× Stalin’s policies led to the imprisonment ofmillions, and when those policies were denounced by his successor, Khrushchev,everyone expected those millions to be freedbut not everyone was happy withthe idea. Miriam Dobson closely examines little-known aspects of what followedthrough meticulous archival research, unearthing letters of anxiety and hope bySoviet citizens to newspapers and government agencies. Khrushchev’s incrediblyliberal prison reform plan, calling for community custodial care and mildsentences, ran aground on bureaucratic resistance and popular worries overrising crime. Khrushchev’s ColdSummer reveals a far more disorderlysociety than is usually imagined in the Soviet era, complete with a youthsubculture idolizing the tattoos, slang and music of prisoners returning fromthe camps.
Khrushchev’s Cold Summer: Gulag Returnees, Crime, and the Fate of Reform After Stalin (Cornell University Press), by Miriam Dobson
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