Kathleen E. Smith. Moscow 1956

No single event can best illustrate the breathless, liberating, and ultimately frustrating decade that followed the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. There were simply too many: the release of over one million prisoners; the publication of once-forbidden poems by repressed Soviet authors; greater access to Western culture; even, for a trusted few, the chance to travel to Western Europe; and most dramatically, the denunciation of Stalin by party figures who had once revered him. Kathleen E. Smith has taken on the ambitious task of distilling the full range of such events as they unfolded in one telling year. As she writes at the outset of her book, “For the Soviet Union, 1956 became a year of optimism and disillusionment, of painful revelations and gratifying debates, of hopes raised and disappointed” (3). Based on painstaking and comprehensive research, Moscow 1956 deftly and with great nuance describes the numerous episodes that highlighted one year, whipsawing Soviet citizens between hopes for greater freedom and the unceasing reality of living under a one-party dictatorship that was not willing to relinquish control.

Democracy · Denunciation · Dictatorship · Economic history · Event (particle physics) · Optimism · Political science · Politics · Soviet union · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Law · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies