Pamyat and the Jewish Menace: Remembrance of Things Past

Abstract

For veterans of the Russian winter, the term “thaw” will ever remain an appropriate metaphor for the waning of periods of control and repression. Unfortunately, many Soviet political thaws have given way quickly to resurgent winters. Perhaps most significant in the current Soviet thaw, the policies of glasnost and perestroika associated with Mikhail Gorbachev, has been the extent to which Soviet society has been invited to participate in it. Society, in its turn, has responded with the creation of numerous grassroots, unofficial social-action groups (samodeiatelnye obshchestvennye organizatsii).