Khrushchev's Cold Summer: Gulag Returnees, Crime, and the Fate of Reform after Stalin

by Miriam Dobson

Between Stalin's death in 1953 and 1960, the government of the Soviet Union released hundreds of thousands of prisoners from the Gulag as part of a wide-ranging effort to reverse the worst excesses and abuses of the previous two decades and revive the spirit of the revolution. This exodus included not only victims of past purges but also those sentenced for criminal offenses. In Khrushchev's Cold Summer Miriam Dobson explores the impact of these returnees on communities and, more broadly, Soviet attempts to come to terms with the traumatic legacies of Stalin's terror. Confusion and disorientation undermined the regime's efforts at recovery. In the wake of Stalin's death, ordinary citizens and political leaders alike struggled to make sense of the country's recent bloody past and to cope with the complex social dynamics caused by attempts to reintegrate the large influx of returning prisoners, a number of whom were hardened criminals alienated and embittered by their experiences within the brutal camp system. Drawing on private letters as well as official reports on the party and popular mood, Dobson probes social attitudes toward the changes occurring in the first post-Stalin decade. Throughout, she features personal stories as articulated in the words of ordinary citizens, prisoners, and former prisoners. At the same time, she explores Soviet society's contradictory responses to the returnees and shows that for many the immediate post-Stalin years were anything but a breath of spring air after the long Stalinist winter.

Genres: History, Russia, Russian History

280 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2009

Reviews

[Kevin McAvoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Stalin died, Krushchev started releasing Gulag prisoners many of whom were totally innocent but also many hardened criminals who were ready to wreak havoc on society. Crime escalated rapidly and the public did not welcome returnees, innocent or not. Many informers were worried that the people they turned in would be back for revenge. The book is very well written with lots of notes if you want to delve further. A fascinating look at a very tough time to be alive in Russia.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Usually, the popular "totalitarian" narratives of the USSR depend on anecdotes and rumours for their scarring content, while the "revisionist" school stays close to numbers and correspondence used within the party and organs of power. Dobson's Cold Summer turns to correspondence from anxious Soviet citizens to newspapers and leaders, inmate literature and policy decrees to sketch a nuanced portrayal of the dynamics of the immediate post-Stalin years. Khrushchev's mendacious "secret speech" marked, he hoped, a clear break-off point between all the hardships of the early Soviet Union, attributed to Stalin's person, and the utopian fun future that was soon bound to arrive; his shift towards gulag amnesty reflects this rebranding. Within the Soviet populace, this lead to great anxiety over relaxed vigilance and the re-integration of unrepentant criminals, which set in motion a series of corrective policy measures that in many ways ended up recreating the prison system that he had ostensibly intended to abolish. The twists and turns of this process are quite interesting: prisoners could resort to writing letters explaining their life story which, if adhering to the correct narrative at the time (such as gratitude for being placed in a centre for re-education after a life of confusion) could significantly cut down on their prison time. Communities could choose to take criminals under their wing and act as guarantors towards the state, avoiding incarceration altogether. Eventually, however, Khrushchev largely gave up on his utopian promises of peaceful non-carceral re-education and filled up the prisons once more. Capital punishment was abolished and abandoned, but the constitution left open a few loopholes through which grave and political offenders could still be executed.

The book is concise and reads smoothly, and mostly avoids touching ideological red flags such as Solzhenitsyn accounts and Applebaum/Snyder history, only quoting the former on gulag tattoo culture. The question remains whether the referenced letters and testimonies are representative of their period. Cool stuff.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

Loved the discourse analysis and the social history challenge to "The Thaw" historiography.