MOSCOW 1956. THE SILENCED SPRING

Drawing on newly declassified Russian archives, Kathleen Smith offers a month-by-month reconstruction of events as the official proc ess of de-Stalinization unfolded and political and cultural experimentation flourished. Smith looks at writers, students, scientists , former gulag prisoners, and free-thinkers who took Khrushchevs promise of liberalization seriously, testing the limits of a more open Soviet system.