European University Institute Library

Zhivago's children, the last Russian intelligentsia, Vladislav Zubok

eng

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

contains biographical information

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Zhivago's children

bibliography

779920472

Vladislav Zubok

the last Russian intelligentsia

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

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