Zhivago's children : the last Russian intelligentsia / Vladislav Zubok.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zubok, V. M. (Vladislav Martinovich)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich, 1890-1960. Doktor Zhivago.

Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich.

Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich, 1890-1960--Influence.

Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953--Influence.

Stalin, Joseph.

Intellectuals--Soviet Union--History.

Intellectuals.

Social change--Soviet Union--History.

Social change.

Socialism--Soviet Union--History.

Socialism.

Soviet Union--Intellectual life.

Soviet Union.

Soviet Union--History--1953-1985.

Soviet Union--History--1985-1991.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (453 p. ) ill., ports.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This is an in-depth history of the cultural and intellectual evolution of the intelligentsia in Russia from Stalin's death in 1953 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Among the least-chronicled aspects of post-World War II European intellectual and cultural history is the story of the Russian intelligentsia after Stalin. Young Soviet veterans had returned from the heroic struggle to defeat Hitler only to confront the repression of Stalinist society. The world of the intelligentsia exerted an attraction for them, as it did for many recent university graduates. In its moral fervor and its rejection of authoritarianism, this new generation of intellectuals resembled the nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia that had been crushed by revolutionary terror and Stalinist purges. The last representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, heartened by Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalinism in 1956, took their inspiration from the visionary aims of their nineteenth-century predecessors and from the revolutionary aspirations of 1917. In pursuing the dream of a civil, democratic socialist society, such idealists contributed to the political disintegration of the communist regime. Vladislav Zubok turns a compelling subject into a portrait as intimate as it is provocative. The highly educated elite-those who became artists, poets, writers, historians, scientists, and teachers-played a unique role in galvanizing their country to strive toward a greater freedom. Like their contemporaries in the United States, France, and Germany, members of the Russian intelligentsia had a profound effect during the 1960s, in sounding a call for reform, equality, and human rights that echoed beyond their time and place. Zhivago's children, the spiritual heirs of Boris Pasternak's noble doctor, were the last of their kind-an intellectual and artistic community committed to a civic, cultural, and moral mission.

Contents:

Prologue: The fate of Zhivago's intelligentsia

The "children" grow up, 1945-1955

Shock effects, 1956-1958

Rediscovery of the world, 1955-1961

Optimists on the move, 1957-1961

The intelligentsia reborn, 1959-1962

The vanguard disowned, 1962-1964

Searching for roots, 1961-1967

Between reform and dissent, 1965-1968

The long decline, 1968-1985

Epilogue: The end of the intelligentsia.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [367]-436) and index.

ISBN:

9780674054837

0674054830

OCLC:

1294423573