Ideologicheskie komissii TsK KPSS, 1958-1964: Dokumenty (review)

Abstract

Several years after being ousted from the Kremlin, Nikita Khrushchev recalled the precariousness of the Thaw in his memoirs. "We were scared - really scared," he observed. "We were afraid the thaw might unleash a flood, which we wouldn't be able to control and which would drown us." 1 Lacking Khrushchev's intimate knowledge of the cultural politics of the era, a handful of scholars have struggled since the late 1950s to make sense of the Thaw by using thick journals, newspapers, and autobiographical accounts. 2 Over the last ten years, a steady stream of archival revelations has enriched this body of literature, but compared to the recent work on the 1920s and 1930s, this archival "gold rush" has been distinctly modest. 3 The vast majority of high party and state materials from the post-Stalin period have not yet been declassified, and phenomena as critical as the inner dynamics of the Thaw remain obscure. 4 Happily, the present [End Page 356] anthology, Ideologicheskie komissii TsK KPSS, 1958-1964, provides historians with one of the first published windows into the central party archives of the post-Stalin period. 5 The book is remarkable for its illumination of the everyday activities of the cultural apparat during the Thaw, and its portrayal of a society which, from the official standpoint, was rapidly spinning out of control.