The origins of the term dissent in the religious struggles of sixteenth and seventeenth-century England have given it strong doctrinal connotations. In the context of communist party states such connotations have been reinforced by the long and close association of dissent with the critical intelligentsia. In Eastern Europe dissent has become almost a synonym for protests centring on the freedom of speech and the whole range of civil and human rights. But dissent is not a preserve of the intellectual. Over the past twenty-five years workers' protests and resistance have made a less overt and spectacular, but arguably a more sustained impact on East European development.