The intellectual heritage of dissidents of the Soviet period has not yet been properly comprehended and assessed, although their experience in the current political reality is more than relevant. The proposed encyclopedic project for the first time gives a comprehensive idea of how significant the role of dissidents was in the fight against the totalitarian system, of the scale and breadth of the range of political practices and methods of nonviolent resistance in the USSR and other countries of the socialist camp. This publication includes biographies of 160 active participants in independent civil, political, intellectual and religious life in Eastern Europe from the 1950s to the 1980s. The fates of these people included prison terms, emigration, forced treatment in psychiatric hospitals, and political triumphs. Along with biographical texts, the book includes extensive historical essays on the socio-political and cultural specifics of the era. The publication is based on a translation from Polish of the first volume of the Dictionary of Dissidents (2007), on which national centers and groups of authors from participating countries worked together.