Remembering Stalin's Victims - by Kathleen E Smith (Paperback)

About the Book

In Remembering Stalin's Victims, Kathleen E. Smith examines how government reformers' repudiation of Stalin's repressions both in the 1950s and in the 1980s created new political crises. Drawing on interviews, she tells the stories of citizens and officials in conflict over the past. She also addresses the underlying question of how societies...

Book Synopsis

In Remembering Stalin's Victims, Kathleen E. Smith examines how government reformers' repudiation of Stalin's repressions both in the 1950s and in the 1980s created new political crises. Drawing on interviews, she tells the stories of citizens and officials in conflict over the past. She also addresses the underlying question of how societies emerging from rep1;essive regimes reconcile themselves to their memories. Soviet leaders twice attempted to liberalize communist rule and both times their initiatives hinged on criticism of Stalin. During the years of the Khrushchev "thaw" and again during Gorbachev's glasnost, anti-Stalinism proved a unique catalyst for democratic mobilization. Under Gorbachev, dissatisfaction with half truths about past atrocities united citizens from all walks of life in the Memorial Society, an independent mass movement that eventually challenged the very notion of reform communism. Smith investigates why citizens risked confrontation with the Communist Party in order to promote recognition of the victims of Stalinism and recompense for their survivors. Efforts to acknowledge the bitter legacy of totalitarian rule, while originally supporting a stable statesociety reform coalition, ultimately provoked "radical" demands for openness about the past, official accountability, and institutional guarantees of human rights, Smith explains. The battle over the Soviet past, she suggests, not only illuminates the dynamic between elite and mass political actors during liberalization, but also reveals the scars that totalitarian rule has left on Russian society and the long-term obstacles to reform it has created.

From the Back Cover

In Remembering Stalin's Victims, Kathleen E. Smith examines how government reformers' repudiation of Stalin's repressions both in the 1950s and in the 1980s created new political crises. Drawing on interviews, she tells the stories of citizens and officials in conflict over the past. She also addresses the underlying question how societies emerging from repressive regimes reconcile themselves to their memories. Soviet leaders twice attempted to liberalize Communist rule and both times their initiatives hinged on criticism of Stalin. During the years of the Khrushchev "thaw" and again during Gorbachev's glasnost, antistalinism proved a unique catalyst for democratic mobilization. The battle over the Soviet past, Smith suggests, not only illuminates the dynamic between elite and mass political actors during liberalization but also reveals the scars that totalitarian rule has left on Russian society and the long-term obstacles to reform it has created.

Review Quotes

The sociologist Kathleen E. Smith, in her work on popular memory and the Stalinist past, provides a kind of 'thick description' of the mutual influence of historiography, politics, and the public sphere in the last years of the USSR.... Her book, which is extraordinarily lively, also provides concrete examples about the way local authorities reacted to the Memorial Society either through accommodation or confrontation, and this clarifies the general conditions governing the relationship between the informal sector and the authorities in a time of flux.

-- "Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History"

The Memorial Society, founded in the late 1980s, provides a focus for Kathleen E. Smith's book. Memorial's value as a forum for liberals of many kinds, its role in conscience-raising in the critical years of glastnost' and its efforts to recover and publish the details of Stalin's repressions are vividly researched. Smith discusses its membership and their motivations at different points.... Her discussion of Memorial is grounded in an awareness of the earlier history of rehabilitation, with Khrushchev's abortive thaw and the twilight world of dissidents receiving careful appraisal. The book is well written, attractively illustrated (many of the pictures come from Memorial's own archive) and based on extensive primary research, including visits to an impressive and widely scattered range of provincial Russian and other former Soviet towns. Smith has interviewed several of the key players in her story, as well as reviewing archival, literary, and other published sources. The result is a balanced and intelligent commentary on Memorial and its antecedents.

-- "Slavonic and East European Review"

About the Author

Kathleen E. Smith is Assistant Professor of Government at Hamilton College.