This is a website devoted to the various forms of Russian Literature, the major authors, and developments in the Russian literary world during the Khrushchev "Thaw" period of 20th Century Russian history.

This home page contains a thorough recount of the history of the literature during the Thaw period, and serves to orient the site.

Disclaimer: This site does not purport to contain all original text; rather, it is more of a compilation of articles/essays/text from various sources centering around a common theme, linked together in a format that hopes to serve the purpose of contributing to simplifying and furthering the study of literature during this period of time.





“The Thaw” is the name given to the softening of official attitudes in Soviet Russia towards literature and the arts over the decade or so from 1953. The term also extends to standing for the artistic production (or at least the more liberal elements thereof) over this particular historical-cultural period. The death of Stalin (early in that year) caught the country unexpectedly, and this applied not least to its cultural life. Some slight signs of political relaxation towards the cultural scene had even begun to appear before then, but these were accompanied at the same time by highly sinister developments (the execution of the Yiddish writers; and the so-called “Doctors’ Plot”).

The Thaw period overall is usually deemed to stretch from 1953 to 1964: that is to say from the death of Stalin, to the ousting of Khrushchev. Within this timeframe, further breakdown is rather more vague. The year 1953 saw early “Thaw” signs: the first publication of writings beginning to criticise the bureaucracy and critical articles on the state of Soviet literature (in a decidedly minor vein at first); but, by the end of 1953, significant pieces had appeared by Olga Berggolts and Il’ia Erenburg, as well as V. Pomerantsev’s essay “On Sincerity in Literature” and a revival (in December) of Maiakovsky’s play The Bath-House (soon taken off back in 1930).

The Thaw proper is normally counted as beginning in 1954, and concluding (at least temporarily) in November 1956, with the Hungarian uprising and its Soviet suppression. 1954 saw the emblematic publication of Erenburg’s novel Ottepel’ [The Thaw], depicting a (symbolic) thaw in human relations, with some tentative discussion too of political questions: anti-semitism and the Doctors’ Plot. Other landmarks included the staging of Zorin’s play The Guests; and an article by Fedor Abramov, entitled “People of the kolkhoz village in Post-War prose”, attacking the idealised presentation of the collective farms (his later stories emphasised his point). Viktor Nekrasov’s "In Their Native Town" depicted men returning from the War to find all not going smoothly and starting to question things. The first trickle back of returnees from the Gulag also began. As always, such developments suffered a reaction, led by the poet and bureaucrat Aleksandr Surkov – attacking Erenburg and Abramov, as well as old suspects, such as Vasilii Grossman.

Also in 1954, the second ever Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers (which had been founded in 1932) took place. Discussions occurred on a slight broadening of Socialist Realism (with some support for more liberal positions). There were some literary “rehabilitations” (e.g. Anna Akhmatova), some reprintings of writers of the 1920s (selections of Babel and Olesha reappeared in 1956). Some censored passages were reinstated in Sholokhov’s The Quiet Don (for a 1956-58 collected edition). Writers themselves were now to judge “political areas” – there was to be no return to Zhdanovshchina (the repressive cultural policies of Andrei Zhdanov). This period also saw the rise of the essayists (employing the ocherk, or sketch, form) and of a new generation of young poets: Evgenii Evtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky and others. Older liberal writers (such as Paustovsky, Kaverin and Erenburg) pressed for rehabilitations and for the republication of disgraced and forgotten writers (such as Bulgakov and Zabolotsky), although many still remained unpublished until glasnost’ in the 1980s. The classic émigré writer Ivan Bunin (who had died in 1953) was published, though the bringing back into the fold of any such figures remained extremely selective. Literary scholarship on Dostoevsky recommenced and the popularisation began of selected western writers (at first the politically acceptable; but then gradually broadening – along with suitable introductions!).

In February of 1956 the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU took place, which included Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” denouncing Stalin. Shockwaves resulted throughout the Soviet bureaucratic world, along with a greatly added impetus for “de-Stalinisation”. The suicide of the novelist and time-serving bureaucrat Aleksandr Fadeev came shortly thereafter. Dudintsev’s novel Not by Bread Alone was published that year, as were various other prose works of Thaw significance by a range of writers, old and new. The beginnings of the Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago) affair were looming and criticisms of letting writers “say what they like” began to be voiced once more.

The “Second Thaw”, as it is sometimes called, is usually dated to the period from 1956 (post-invasion of Hungary) to 1959, and represents in effect a resumption of the previous developments, despite the attacks made on “revisionism”, and the “blackeners of reality”. It also saw the cultural crisis created by the Pasternak affair (1957-58); and a counter-attack by Khrushchev (1957) on Dudintsev and others, as a result of which the writers seemed to be caving in. However, the period also saw important writings by Erenburg, including his “The Laws of Art” essay (1959), followed by the volumes of his People, Years, Life memoirs (published 1960-65). In 1959 the Third Congress of the Writers’ Union took place, in which Konstantin Fedin took over as General Secretary: a former member of the (liberal) Serapion Brothers group of writers in the 1920s, he was expected to provide a liberal influence, but turned out to be weak, duplicitous and easily compromised. This period saw the beginnings of the “New -” or "Youth Prose ”(“Molodaia proza”) movement. There was development too in Soviet literature of urban themes, psychology, nature and rural themes (leading to “Village Prose”), and the short story form. The poetry of the younger generation of poets continued to flourish. There was also something of a conservation and “Old Russia” movement in Soviet prose, leading towards what we now recognise as post-Soviet Russian nationalism. The memoir became an important literary and cultural form (from Erenburg, Paustovsky and Olesha, soon to be followed by more dissident examples, such as those of Nadezhda Mandel’shtam). At this time there were few long novels (at least, ones published in the Soviet Union) of any merit.

The 1960-64 period saw a further continuation of the Thaw. In 1961, at the 21st Congress of the CPSU, Krushchev made public his “secret speech” of 1956. Prominent publications included the Evtushenko poems, “Babii Iar” and “The Heirs of Stalin”; the Pages from Tarusa almanac; Aksenov’s novella A Ticket to the Stars; and even Solzhenitsyn’s "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". Tvardovsky published his own Terkin in the Other World and, as editor of the journal Novyi mir [New World] brought out further Solzhenitsyn stories. However, an exhibition of modern art at the Manezh prompted a vitriolic attack by Khrushchev, who was in the process of backtracking towards a a partial re-Stalinization. In February 1964, the young poet Joseph [Iosif] Brodsky was put on trial for “parasitism”. Soon afterwards the Lenin Prize was denied to Solzhenitsyn and his Soviet publishing career had come to an end, with publication of Cancer Ward refused. A policy was adopted of blaming writers for any use made (or political-cultural exploitation) of their works in the West: attacks were made on Solzhenitsyn, and attempts were stepped up to uncover the identities of the pseudonymous writers “Abram Terts” and “Nikolai Arzhak” (subsequently unmasked as Andrei Siniavsky and Yuli Daniel, who were put on trial). In October of 1964, Khrushchev was in any case thrown out of office in a Kremlin coup, ushering in Brezhnev’s “period of stagnation” [period zastoia].

This major Soviet political event is generally held to mark the end of the Thaw period, although a very gradual progression of (possibly unstoppable) literary liberalisation did continue, alongside repressive measures which led to a hardening of dissidence (two steps forward and at least one step back) on through the next twenty-odd years. Defections and expulsions (the “Third Emigration”) resulted, accompanied by the growth of samizdat [self-publication] and tamizdat [overseas publication] – as opposed to gosizdat [official publication]. Thus did Soviet literature proceed on a twenty-year crawl towards glasnost’ – and with that a real Thaw of the strictures which had been imposed on Russian literature.

Citation: Cornwell, Neil. "Soviet Literature - The “Thaw”". The Literary Encyclopedia. 20 July 2005.


A thorough history of the Thaw from a political/historical perspective can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchev_thaw