19Post-Stalin Era: Nationalism, Culture, and Foreign Policy

Overview

A. Main Themes

B. Nationalities: From Fusion to Fission

C. Culture: Thaw, Repression, Dissent

D. Foreign Policy: Confrontation, Détente, Crisis

E. Conclusions

A. Main Themes

1. Nationality: neither integration nor suppression, denial and disintegration

2. Khrushchev’s thaw: concessions and conflict

3. Brezhnev era: repression and rise of dissent

4. Antireligious campaigns

5. Khrushchev’s USSR: confrontation

B. Nationalities: From Fusion to Fission

1. Demography

2. Post-Stalin Policy: Voluntary Fusion

3. Politics: Slavic Center, Non-slavic periphery

4. Economics

5. Cultural issue: language, literature, religion

6. Dissent: minority and Russian nationalism

7. 1980s: Centrifugal forces prevail

Central Asia: Two Worlds

C. Culture

1. Khrushchev: Concessions and Conflicta. “Thaw”

b. Conflict and consternation

c. Antireligious campaign

2. Brezhnev: Repression and dissenta. Repression

b. Dissidenty: Dissenters

c. Diversity of dissent

Moscow Youth Festival (1957)

Krokodil Satire: Soviet Hippies (1969)

Boris Pasternak

Elena Bonner and Andrei Sakharov

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Vladimir VysotskiiBard and Actor

Leaving the Village (1965 Painting)

D. Foreign Policy

1. Principal issues

2. Khrushchev eraa. Goals and strategy

b. Bloc politics

c. West: accommodation, competition, confrontation

3. Brezhnev eraa. Goals and strategy

b. Bloc politics: Czechs, Chinese, and Poles

c. Developing countries

d. Détente

e. Kabul and confrontation

Soviet Tanks in Budapest1956

Budapest 1956

Mao, Stalin, Khrushchev

Khrushchev-Mao Negotiations1959

“Good Morning, Africa!”

Prague 1968: Student Confronts Soviet Tank

Prague 1968: Students Exhort Soviet Soldiers to Leave

Afghanistan: Graveyard of Soviet Tanks

Soviet-Afghan War