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Based on Chilean, Soviet, American, and Italian declassified documents, this article examines a particular case in the global Cold War: the only international exchange of political prisoners during that period, involving the general secretary of the Chilean Communist Party Luis Corvalan and Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. It emphasises the intersecting agendas, purposes, and consequences of multiple state and non-state actors in this episode: from the governments of Chile, the US, and the USSR, to the Chilean Communist Party, the Soviet dissident movement, and finally to the European communist parties, Cuba, international solidarity, and human rights movements. Adapted from the source document.

Founded in 1922, thePartido Comunista de Chile(PCCh) had a somewhat chequered career before the mid-1930s.1Although the prestige of its founder, Luis Emilio Recabarren, and its close ties with organized labour gave the party an early significance, its progress towards becoming an important force in Chilean politics halted abruptly when General Carlos Ibáñez came to power in 1927. Forced into clandestinity by Ibáñez, the party emerged on his downfall in 1931 with its membership vastly reduced, its trade union arm, theFederación Obrera de Chile(FOCH), moribund, and its remaining activists deeply divided by ideological, tactical and personal differences.

Although Chile is a relatively small country, writings about the Chilean
party systems have long been better and more voluminous than is the case
with most party systems in Latin America. Several orthodoxies have
emerged in this literature: that Chilean parties are strong, that the party
systems have been divided into three roughly equal parts, and that they
have been relatively stable. The purpose of this article is to challenge these
three orthodoxies. These orthodoxies are not completely wrong, but they
need to be qualified.The dominant view that Chilean parties are strong has been overstated.
They have been strong in some respects and for some periods, but not in
others. Parties have traditionally dominated mechanisms of representation
in Chile's democratic periods, overshadowing unions, social movements,
and other forms of representation. Party penetration in the electorate,
however, has not been powerful. Parties have appeared and disappeared
with frequency, and most parties have been relatively weak organisationally.
More so than is the case in Uruguay, Venezuela from 1958 until
the 1990s, Costa Rica or most of Western Europe, Chile's democratic
periods have allowed space for anti-party populists to develop successful
political careers, including capturing the presidency.