A history of Russia

prominent victims. Two developments in relation to the police after Stalin's death deserve special notice: the numbers of forced-labor camps and their inmates was drastically reduced; also, it seems that Soviet citizens gradually lost the immediate and all-pervasive dread of the political police which they had acquired under Stalin. But, although milder, the Soviet Union remained a police state.

As we shall see in a later chapter, Stalin's death was also followed by some relaxation of Party control in the field of culture. Khrushchev's denunciation of the late dictator in itself suggested the need of thorough reevaluation of a great many former assumptions and assertions. It also created much confusion. For a number of months in 1956 some Soviet writers exercised remarkable freedom in their approach to Soviet reality and their criticism of it. But, after the Polish crisis and the Hungarian uprising in the autumn of that year, severe restrictions reappeared. After 1956 and until the proclamation of glasnost, in the 'quiet' years between Stalin and Gorbachev, actual Soviet culture, although not as much hampered and badgered as in the worst days of Stalin and Zhdanov, on the whole faithfully reflected totalitarian Party control. Khrushchev's fall made little difference in this respect. In fact, it can be argued that his successors generally assumed a harder line against dissent, as illustrated by the arrest, trial, and sentencing of Andrei Siniavsky and Julius Daniel in 1965-66 and numerous other instances of cultural suppression.

The amount of covert opposition and bitterness that this control and the Soviet system in general created can only be surmised. Yet it should be noted that uprisings against Communist regimes took place not only in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, but also in the

U.S.S.R. itself: notably in the Vorkuta forced-labor camps in the north of European Russia in 1953; in Tbilisi - or Tiflis - the capital of Georgia, in 1956; in Temir-Tau in Kazakhstan among young Russian construction workers, most of them members of the Union of Communist Youth - or Komsomol - in 1959; and in Novocherkassk in 1962. Sporadic riots, strikes, and student demonstrations against the government also occurred in the Soviet Union in later years, as in Dneprodzherzhinsk in 1973.

Short of physical violence, the thawing of Soviet society and the emerging opposition views gave rise to the blossoming of a striking and varied samizdat, that is, self-published, illegally produced, reproduced, and distributed literature, and to the appearance of dissenting intellectuals and even groups of intellectuals on the fringes of official cultural life. Harassed and suppressed in many ways, including on occasion incarceration in dreadful mental hospitals, the opposition kept nevertheless delivering its message, or rather messages, ranging from a kind of conservative nationalism and neo-Slavophilism to former hydrogen-bomb physicist, the late Andrei Sakha-rov's, progressive, generally Westernizer, views and the late Andrei Amalrik's personal, catastrophic, almost Chaadaev-like vision. And it produced the phenomenon of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Whatever one thinks of that writer in terms of literary stature, ideological acumen, or scholarly precision, most of his works, especially the Gulag volumes, are likely to be linked as indissolubly to the Russia of Stalin as Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and Turgenev's Gentry Nest have been linked to the Russia of the landed gentry - probably unto the ages of ages. Isolated, weak, armed only with a belief in individual moral regeneration, so prominent in Solzhenitsyn, the intellectual opposition remained a highly troublesome element in Soviet society and a forerunner of glasnost.

Jewish self-affirmation, protest, and massive migration to Israel (about 235,000 emigrants up to 1985, some 10 per cent of the total Jewish population of the U.S.S.R., with many more applying) - together with the permitted emigration of some non-Jews - represented another development to disturb the post-Stalin Soviet scene, a development closely linked to the intellectual opposition, although also quite distinct. One suspects that the decision to let numerous dissatisfied Soviet citizens leave, while solving the immediate problem of dealing with those people as well as responding in a conciliatory way to world public opinion, potentially raised more questions for the Soviet system than it settled. It is apparently among many Soviet Jews that the alienation from the established order was especially thoroughgoing, as in the anecdotal story of the Moscow Jew who was accused of receiving a letter from a brother in Tel Aviv, although

he had claimed that he had no relatives abroad. He explained: 'You don't understand: my brother is at home; I am abroad.'

The post-Stalin relaxation of restrictions appeared especially striking in an area that spans domestic and foreign policies: foreign travel and international contacts in general. Modifying the former Draconian regulations, which had made a virtually impenetrable 'iron curtain' between the Soviet people and the outside world, Soviet authorities began to welcome tourists, including Americans, and allow increasing numbers of their citizens to travel abroad. Always strong on organization, they proceeded to arrange numerous 'cultural exchanges,' ranging from advanced study in many fields of learning to motion pictures and books for children. Soviet scientists, scholars, athletes, dancers, and musicians, not to mention the astronauts, drew deserved attention in many countries of the world. At the same time Soviet citizens welcomed distinguished visitors from the West and vigorously applauded their performances. In 1976, following the Helsinki agreements of the preceding year, foreign travel and cultural exchange gained further strength, supplying the U.S.S.R. with more international contacts than had been the case at any time since the discontinuation of the N.E.P. Bit by bit, the Soviet Union was becoming better acquainted with the West and the world.

Foreign Relations

Soviet foreign policy after Stalin's death also continued to follow the established pattern in many respects as the U.S.S.R. and the Communist bloc faced the United States and its allies. No conclusive agreements on such decisive issues as control of atomic weapons, general disarmament, or Germany were reached between the two sides. Crises in widely scattered areas appeared in rapid succession. The Soviet Union made a special effort to profit by the emancipation of former Asian and African colonies from Western rule. Yet the post-Stalin policy, especially as developed by Khrushchev, also had its more conciliatory side. The new party secretary elevated the fact of coexistence of the two worlds into a dogma and asserted that all problems would be solved without war. The apparent contradiction of the two approaches probably stemmed from a real inconsistency in Khrushchev's thinking rather than from tactical considerations. It reflected further the dilemma faced by aggressive communism in an age of hydrogen warfare. Brezhnev was to pursue the substance, if not the flamboyant style, of his predecessor's foreign policy, engaging in an enormous arms race and pushing hard Soviet influence and interests in Europe, Asia, the Near East, Africa, and elsewhere, while emphasizing at

the same time detente with the United States and the march of history towards peaceful evolution and international cooperation.

Stalin's death and Malenkov's assumption of the leading role in the Soviet Union marked some lessening of international tensions as well as some relaxation at home. The new prime minister asserted that all disputed questions in foreign relations could be settled peacefully, singling out the United States as a country with which an understanding could be reached. In the summer of 1953 an armistice was finally agreed upon in Korea. In the spring of 1954 an international conference ended the war in Indo-China by partitioning it between the Communist Vietminh in the north and the independent state of Vietnam in the south. Although the Soviet Union had not participated directly in the Indo-Chinese conflict, that local war had threatened to become a wider conflagration, and its termination enhanced the chances of world peace. In January 1954, the Council of Foreign Ministers of the four powers, inoperative for a long time, met in Berlin to discuss the German and Austrian treaties, but without result. The Soviet Union joined the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, and the International Labor Organization, or ILO, that April. Malenkov spoke of a further improvement of international relations and of a summit meeting.

That a policy of even moderate relaxation had its dangers for the Soviet bloc became, however, quickly apparent. In early June 1953, demonstrations and strikes erupted in Czechoslovakia, assuming a dangerous form in Pilsen - or Plzen - where rioters seized the city hall and demanded free elections. In the middle of the month East Berlin and other centers in East Germany rose in a rebellion spearheaded by workers who proclaimed a general strike. Soviet troops re-established order after some bitter fighting. Beria's fall that summer might have been affected by these developments, for the police chief had stressed relaxation and legality since the death of Stalin. Malenkov's resignation from the premiership in February 1955 ended the role of that former favorite of Stalin on the world scene.

Bulganin, who replaced Malenkov as head of the government, became the most prominent Soviet figure in