Golfo Alexopoulos
In this remarkable book, Miriam Dobson offers a strikingly original and fascinating perspective on the de-Stalinization process. At the center of her captivating narrative is the dismantling of the Gulag and the impact—social, cultural, psychological—of former prisoners on Soviet society during the Khrushchev years. Her keen analysis provokes us to think anew about Khrushchev's leadership, the discourses of exclusion and inclusion in the USSR, and everyday life after Stalin.
Amir Weiner
Based on myriad personal stories, Khrushchev's Cold Summer is an original and important book that never loses sight of the big picture. Effectively using the medium of letter writing to the authorities, Miriam Dobson tells a human and often moving story of revived and crushed hopes, compassion and cruel indifference, zeal and apathy, ideological concerns, and petty calculations that formed Soviet life.
Lynne Viola
In this major revisionist study, Miriam Dobson details one of the most important chapters in the history of Khrushchev's reforms. The release of hundreds of thousands of prisoners from the Gulag, before and after Khrushchev's secret speech, symbolized and reflected the regime's efforts at de-Stalinization. At the same time, the release of these prisoners, only a minority of whom were political prisoners, led to a wave of crime and social anxiety across the Soviet Union, resulting in the paradox of this reform ultimately leading the regime back to illegality in the interests of law and order. Based on a wide variety of declassified archival sources, Khrushchev's Cold Summer shows both the extent to which Stalinism endured in Soviet society and the multiple obstacles to change. The result is a fascinating tale of society's response to Khrushchev's reforms based on an astute analysis and sympathetic reading of hundreds of unpublished letters to leaders, journals, and newspapers.
Hubertus F. Jahn
A truly panoptic study of Khrushchev's USSR, Miriam Dobson's book offers a perceptive analysis of de-Stalinization, especially the social and moral upheavals following the mass return of 'Stalin's outcasts' from the Gulag. Based on new archival sources and covering issues as diverse as party politics, youth culture, and prisoners' tattoos, it shows a society in the process of re-inventing itself, defining new values and articulating new meanings for justice, honor, and respectability. Among the relatively few books on Soviet society during the Khrushchev period, this is without doubt one of the most authoritative and readable ones.