the Western secret services, none of which could be taken seriously. More invidious were veiled attacks in the West from individuals or organisations who favoured appeasing the USSR at any cost. Such attacks were harder to counter because, to borrow from Alexander Pope's characterisation of Joseph Addison, they were generated by those who were ‘Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike/Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike’. After all, smear campaigns and character assassination have been the faithful handmaidens of politics for countless centuries and the Soviet propaganda machine employed them enthusiastically: in ancient Rome, the advice supposedly written to Cicero by his younger brother for political success includes brutal blackening of the names of all opponents, ruthlessly calling in old favours, and many other useful tips.

Ironically enough such accusations, which were meant to goad and detract, encouraged the organisations examined by the author to check and re-check the information that they received from various sources, to be absolutely certain that their press releases and publications were based on facts, and not conjecture or hearsay. This is amply demonstrated in the final chapter, ‘Attempting impartiality’. Western human rights activists were not (as they were often accused) engaging in attempts to bring down the Soviet regime by force: they campaigned for justice and equality before the law, upholding the principles of the UN Charter of Human Rights and other international instruments such as the Helsinki Accords, which the USSR signed and proceeded to abuse; and at least, in the words of Soviet dissidents themselves, called upon the Soviet government to observe its own laws.

With the coming of perestroika and the release of numerous incarcerated dissidents, the acute nature of the human rights situation in the USSR decreased the urgency for immediate action and campaigning. Yet there is disquieting information that repression is on the rise once more. According to the Netherlands-based Human Rights Initiative for the Former USSR, the New Chronicle of Current Events lists 277 people imprisoned in Russia on 1 June 2016, a third of whom are political opponents, forty are imprisoned for their religious beliefs and 8 per cent are bloggers and civil society activists. Recent repressive legislation regarding civil rights and performance of religious practices are a dark cloud on the horizon. As the author notes aptly in his closing remarks:

None the less, Mark Hurst's book leaves this reviewer with the conviction that, as in the past, when the Goliath of injustice and repression rears its head, there will always be a David to come forth and rise to the challenge. And even win.