The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization

The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization PDF

Author: Polly Jones

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2006-04-07

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1134283474

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Providing a comprehensive history of reform in the Khrushchev era, this book focuses specifically on social and cultural developments. It appraises how far 'Destalinization' went and whether developments in the period represented a real desire for reform, or rather an attempt to fortify the Soviet system, but on different lines.

The Khrushchev Era

The Khrushchev Era PDF

Author: Don Filtzer

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 1993-11-11

Total Pages: 104

ISBN-13: 1349130761

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The Khrushchev Era examines the major political, social, and economic reforms of Nikita Khrushchev, from the 'Secret Speech' and Khrushchev's limited, but at the time earth-shattering critique of Stalin, to his ill-fated reorganizations of the Communist Party, agriculture, and industry. Besides giving a factual account of the reforms themselves, Filtzer analyses the complex factors behind their failure, focussing not so much on the inadequacies of Khrushchev as a leader, as on the structural obstacles to reform within the Stalinist system itself. As such the Khruschev period is shown to contain instructive historical lessons for our understanding of Mikhail Gorbachev and his own failed perestroika.

Myth, Memory, Trauma

Myth, Memory, Trauma PDF

Author: Polly Jones

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2013-08-27

Total Pages: 439

ISBN-13: 0300187211

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Drawing on newly available materials from the Soviet archives, Polly Jones offers an innovative, comprehensive account of de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union during the Khrushchev and early Brezhnev eras. Jones traces the authorities' initiation and management of the de-Stalinization process and explores a wide range of popular reactions to the new narratives of Stalinism in party statements and in Soviet literature and historiography. Engaging with the dynamic field of memory studies, this book represents the first sustained comparison of this process with other countries' attempts to rethink their own difficult pasts, and with later Soviet and post-Soviet approaches to Stalinism.

The Private World of Soviet Scientists from Stalin to Gorbachev

The Private World of Soviet Scientists from Stalin to Gorbachev PDF

Author: Maria Rogacheva

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-07-10

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1108171338

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Rogacheva sheds new light on the complex transition of Soviet society from Stalinism into the post-Stalin era. Using the case study of Chernogolovka, one of dozens of scientific towns built in the USSR under Khrushchev, she explains what motivated scientists to participate in the Soviet project during the Cold War. Rogacheva traces the history of this scientific community from its creation in 1956 through the Brezhnev period to paint a nuanced portrait of the living conditions, political outlook, and mentality of the local scientific intelligentsia. Utilizing new archival materials and an extensive oral history project, this book argues that Soviet scientists were not merely bought off by the Soviet state, but that they bought into the idealism and social optimism of the post-Stalin regime. Many shared the regime's belief in the progressive development of Soviet society on a scientific basis, and embraced their increased autonomy, material privileges and elite status.

De-Stalinising Eastern Europe

De-Stalinising Eastern Europe PDF

Author: Kevin McDermott

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-07-28

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1137368926

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This unique volume examines how and to what extent former victims of Stalinist terror from across the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were received, reintegrated and rehabilitated following the mass releases from prisons and labour camps which came in the wake of Stalin's death in 1953 and Khrushchev's reforms in the subsequent decade.

Goodbye to All That?

Goodbye to All That? PDF

Author: Dan Stone

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 019969771X

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Shows how the anti-fascist consensus prevalent throughout Europe following World War II has been crumbling since the 1970s and how globalization, deregulation, the erosion of social-democratic welfare capitalism in the West, and the collapse of the Communist alternative in the East are leading to a social divisive, politically dangerous rise of fascism that could threaten the peace of Europe.

The Devil in History

The Devil in History PDF

Author: Vladimir Tismaneanu

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2014-03-14

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 0520282205

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The Devil in History is a provocative analysis of the relationship between communism and fascism. Reflecting the author’s personal experiences within communist totalitarianism, this is a book about political passions, radicalism, utopian ideals, and their catastrophic consequences in the twentieth century’s experiments in social engineering. Vladimir Tismaneanu brilliantly compares communism and fascism as competing, sometimes overlapping, and occasionally strikingly similar systems of political totalitarianism. He examines the inherent ideological appeal of these radical, revolutionary political movements, the visions of salvation and revolution they pursued, the value and types of charisma of leaders within these political movements, the place of violence within these systems, and their legacies in contemporary politics. The author discusses thinkers who have shaped contemporary understanding of totalitarian movements—people such as Hannah Arendt, Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Camus, François Furet, Tony Judt, Ian Kershaw, Leszek Kolakowski, Richard Pipes, and Robert C. Tucker. As much a theoretical analysis of the practical philosophies of Marxism-Leninism and Fascism as it is a political biography of particular figures, this book deals with the incarnation of diabolically nihilistic principles of human subjugation and conditioning in the name of presumably pure and purifying goals. Ultimately, the author claims that no ideological commitment, no matter how absorbing, should ever prevail over the sanctity of human life. He comes to the conclusion that no party, movement, or leader holds the right to dictate to the followers to renounce their critical faculties and to embrace a pseudo-miraculous, a mystically self-centered, delusional vision of mandatory happiness.

Replacing the Dead

Replacing the Dead PDF

Author: Mie Nakachi

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 0190635134

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"In 1955 the Soviet Union re-legalized abortion on the basis of women's rights. However, this fact is not widely known. In the absence of a feminist movement, how did the idea of women's rights to abortion emerge in an authoritarian society, decades before it appeared in the West? The answer is found in the history of the Soviet politics of reproduction after World War II, a devastation in which 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians perished. This enormous loss of predominantly adult males posed a threat to economic recovery. In order to replace the dead, the Soviet Union introduced the 1944 Family Law based on the proposal submitted by Nikita S. Khrushchev. This extreme pronatalist policy encouraged men to father out-of-wedlock children and celebrated "Mother Heroines." However, Replacing the Dead argues that in the absence of serious commitment to supporting Soviet women who worked full-time, the policy actually did extensive collateral damage to gender relations and the welfare of women and children. Replacing the Dead finds the origin of the movement to improve women's reproductive environment in postwar social critique arising from women and Soviet professionals. Neither Stalin, nor Khrushchev allowed any major reform, but the movement did not die out. With relegalization and lack of contraception, an abortion culture grew among Soviet women. The model of socialist reproduction continues to set socialist and postsocialist countries apart. This history is a cautionary tale for today's Russia, as well as other countries that attempt to promote births"--

Social Control under Stalin and Khrushchev

Social Control under Stalin and Khrushchev PDF

Author: Immo Rebitschek

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2023-08-31

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1487544316

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How did the Soviet Union control the behaviour of its people? How did the people themselves engage with the official rules and the threat of violence in their lives? In this book, the contributors examine how social control developed under Stalin and Khrushchev. Drawing on deep archival research from across the former Soviet Union, they analyse the wide network of state institutions that were used for regulating individual behaviour and how Soviet citizens interacted with them. Together they show that social control in the Soviet Union was not entirely about the monolithic state imposing its vision with violent force. Instead, a wide range of institutions such as the police, the justice system, and party-sponsored structures in factories and farms tried to enforce control. The book highlights how the state leadership itself adjusted its policing strategies and moved away from mass repression towards legal pressure for policing society. Ultimately, Social Control under Stalin and Khrushchev explores how the Soviet state controlled the behaviour of its citizens and how the people relied on these structures.

Substate Dictatorship

Substate Dictatorship PDF

Author: Yoram Gorlizki

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2020-08-05

Total Pages: 458

ISBN-13: 0300230818

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An essential exploration of how authoritarian regimes operate at the local level How do local leaders govern in a large dictatorship? What resources do they draw on? Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk examine these questions by looking at one of the most important authoritarian regimes of the twentieth century. Starting in the early years after the Second World War and taking the story through to the 1970s, they chart the strategies of Soviet regional leaders, paying particular attention to the forging and evolution of local trust networks.