Campaigns on behalf of Russian political prisoners stretch from the revolutionary “nihilists” of the 1880s to the dissidents of the 1970s. While the efforts of political émigrés and their Western sympathizers – to promote awareness, raise funds, and pressure governments – met with decidedly mixed success, there were several watershed moments. This article examines how one such breakthrough, the compilation and publication of Letters from Russian Prisons in 1925, resulted in the formation of the International Committee for Political Prisoners (ICPP) as the first ever transnational amnesty NGO. Along with 300 pages of harrowing accounts of Soviet prisons, camps, and exile, the book featured endorsements by “Twenty-Two Well-Known European and American Authors”. The disputatious process of this volume's compilation and the controversy greeting its issuance show the challenges of extending civil liberties advocacy to include criticism of the Soviet Union among left and liberal figures in the interwar period. In establishing a new field of endeavor – universalist transnational activism to aid political detainees – the ICPP navigated a complex network of relationships among a diverse array of political and intellectual figures.

代表俄罗斯政治犯的运动涵盖了从 1880 年代的革命“虚无主义者”到 1970 年代的持不同政见者。虽然政治流亡者及其西方同情者为提高认识、筹集资金和向政府施压所做的努力，取得了明显的成功，但也出现了几个分水岭。本文探讨了这样一项突破，即 1925 年编辑和出版《俄罗斯监狱信件》，如何促成国际政治犯委员会的成立（ ICPP）是第一个跨国特赦非政府组织。除了 300 页有关苏联监狱、集中营和流放地的悲惨记述之外，这本书还得到了“二十二位欧美知名作家”的认可。本书的编撰过程充满争议，出版时也引发争议，这表明将公民自由倡导范围扩大到两次世界大战期间左派和自由派人士对苏联的批评所面临的挑战。在建立一个新的努力领域——援助政治犯的普遍主义跨国行动主义中——ICPP在不同政治和知识分子之间建立了复杂的关系网络。