ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the theoretical side of the problem and discusses developments from the perspective of both the official Marxist-Leninist doctrine and the dissident groups. Westerners sometimes assume that there is no difference of opinion about human rights between East and West, After all, the Soviet Union was one of the first countries to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and it has signed many other international documents on human rights. The traditional Soviet Union's interpretation of human rights pertains to the relationship between the state and the citizen, the different emphasis on civil and political rights, on one hand, and on socioeconomic and cultural rights, on the other, and the differences in the legal enforcement of the various rights. The Soviet view of human rights derives from Karl Marx's imperative "to abolish all relationships in which man is a humiliated, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being."
