Following the deep freeze in intercultural relations in the late Stalin period, the years after Stalin's death saw a gradual, albeit fitful, re-engagement with the West. Cultural events such as the Geneva Summit of July 1955 and the development of new cultural exchange programmes – culminating in a formal exchange agreement in 1958 – ‘created a pleasanter atmosphere’, notwithstanding their relatively small impact on policy. As diplomatic relations warmed and political attitudes to the West became more positive, visits from foreigners increased and some Soviet citizens were able to travel abroad more frequently, albeit still under tight control; VOKS and its successor organisations expanded their operations in the realm of formal cultural exchange. A high point was the sixth World Festival of Youth and Students, held in Moscow in 1957; the festival opened up relations between East and West, allowing foreign visitors to see the Soviet Union and establishing new contacts between Soviet citizens and foreigners. Such officially sanctioned and organised interactions were used as tools to strengthen cultural influence in the other sphere, as weapons of soft power in the so-called ‘cultural cold war’, the struggle between the Soviet Union and its adversaries for cultural influence in the others’ sphere. The official opening up to the West was paralleled in the cultural scene: more informal, non-state connections included the consumption of foreign cultural products, principally literature and, in later years, pop-culture products such as records. The West, particularly America, became an important model for Thaw culture. These new, more open tendencies at all levels in society are reflected in a renewed enthusiasm for Western literature that was represented by the production of translated literature and, critically, in the approach of the state towards it.

Although publication of foreign literature in book form continued throughout the 1940s and early 1950s (albeit on a much curtailed scale), there was at this time no journal dedicated to foreign literature. It was to be more than a decade after the closure of Internatsional'naia literatura before a new journal of translations was established. Issued by the Union of Writers, Inostrannaia literatura was founded in 1955. Like its predecessor, it published fiction and poetry translated from a wide range of languages, as well as some pieces of journalism and literary criticism.