Myth, Memory, Trauma: Rethinking the Stalinist Past in the Soviet Union, 1953-70

Description

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. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Introduction 1. The Secret Speech 2. From Thaw to Freeze: Party History and Soviet Literature, 1956–57 3. Forgetting within Limits: Censorship and Preservation of the Stalin Cult 4. Trauma and Redemption: Narratives of 1937 in Soviet Culture 5. Between Myth and Memory: War, Terror, and Stalin in Popular Memory 6. The “Cult of Personality” in the Early Brezhnev Era Conclusion NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX