The Cambridge History of Communism

The most recent study on Nikita Khrushchev is Taubman, William, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003). Taubman argues that Khrushchev’s politics of de-Stalinization were not only enforced from above but also formed a moral project. Older studies see Khrushchev’s reforms also as a product of the power struggle after Stalin’s death and of pressures from below. See Tompson, William J., Khrushchev: A Political Life (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995); Medvedev, Roy and Medvedev, Zhores, Khrushchev: The Years in Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976); Medvedev, Roy, Khrushchev (Garden City, NY: Doubleday/Anchor, 1983).

The best overviews are Taubman, William, Khrushchev, Sergei and Gleason, Abbott (eds.), Nikita Khrushchev (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); McCauley, Martin (ed.), Khrushchev and Khrushchevism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Ilic, Melanie and Smith, Jeremy (eds.), Khrushchev in the Kremlin: Policy and Government in the Soviet Union, 1953–1964 (London: Routledge, 2011); Filtzer, Donald, The Khrushchev Era: De-Stalinisation and the Limits of Reform in the USSR, 1953–1964 (London: Macmillan, 1993).

On the effects of Khrushchev’s Secret Speech and the de-Stalinization process on Soviet society, see the archive-based studies of Zubkova, Elena, Russia After the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945–1957 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998); Aksiutin, Yurii, Khrushchevskaia “ottepel’” i obshchestvennye nastroenia v SSSR v 1953–1964 gg. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004); and Jones, Polly (ed.), The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization: Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era (London: Routledge, 2006).

On the end of the Gulag system, the returnees from the camps and the social and cultural consequences of de-Stalinization, see Dobson, Miriam, Khrushchev’s Cold Summer: Gulag Returnees, Crime, and the Fate of Reform after Stalin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009); Toker, Leona, Return from the Archipelago: Narratives of Gulag Survivors (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); Adler, Nanci, The Gulag Survivor: Beyond the Soviet System (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002); Adler, Nanci, Keeping Faith with the Party: Communist Believers Return from the Gulag (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012); Smith, Kathleen, Remembering Stalin’s Victims: Popular Memory and the End of the USSR (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).

There are only a few studies on the reform of the judicial system under Khrushchev. See, among others, Ginsburgs, George, “Soviet Court Reform 1956–1958,” in Barry, Donald D. et al. (eds.), Soviet Law After Stalin, vol. I (Leyden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1977), 77–104.

The most recent book on the emergence of the intelligentsia, which portrays the thaw as an era of liberty, is Zubok, Vladislav, Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); see also Spechler, Dina, Permitted Dissent in the USSR: “Novyi Mir” and the Soviet Regime (New York: Praeger, 1982); Frankel, Edith Rogovin, Novj Mir: A Case Study in the Politics of Literature, 1952–1958 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Bittner, Stephen, The Many Lives of Khrushchev’s Thaw: Experience and Memory in Moscow’s Arbat (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2008). On terror and memory, see Jones, Polly, Myth, Memory, Trauma: Rethinking the Stalinist Past in the Soviet Union, 1953–1970 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).

Most books on the economy and social welfare agree that Khrushchev tried to improve living conditions but failed in his agrarian policy. See McAuley, Alastair, Economic Welfare in the Soviet Union: Poverty, Living Standards, and Inequality (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979); and Schröder, Hans-Henning, “‘Lebendige Verbindung mit den Massen.’ Sowjetische Gesellschaftspolitik in der Ära Chruščev,” Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 34, 4 (1986), 523–60.

On Khrushchev’s housing policy, see Smith, Mark, Property of Communists: The Urban Housing Program from Stalin to Khrushchev (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010). The memoirs of Khrushchev, Mikoian and Shepilov tell us about the political debates in the leading circle: Khrushchev, Sergei (ed.), Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, 3 vols. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004–07); Mikoian, Anastas, Tak bylo. Razmyshleniia o minuvshem [How It Was: Reflections on the Past] (Mosow: Vagirus, 1999); Shepilov, Dmitrii, The Kremlin’s Scholar: A Memoir of Soviet Politics Under Stalin and Khrushchev (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).

Memoirs of ordinary citizens and artists on the thaw are included in Raleigh, Donald (ed.), Russia’s Sputnik Generation: Soviet Baby Boomers Talk About Their Lives (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); Alexeyeva, Ludmilla and Goldberg, Paul, The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993).

In recent years, many collections of documents on de-Stalinization have been published, among others: Artizov, A. N. et al. (eds.), Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. Dva tsveta vremeni. Dokumenty iz lichnogo fonda N. S. Khrushcheva [Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. Two Colors of Time. Documents from the Private Files of N. S. Khrushchev], 2 vols. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2009); Kovaleva, N. et al. (eds.), Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich. 1957: Stenogramma iiunskogo plenuma TsK KPSS i drugie dokumenty [Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich. 1957: Report of the June Plenum of the CC CPSU and Other Documents] (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998); Fursenko, Andrei (ed.), Prezidium TsK KPSS 1954–1964 [Presidium of the CC CPSU 1954–1964], vol. I, Chernovye protokol’nye zapisi zasedanii Stenogrammy [First Draft Notes for the Official Reports] (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003), and vol. II, Postanovleniia 1954–1958 [Resolutions] (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006); Artizov, A. N. et al. (eds.), Nikita Khrushchev 1964. Stenogrammy plenuma TsK KPSS i drugie dokumenty [Nikita Khrushchev 1964. Report of the CC CPSU Plenum and Other Documents] (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2007).