Khrushchev’s secret policy : power, the intelligentsia, the Jewish question (New version)

   This monograph is part of a series of books on the history of the Jewish policy in the Soviet Union, which also includes books such as Stalin’s secret policy. Power and antisemitism (New Version): in 2 parts, (M., 2015) and Secret policies: from Brezhnev to Gorbachev: in 2 parts (M., 2019). Following the Latin term “Sine ira et studio” (Without anger and passion), the author reconstructs, on the basis of strictly academic documentation, the complex and conflicting course of post-Stalin authority and that of the country’s new leader Khrushchev, in resolving the Jewish problem. The Jewish problem that called for urgent measures especially to surmount the legacy of Stalinism; a completely destroyed and banned Jewish culture and Judaism which had gone through a deep depression. The bubbling, mid-1950s thaw of liberalization in Soviet society only helped in overcoming these crisis phenomena to a minimum degree, if at all. To help to reader be sure of this, the book reproduces in detail the dialogue of the authorities with the liberal creative intelligentsia, and also starkly describes the dramatic fates of the intelligentsia’s prominent actors who include Vasiliy Grossman, Ilya Erenburg, Mikhail Romm and Margarita Aliger. Moreover, this has been the first attempt, on the basis of serious academic investigation, to work out Khrushchev’s complex personal stance on the Jewish question and to understand the bureaucratic mechanism that concealed his stance with the party state apparatus. Foreign policy themes which include the chaotic events of 1956 in Poland, Hungary and the near East, also have an important place in the book. Israel’s aggressive strategy in the struggle for the emigration of Soviet Jews is laid out in an unbiased manner. This study is particularly valuable in that the author holds to the principle of disaffirming and exposing various legends, myths and falsifications, which sprouted from the Jewish problem in the USSR and also in the post-Soviet period.