Dobson, Miriam. Khrushchev’s Cold Summer. Gulag Returnees, Crime, and the Fate of Reform After Stalin

Dobson, Miriam. Khrushchev’s Cold Summer. Gulag Returnees, Crime, and the Fate of Reform After Stalin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009.

Draws on rich materials from Soviet letters to ‘power’ to show ambivalent character of ‘popular’ attitudes to Stalinist and post-Stalinist policies. Argues that skills to ‘write bolshevik’ were very different in all cases, an indication which shows that the ‘internal world’ remained affected in a different way than targeted and envisioned by official media. Search of narrative form to make one’s life experience expedient for ‘sale’ to authorities. Discusses the party’s search for truth and purity as driven by interaction between party leaders and narrated experiences of gulag. Speaks of the ‘cult of criminality’ as a released social phenomenon. Different biometaphors (life, garden, purge, decease, etc.) as metaphors shaping and making sense of social relations – in particular, of treating outcasts. In many ways, an excellent cultural and language analysis of soviet realities of Khrushchev’s time. Her emphasis of the ways in which the concept of truth was used is particularly illuminating of many things behind political and social reforms of Khrushchev’s time.