Jones, Polly. Myth, Memory, Trauma: Rethinking the Stalinist Past in the Soviet Union, 1953–70 (review)

Abstract

SEER, 92, 4, OCTOBER 2014 784 What relationship did the ‘conservatives’ in Jones’s chapter bequeath to the Russophile resurgence of the 1970s? And if the Thaw was an event then was there a counter-event (Prague ‘68, perhaps?) that erased this legacy? These questions notwithstanding, the book makes a crucial contribution to scholarly understanding of the Soviet Union after 1953. While its findings may not be entirely novel given that many of its contributors have already published similar research in journals and monographs, The Thaw still represents a valuable summary of the current state of the field. The chapters are uniformly well-written, cogently argued and make use of a wide range of sources; Kozlov and Gilburd’s introduction alone makes the book a must-read. As such, the volume will surely become a standard reference for scholars, while providing an introduction to critical issues for undergraduate and graduate student alike. Department of Social Sciences S. J. Huxtable Loughborough University Jones, Polly. Myth, Memory, Trauma: Rethinking the Stalinist Past in the Soviet Union, 1953–70. Eurasia Past and Present. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London, 2013. xii + 362 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index.£45.00. Solidly grounded in archival research, Polly Jones’s book is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the de-Stalinization process and the development of Soviet ideology and historical memory. Resolutely overcoming the simplified oppositions of ‘friends’ vs. ‘foes’ of Stalinism and of ‘official’ vs. ‘popular’ memory, Jones shows the ‘complex memory dynamics of deStalinization ’ (pp. 11, 59) involving an interaction of top-down and bottom-up impulses. This interaction manifested itself in various forms, from discussions within the Communist party to exchanges between writers and their readers whose letters (one of the book’s main sources) could ‘profoundly affect’ a writer’s ‘understanding of his, and the nation’s, recent past’ (p. 186). The book focuses on the debates around de-Stalinization among Soviet writers as well as, to a lesser extent, Communist party historians, and especially on the reception of their works. It also examines the reaction of rank-and-file Communists to Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’ of 1956. The ‘memory dynamics’ that Jones reconstructs in her chapters are as follows. De-Stalinization begins with Khrushchev’s secret speech. Notwithstanding the book’s title, Jones does not say much about the period before 1956. In 1956, the party ‘invited the Soviet population to rethink the Stalinist past’ (p. 10) by making available some facts about the repressions, including testimonies of REVIEWS 785 their survivors. (Let me note in passing Jones’s interesting analysis of the role of these testimonies that, once authorized, became an autonomous factor of ‘memory work’). A ‘closed letter’ of the Central Committee from December 1956 temporarily ‘froze’ the de-Stalinization campaign under the influence of ‘events in Hungary’ (p. 57). However, neither the speech nor the letter gave a ‘single, clear calculation of Stalin’s legacy’. Chaotic ‘memory work’ continued and its different agents, including ‘historians and journalists, had to negotiate between many different images of Stalin that had accumulated in the years since his death’ (p. 104). The ‘freeze’ lasted until 1961 when the 22nd Congress inaugurated a more radical stage of de-Stalinization. However, the second ‘thaw’ only added to the variety of the cult’s interpretations. It remained unclear how exactly one had to combine the ‘gloomy’ memory of the Terror with its ‘broadly optimistic framing’ (the victories of socialism) (p. 136). The fall of Khrushchev in 1964 did not interrupt de-Stalinization. For several more years anti-Stalinist books would occasionally be published, but it was not until the end of the decade that the ‘cult of personality’ was marginalized in Soviet public culture. The late 1960s was also the moment when ‘narratives of the cult of personality retreated fully into non-state networks’ to become dissidents’ ‘counter-memory’ (p. 11). Meanwhile Stalin’s image kept its ‘potential to divide collective memory’ (pp. 251–52). Asithappens,thebook’sshortcomingsareacontinuationofitsachievements. First, focusing on the popular reception of official party documents and literary works Jones economizes on analysis of the ‘messages’ themselves, at best limiting herself to short summaries. Political (struggles within the party leadership) and...