De-Stalinization

Abstract: North Korea remains the most mysterious of all Communist countries. The acute shortage of available sources has made it a difficult subject of scholarship. Through his access to Soviet archival material made available only a decade ago, contemporary North Korean press accounts, and personal interviews, Andrei Lankov presents for the first time a detailed look at one of the turning points in North Korean history: the country's unsuccessful attempts to de-Stalinize in the mid-1950s. He demonstrates that, contrary to common perception, North Korea was not a realm of undisturbed Stalinism; Kim Il Sung had to deal with a reformist opposition that was weak but present nevertheless. Lankov traces the impact of Soviet reforms on North Korea, placing them in the context of contemporaneous political crises in Poland and Hungary. He documents the dissent among various social groups (intellectuals, students, party cadres) and their attempts to oust Kim in the unsuccessful "August plot" of 1956. His reconstruction of the Peng-Mikoyan visit of that year - the most dramatic Sino-Soviet intervention into Pyongyang politics - shows how it helped bring an end to purges of the opposition. The purges, however, resumed in less than a year as Kim skillfully began to distance himself from both Moscow and Beijing. The final chapters of this fascinating and revealing study deal with events of the late 1950s that eventually led to Kim's version of "national Stalinism." Lankov unearths data that, for the first time, allows us to estimate the scale and character of North Korea's Great Purge. Meticulously researched and cogently argued, Crisis in North Korea is a must-read for students and scholars of Korea and anyone interested in political leadership and personality cults, regime transition, and communist politics.

Abstract: The Khrushchev era is increasingly seen as a period in its own right, and not just as 'post-Stalinism' or a forerunner of subsequent 'thaws' and 'reform from within' This book provides a comprehensive history of reform in the period, focusing especially on social and cultural developments Since the opening of the former Soviet archives, much new information has become available casting light on how far official policies correlated with popular views Overall the book appraises how far 'Destalinization' went; and whether developments in the period represented a real desire for reform, or rather an attempt to fortify the Soviet system, but on different lines © 2006 selection and editorial matter, Polly Jones; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved

Abstract: Introduction 1 De-stalinisation, Ideology and Leisure Policy 2 A Brief History of Cultural Enlightenment 3 Changing Content - Changing Goals? 4 Policy and Practice: Party and State 5 Policy and Practice: House of Culture Staff and the Public 6 The Effectiveness of Cultural Enlightenment 7 Conclusions: the Death of Communist Cultural Enlightenment? Bibliography

Abstract: ‘Thou hast done well: This is God Who hath brought thee here!’ Īsān Tīmūr Hwāja (born 1948) to the author, summer village of Sang-i Milla-yi Bālā, district of Sahr-i Naw, Tajikistan, 10 August 2009 On the basis of a reconstruction of the careers of a variety of religious personnel of Islam in the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, from de-Stalinization to independence, this article aims to shed light on some neglected features of Islam in Soviet Central Asia. Questioning the present-day hagiographic process, and confronting the data of oral history with those of pre-modern Muslim hagiography and biographies of religious scholars, this article assesses the specific Islamic revival that has been taking place in Central Asia in the aftermath of the reopening of the Gulag in 1955–56. It also deals with the lasting Kulturkampf, engineered by the Soviet authorities, between the Fergana-born Uzbek-speaking accredited staff of the Muslim Spiritual Board on the one hand, and the Persian-speaking leaders of prominent...