"Moments of mocking cynicism": Gaining dignity through the humiliation of humiliators

he paper examines comic elements in the narratives of Jewish national movement (or Refusenik movement) in the late USSR drawing from later sources, oral and written memories, as well as from letters to the authorities and to Western public, simultaneous with the movement. Comic episodes and ironic tone turn out to be an important facet of Jewish activists’ dialogue with the authorities and are discussed as such, or as “weapon of the weak” within the symbolic resistance of Refuseniks to the repressive regime.