Soviet dissidents were citizens of the Soviet Union who disagreed with the policies and actions of their government and actively protested against these actions through either violent or non-violent means. Through such protests, Soviet dissidents incurred harassment, persecution, imprisonment or death by the KGB, or other Soviet government agencies.
From the mid-1970s, the term was first used in the Western propaganda [1] and subsequently, with derision, by the Soviet media. Human rights activists in the USSR then adopted this term.
While dissent with Soviet policies and persecution for this dissent existed since the times of the October Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet power, the term is most commonly applied to the dissidents of the post-Stalin era.