Smith, Kathleen E. Moscow 1956: The Silenced Spring (review)

Abstract

SEER, 96, 2, APRIL 2018 382 ‘poor substitute for real power’ (p. 307). Yet the cultural capital built up in these turbulent years was significant, and ‘the infrastructure created for interwar cultural diplomacy remained essential during the communist era’ (p. 302) and beyond. Accordingly, the book concludes that in the long run the propaganda drive was not ‘for naught’, as it ‘helped to legitimize Hungary’s status as an independent state’ and to develop a ‘basic template of Hungarian identity, which, for better or worse, survives today’ (pp. 301, 306). University of Bradford Gábor Bátonyi Smith, Kathleen E. Moscow 1956: The Silenced Spring. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA and London, 2017. 434 pp. Map. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $29.95: £23.95: €27.00. Moscow 1956, by Kathleen Smith, is a detailed and engaging portrait of the political change and cultural experimentation that followed Nikita Khrushchev’s so-called ‘Secret Speech’ denouncing Joseph Stalin in February of the titular year. The book’s twelve chapters, each roughly representing one month, cover a variety of the events and themes that defined 1956, including the Twentieth Party Congress (where the speech took place), the involvement of urban youth in the Virgin Lands Campaign, trips by Soviet tourists to capitalist countries, the publication of Vladimir Dudintsev’s controversial novel Not By Bread Alone, and the Soviet response to the Hungarian uprising. Together, these chapters give readers a visceral sense of how Soviet citizens experienced the dramatic changes of a watershed year while making a case for Smith’s larger argument — that ‘the arc of the year 1956 in Russia encompassed multifaceted reform from above, scattered, sometimes intemperate reactions from below, and ultimately a reassertion of top-down control that did not (and could not) restore the status quo ante’ (p. 5). Moscow 1956, in short, is both ‘the story of a memorable year’ and a ‘reflection on the long-term impact of stunted reforms’ (p. 8). Although Smith’s book is a sweeping account of the events of 1956, it focuses on the ways that intellectuals, other educated people, former political prisoners and other citizens responded to Khrushchev’s reforms. The book’s early chapters (following Smith’s account of the Secret Speech) describe the processes of de-Stalinization and rehabilitation by highlighting a large cast of characters, including the Old Bolshevik Elena Stasova (who made it her mission to help victims of Stalin’s terror), the historian Anna Pankratova, a number of GULag returnees, including several who became advisers to Khrushchev (Aleksei Snegov and Olga Shatunovskaia) and a number of intellectuals, including the writer Anna Barkova and the screenwriters Iulii Dunskii and REVIEWS 383 Valerii Friid. These chapters paint a clear and compelling picture of what it was like for Stalin’s victims to live through the year 1956 — touching on the politics of de-Stalinization, the logistics of rehabilitation and the difficulties of return. Other chapters examine the work of scientists and university life in 1956, highlighting both everyday experiences (like tourist hikes) and the responses of trouble-making students to the Secret Speech and events in Hungary. Smith convincingly highlights the zigzag pattern of reform, beginning with the dizzying discussions that followed the Secret Speech and leading to a December 1956 Central Committee letter that stalled the reform process. De-Stalinization, she argues, ‘had plunged many Party members into a state of anxious uncertainty even as it liberated them to criticize the old regime. 1956 became a year of questions and questioning, but also a year of silences, some strategic, some self-imposed, and others ordained from above’ (p. 331). Although it could have been useful to get more of a sense of how other Soviet citizens responded to the events of 1956 (including peasants and less politically engaged citizens), Moscow 1956 does an extremely effective job of capturing the ways its cast of characters experienced the year’s events. There are, of course, some disadvantages to structuring this book as a series of snapshots of Russia in the year 1956. Focusing on 1956 alone runs the risk of giving an incomplete look at Thaw-era politics and society, for example. As scholars like Polly Jones and Miriam...