Khrushchev Thaw

Thaw ( Russian: Хрущёвская оттепель, IPA: [ xruʃ ʲ ʃ ʲ ɔ ˑ fskəjə ɔ ˑ t ʲ t ʲ ɪp ʲ ɪl ʲ ], " Chrustschow'sches thaw" ) is called an after Stalin's death emanating from the Soviet Union period, the loosening and greater freedom of the internal culture in the countries of the Eastern bloc. The name comes from Ilya Ehrenburg's novel " thaw" back.

Trigger for the end of the " Ice Age" and the beginning of the thaw was the death of Stalin on 5 March 1953. Nikita Khrushchev, after a slow start, the reformer of the Stalinist system (" de-Stalinization " ) when he in February 1956 following the XX. Congress of the CPSU held the so-called secret speech. In it he raised severe criticism of the cult of personality around Stalin and the Stalinist crimes in the 1930s. The thaw also led to the price of "peaceful coexistence" in Soviet foreign policy. So Khrushchev went on approach course to Tito in Yugoslavia.

Background for Soviet change of course was that until the death of Stalin, even the highest party officials, when they fell out of favor, had to fear for their lives. Therefore, the thaw policy was initially in the own interest of the party functionaries. A second motive for the policy of détente were the high administrative and military costs that caused the totalitarian control of the satellite states. Khrushchev also increasingly used his image as a reformer in the struggle for power with conservative opponents within the party, which he denounced as backward and dangerous. His own involvement in the crimes of the Stalin era, he could better conceal.

During this phase of de-Stalinization, the censorship weakened markedly, especially in literature, art and film was discussed openly. Most important platform of the representatives of the thaw was the literary journal Novy Mir. Some works of this period came in the west to greater prominence, including Vladimir Dudinzews " Man does not live by bread alone " "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich ", the Khrushchev personally released for publication and Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel. Other important representatives of the thaw period were the writer Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko, Viktor Petrovich Astafyev, Vladimir Fedorovich Tendryakov, Bella Achatowna Akhmadulina, Robert Ivanovich Rozhdestvensky, Andrei Andreyevich Voznesensky and Anna Akhmatova Andrejewna.

In September 1955, the then German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer traveled to Moscow to obtain the return of the last POWs from Soviet camps. At that time were still almost 10,000 former soldiers of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen- SS and about 20,000 politically imprisoned civilians in Soviet captivity (See Return of the Ten Thousand ); they were allowed to return home from the 7th October 1955.

Many political prisoners in the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries were released after 1956 and rehabilitated in part. Whole under Stalin outlawed groups have now been rehabilitated. In some countries, relatively liberal prime minister came to power in Hungary, for example Imre Nagy. On May 15, 1955, the Austrian State Treaty between the four occupying powers (USSR, USA, UK, France ) and Austria was signed, ending the occupation. After these first signals a new attitude came in 1955 to the Geneva summit between U.S. President Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the leaders of Britain, France and Bulgaria.

The thaw did not last long. With the suppression of the uprising in Hungary in November 1956, many people buried hopes of a further opening. Khrushchev's campaign against Boris Pasternak, the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded ( Pasternak did not dare to these receive it in person ), showed the Russian artists clearly the limits of liberalization. The Soviet leadership fluctuated rapidly between liberal approaches and the fear of losing control exactly. In the early 60s, the latest with the disempowerment by Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev ( October 1964 ), the thaw ended. That Khrushchev was deposed and not simply arrested or even murdered, the Thaw and the end of terror would be beforehand probably not have been possible without.

After the end of the thaw Soviet -critical documents could only be provided through unofficial channels ( samizdat ). The Thaw fact has become the forerunner of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms from 1985, who received the Stalinization again ( glasnost and perestroika ).

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