Khrushchev's Cold Summer

Between Stalin's death in 1953 and 1960, the government of the Soviet Union released hundreds of prisoners from the Gulag as part of a wide-ranging effort to reverse two decades and revive the spirit of the revolution. This exodus included not only victims of past purges but also these 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.
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.

Miriam Dobson is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Sheffield.