Notice bibliographique
- Notice
Au format public
Type(s) de contenu et mode(s) de consultation : Texte noté : sans médiation
Auteur(s) : Kalb, Marvin Leonard
Titre(s) : The year I was Peter the Great [Texte imprimé] / Marvin Kalb
Publication : Washington (D.C) : Brookings, 2017
Description matérielle : 1 vol. (XIV-290 p.) : illustrations ; 24 cm
Note(s) : Maps on endpapers. - Includes index
The year 1956 was an extraordinary year in modern Russian history. It was called "the
year of the thaw"--a time when Stalin's dark legacy of dictatorship died in February
only to be reborn later that December. This historic arc from rising hope to crushing
despair opened with a speech by Nikita Khrushchev, then the unpredictable leader of
the Soviet Union. He astounded everyone by denouncing the one figure who, up to that
time, had been hailed as a "genius," a wizard of communism--Josef Stalin himself.
Now, suddenly, this once unassailable god was being portrayed as a "madman" whose
idiosyncratic rule had seriously undermined communism and endangered the Soviet state.
This amazing switch from hero to villain lifted a heavy overcoat of fear from the
backs of ordinary Russians. It also quickly led to anti-communist uprisings in Eastern
Europe, none more bloody and challenging than the one in Hungary, which Soviet troops
crushed at year's end. Marvin Kalb, then a young diplomatic attaché at the U.S. Embassy
in Moscow, observed this tumultuous year that foretold the end of Soviet communism
three decades later. Fluent in Russian, a doctoral candidate at Harvard, he went where
few other foreigners would dare go, listening to Russian students secretly attack
communism and threaten rebellion against the Soviet system, traveling from one end
of a changing country to the other and, thanks to his diplomatic position, meeting
and talking with Khrushchev, who playfully nicknamed him Peter the Great. In this,
his fifteenth book, Kalb writes a fascinating eyewitness account of a superpower in
upheaval and of a people yearning for an end to dictatorship
Autre(s) forme(s) du titre :
- Titre de couverture : Nineteen fifty-six - Khrushchev, Stalin's ghost, and a young
American in Russia
Sujet(s) : Kalb, Marvin Leonard
Année 1956
Politique et gouvernement -- URSS -- 1953-1964
URSS
Hongrie -- 1956 (Révolution)
Genre ou forme : Autobiographie
Récits de voyages -- 1945-1970
Récits personnels
Identifiants, prix et caractéristiques : ISBN 9780815731610. - ISBN 0815731612. - ISBN 9780815731627 (erroné) (rel.)
Identifiant de la notice : ark:/12148/cb45490047c
Notice n° :
FRBNF45490047
(notice reprise d'un réservoir extérieur)
Table des matières : Roots ; War, college, and basketball ; Joyce, Teddy, and journalism ; From Cambridge to Moscow ; Govorit Moskva ; Moscow calling ; De-Stalinization = Destabilization ; The thaw ; From Zhukov to Poznan ; Into the heartland ; A summertime break in Central Asia ; Where Stalin is still worshipped ; Back to a familiar chill ; "Dark, frightening, and tragic days" ; Uvarov, Sasha, and Stalin's ghost ; At the end of the arc ; Postscript : five months later.
