Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The genesis of the Russian intelligentsia
- 3 The formation of a Russian intelligent
- 4 Reason and revolution
- 5 Khrushchev and the de-Stalinization campaign: the development of literary dissent
- 6 The Siniavsky–Daniel trial and its aftermath: legal tactics and organizational efforts
- 7 The Soviet dissidents
- 8 Programs and prospects
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index
5 - Khrushchev and the de-Stalinization campaign: the development of literary dissent
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The genesis of the Russian intelligentsia
- 3 The formation of a Russian intelligent
- 4 Reason and revolution
- 5 Khrushchev and the de-Stalinization campaign: the development of literary dissent
- 6 The Siniavsky–Daniel trial and its aftermath: legal tactics and organizational efforts
- 7 The Soviet dissidents
- 8 Programs and prospects
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
We were scared – really scared. We were afraid the thaw might unleash a flood, which we wouldn't be able to control and which could drown us. How could it drown us? It could have overflowed the banks of the Soviet riverbed and formed a tidal wave which would have washed away all the barriers and retaining walls of our society. From the viewpoint of the leadership, this would have been an unfavorable development. We wanted to guide the process of the thaw so that it would stimulate only those creative forces which would contribute to the strengthening of socialism.
Nikita Khrushchev, in Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament.By the time Stalin died, on March 5, 1953, he appeared to have succeeded in stifling all criticism and dissent on the part of the Soviet citizenry. The war years, in which some loosening of ideological controls over Soviet life had been permitted, were followed by the massive cultural purge of the late forties. This reimposition of ideological orthodoxy came to be termed the “Zhdanovshchina,” after the official primarily responsible for carrying it out, Andrei Zhdanov. It was characterized by a crude campaign against Western influences, and such leading literary figures as the poet Anna Akhmatova and the satirical writer Michael Zoshchenko were savagely attacked for their alleged adulation of “bourgeois” Western culture.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Soviet Dissent in Historical Perspective , pp. 93 - 116Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1981