The First Crack in the Ice: How the 1956 Protests Altered Soviet Cold War Hegemony Restricted; Files Only
Gayan, Melissa (Summer 2023)
Published
Abstract
After Joseph Stalin’s death in March 1953, the collective government’s rejection of terror as state policy was a fundamental change in how it would govern the country. The distancing of this new version of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from its Stalinist legacy faced an early crisis in its internal republic of Georgia after the 20th Party Congress and Nikita Khrushchev’s delivery of the commonly known “Secret Speech” in February 1956. The close study of the central authorities’ immediate and long-term responses in Georgia, as well as in Poland and Hungary where protests occurred later in the same year revealed a new relationship between center and periphery authorities in the post-Stalin era. In exchange for assurances to keep their respective populations in line with Soviet policies, the central authorities treated these national leaders as unofficial viceroys, a position used in Imperial Russia, and afforded a tremendous amount of autonomy in their territory. The practice of granting the unofficial viceroy status to these national communist leaders showed since the CPSU indicated that it would no longer use terror to gain compliance among its population, it had to negotiate with its periphery a boundary of acceptable behavior. If the viceroys fulfilled Moscow’s requirements, these areas built a socialist government that fit within its national context. This renegotiated unofficial power structure proved stable as it stabilized an ideologically deficient Soviet Union for thirty years until Mikhail Gorbachev’s 1986 reforms.
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 9
Building the Foundations of Power and Identity: Georgia’s Imperialist History
Chapter 2 43
Chaos, Independence, and Forced Sovietization: Georgia and the Bolsheviks
Chapter 3 71
Stalin Consolidates Power: The Attack on Patronage, 1941-1953
Chapter 4 107
The Center Loosens Its Grip: The Post-Stalinist Party
Chapter 5 107
1956: Rebellion and Reform
Conclusion 140
Bibliography 198
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