Description
"In the aftermath of Joseph Stalin's iron-fisted rule, the Soviet Union was at a crossroads: would the new government continue with Stalin's campaign of violence and fear, or would it move away from his dictatorship model? The answer, as Mark B. Smith demonstrates in his sweeping new history, was both. Although Khrushchev and his successors implemented significant reforms to enhance citizens' rights and security, they retained many of Stalin's authoritarian methods. Governmental power became more subtle, making it harder to detect. Even so, Smith argues that the Soviet Union became a true civilization-a stable society with a distinct culture-during this period despite its revolutionary roots and its recent tyrannical past. Soviet sustainability and the unlikelihood of revolution or collapse was the core truth of the post-Stalin decades. Combining social and cultural history with high politics and vivid biographical portraits, Smith examines three core areas of the post-Stalin USSR: recovery from its bloody early history, everyday life, and the puzzle of its eventual collapse. By weaving together a variety of stories of the Soviet world, Smith creates a dazzling narrative account of life in post-Stalin Russia. Exit Stalin is not just a new history of one of the great powers of the 20th century, but a portrait of a culture that adapted and wrestled with its own complexities, leaving an indelible mark on the world stage"--
