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(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017), 434 pp., $29.95 (hb), isbn 9780674972001.This masterfully written book describes one breakthrough year in Soviet history: 1956. The author’s choice is well justified, because that year indeed accumulated some of the very central events and phenomena which heralded the end of Stalinism and the beginning of a new historical epoch, the Thaw. Although the term usually refers to the 1950s and 1960s, the book suggests that the effects of the Thaw lasted much longer. Smith argues persuasively that 1956 became a “mental threshold” (p. 5) in Soviet history. Even though the political struggles and turbulent discussions of the year offered plenty of setbacks or even personal disasters for the participants who wanted to move too quickly in criticizing the past and the present, in the end Soviet society made a major, irreversible step forward. After 1956, the spirit of critical rethinking and reforming of social reality would never die, and there would be no going back to the rigid Stalinist uniformity of politics, culture, and self-expression. No freeze would undo the strategic effects of the Thaw.The distillation of an epoch into one year is an arduous mission for a historian, demanding a particularly wise
The Soviet and Post Soviet Review – Brill
Published: Apr 9, 2018
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