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The Khrushchev era is increasingly seen as a period in its own
right, and not just as 'post-Stalinism' or a forerunner of
subsequent 'thaws' and 'reform from within'. This book provides a
comprehensive history of reform in the period, focusing especially
on social and cultural developments. Since the opening of the
former Soviet archives, much new information has become available
casting light on how far official policies correlated with popular
views. Overall the book 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 is increasingly seen as a period in its own
right, and not just as 'post-Stalinism' or a forerunner of
subsequent 'thaws' and 'reform from within'. This book provides a
comprehensive history of reform in the period, focusing especially
on social and cultural developments, about which a great deal of
information has become available since the opening of the former
Soviet archives, and which cast much light on how far official
policies correlated with popular views. Overall the book appraises
how far 'Destalinisation' 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.
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Life and Fate (Hardcover)
Vasily Grossman; Introduction by Polly Jones; Translated by Robert Chandler
bundle available
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R623
R517
Discovery Miles 5 170
Save R106 (17%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Based around the pivotal WWII battle of Stalingrad (1942-3), where
the German advance into Russia was eventually halted by the Red
Army, and around an extended family, the Shaposhnikovs, and their
many friends and acquaintances, Life and Fate recounts the
experience of characters caught up in an immense struggle between
opposing armies and ideologies. Nazism and Communism are
appallingly similar, 'two poles of one magnet', as a German camp
commander tells a shocked old Bolshevik prisoner. At the height of
the battle Russian soldiers and citizens alike are at last able to
speak out as they choose, and without reprisal - an unexpected and
short-lived moment of freedom. Grossman himself was on the front
line as a war correspondent at Stalingrad - hence his gripping
battle scenes, though these are more than matched by the drama of
the individual conscience struggling against massive pressure to
submit to the State. He knew all about this from experience too.
His central character, Viktor Shtrum, eventually succumbs, but each
delay and act of resistance is a moral victory. Though he writes
unsparingly of war, terror and totalitarianism, Grossman also tells
of the acts of 'senseless kindness' that redeem humanity, and his
message remains one of hope. He dedicates his book, the labour of
ten years, and which he did not live to see published, to his
mother, who, like Viktor Shtrum's, was killed in the holocaust at
Berdichev in Ukraine in September 1941.
Towards the end of the Khrushchev era, a major Soviet initiative
was launched to rekindle popular enthusiasm for the revolution,
which eventually gave rise to over 150 biographies and historical
novels (The Fiery Revolutionaries/Plamennye revoliutsionery
series), authored by many key post-Stalinist writers and published
throughout late socialism until the Soviet collapse. What new
meanings did revolution take on as it was reimagined by writers,
including dissidents, leading historians, and popular historical
novelists? How did their millions of readers engage with these
highly varied texts? To what extent does this Brezhnev-era
publishing phenomenon challenge the notion of late socialism as a
time of 'stagnation', and how does it confirm it? By exploring the
complex processes of writing, editing, censorship, and reading of
late Soviet literature, Revolution Rekindled highlights the dynamic
negotiations that continued within Soviet culture well past the
apparent turning point of 1968, through to the late Gorbachev era.
It also complicates the opposition between 'official' and
underground post-Stalinist culture by showing how Soviet writers
and readers engaged with both, as they sought answers to key
questions of revolutionary history, ethics and ideology. Polly
Jones reveals the enormous breadth and vitality of the 'historical
turn' amongst the late Soviet population. Revolution Rekindled is
the first archival, oral history, and literary study of this unique
late socialist publishing experiment, from its beginnings in the
early 1960s to its collapse in the early 1990s. It draws on a wide
range of previously untapped archives, including those of the
publisher Politizdat, of Soviet institutions in charge of
propaganda, publishing, and literature, and of many individual
writers. It also uses in-depth interviews with Brezhnev-era
writers, editors, and publishers, and assesses the generic and
stylistic innovations within the series' biographies and novels.
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.
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