Khrushchev's Russia (Edward Crankshaw)

I love the look of the old Penguin books. For a cheap paperback printed over fifty years ago, my copy of Krushechev's Russia, is in very good condition. The pages are yellowed and the spine has some wear on either end, but other than that, the book is undamaged. If I recall correctly, I didn't pay a thing for it. About two years ago I pulled a dozen or so of these penguin books from a recycling dumpster. It seemed a shame to let them be destroyed. After collecting dust on my shelf for a very long time, I finally picked this one up.

It's a short, non-fiction read spanning only 176 pages. Published in 1959, the book provides a picture of the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin. Crankshaw chooses to focus, not of foreign policy or international affairs as many of the writers did and still do when discussing Russia, but rather he focuses on the internal state and changes within Russian society, government and industry. The picture provided is very small and perhaps an inaccurate one at times. Crankshaw makes interpretations and predictions at a time when it was assumed that Khrushchev would remain in power in the Soviet Union for a long time to come.

One of the more interesting aspects of the book is Crankshaw's interlude about literature and writing near the end. Crankshaw describes the previous Russian literature under Stalin as being a literature in which, "the only possible hero was the young man with a steam shovel who thought solely in terms of fulfilling his norm, of then exceeding it; the only possible heroine was the young woman who was prepared to turn her back on the man she loved, if the man she loved showed the slightest sign of putting his private concerns, including her, before his allotted task (p.101-2). Subtly, Crankshaw implies that what happened under Khrushchev was a loosening of the reigns which had formerly forced Russian authors to write nothing that did not reinforce the dominant ideologies and rhetoric of Soviet Russia. I admire this line: "An author," Crankshaw says, "is not a piece of machinery registering events" (p.105).

Crankshaw spends a number of pages praising the loosening of government restraints over literature, but reminds the reader to make no mistake; while there may be a thaw, there are still constraints in Soviet literature. To prove this point, he recounts a garden party in Moscow where a selection of  Soviet writers were invited. They listened to a speech given by Khrushchev. A few indirect threats were uttered within the speech and apparently one author fainted.

Regardless of what Soviet Russia was and wasn't under Khrushchev, it is apparent that the system developed under the tight hand of Stalin was relaxed and altered in many ways. Innovations and reallocation of funds allowed the standard of living in the country to begin to increase.

Krushchev's Russia is a unique piece of historical writing which is well worth the read, but perhaps it is best consumed accompanied by other, more modern writings on the same time period and subject so that the reader is provided with as balanced a view as possible.