Protest, Reform and Repression in Khrushchev's Soviet Union

by Robert Hornsby

Overview

Protest, Reform and Repression in Khrushchev's Soviet Union explores the nature of political protest in the USSR during the decade following the death of Stalin. Using sources drawn from the archives of the Soviet Procurator's office, the Communist Party, the Komsomol and elsewhere, Hornsby examines the emergence of underground groups, mass riots and public attacks on authority as well as the ways in which the Soviet regime under Khrushchev viewed and responded to these challenges, including deeper KGB penetration of society and the use of labour camps and psychiatric repression. He sheds important new light on the progress and implications of de-Stalinization, the relationship between citizens and authority and the emergence of an increasingly materialistic social order inside the USSR. This is a fascinating study which significantly revises our understanding of the nature of Soviet power following the abandonment of mass terror.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107301801
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/14/2013
Series:	New Studies in European History
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Robert Hornsby is Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham. He is also a Teaching Fellow in Russian History at the University of Leeds and, from May 2013, a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the School of History at the University of Kent.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Part I: 1. An end to silence; 2. Putting out fires; 3. After the Hungarian rising; 4. Turning back the tide: the clampdown on dissent; Part II: 5. The anti-Soviet underground; 6. Taking to the streets; 7. Less repression, more policing; 8. The application of force; 9. A precursor to the Soviet human rights movement; Conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

"Hornsby argues that dissent during the Khrushchev period was more varied and widespread than customary depictions indicate … using archival sources, he contends convincingly that the Soviet leader's primary goal was to maintain political stability without using terror, not to establish greater political freedom."
K. D. Slepyan, Choice

"Hornsby's book is a very well researched, richly detailed and elegantly written synthesis of dissent and popular protest under Khrushchev."
H-Soz-u-Kult

"Hornsby’s book makes several contributions to the field … it strengthens the scholarship on Khrushchev-era society …"
Aaron Hale-Dorrell, Canadian Slavonic Papers

From the Publisher