ABSTRACT
The presence of dissent is a feature of any political, economic and social system. Its appearance may be suppressed, ignored or inadvertently nurtured through the application of rules, convention and culture. From the first moment, the Bolshevik grip was a form of government as ruthless as that of any Tsar, a dictatorship ostensibly of the proletariat but actually of a few men who controlled the Communist Party. The coded nature of high poetry as subtle resistance in Soviet rock music reiterated to a generation the failings of the authoritarian system. Its literary duplication in the forms of samizdat and magnitizdat seemingly galvanised interest in opposing the regime without alienating general accessibility. From the late 1950s, a general improvement in Soviet life occurred. The long problem of scarce or cramped accommodation was partly relieved with development and completion of residential buildings around the major Soviet cities.
