Moscow 1956 the Silenced Spring

8vo hardcover in Dust Jacket Condition. 448 pp. 28 halftones. "Joseph Stalin had been dead for three years when his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, stunned a closed gathering of Communist officials with a litany of his predecessorís abuses. Meant to clear the way for reform from above, Khrushchevís ìSecret Speechî of February 25, 1956, shattered the myth of Stalinís infallibility. In a bid to rejuvenate the Party, Khrushchev had his report read out loud to members across the Soviet Union that spring. However, its message sparked popular demands for more information and greater freedom to debate. Moscow 1956: The Silenced Spring brings this first brief season of thaw into fresh focus. Drawing on newly declassified Russian archives, Kathleen Smith offers a month-by-month reconstruction of events as the official process of de-Stalinization unfolded and political and cultural experimentation flourished. Smith looks at writers, students, scientists, former gulag prisoners, and free-thinkers who took Khrushchevís promise of liberalization seriously, testing the limits of a more open Soviet system. But when anti-Stalin sentiment morphed into calls for democratic reform and eventually erupted in dissent within the Soviet blocónotably in the Hungarian uprisingóthe Party balked and attacked critics. Yet Khrushchev had irreversibly opened his compatriotsí eyes to the flaws of monopolistic rule. Citizens took the Secret Speech as inspiration and permission to opine on how to restore justice and build a better society, and the new crackdown only reinforced their discontent. The events of 1956 set in motion a cycle of reform and retrenchment that would recur until the Soviet Unionís collapse in 1991.".