What Can and Cannot Be Said: Between the Stalinist Past and New Soviet Future

Author: Hooper, Cynthia

Source: The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 86, Number 2, 1 April 2008 , pp. 306-327(22)

Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

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Abstract:

During successive waves of de-Stalinization, Nikita Khrushchev trumpeted the principle of glasnost' as the key to Communist Party reform. At the same time, his revelations of past wrongdoing were always carefully tailored and chronically incomplete. Throughout his reign, Kremlin-generated stories of the Stalin era shifted significantly over time, as did the extent of their allowed discussion; these shifts testified to the fact that post-Stalin professions of openness had failed to supplant more traditional Party practices of censorship and concealment. By looking at such changes, and at the way Party members in the regions of Ekaterinburg and Samara responded to them, this article argues that the rhetoric of glasnost' triggered enormous conflict within the Party about openness in practice and drew new, or at least newly vocal, attention to continuities in the top-down manipulation of truth.

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: The Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, Massachusetts; the College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts

Publication date: 2008-04-01

More about this publication?

The Review is the oldest British journal in the field, having been in existence since 1922. Edited and managed by the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, it covers not only the modern and medieval languages and literatures of the Slavonic and East European area, but also history, culture, and political studies.