Word: thawing
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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What the Kremlin appeared to be driving for, even at the price of making procedural concessions, was a new series of parleys for propaganda's sake. In these, surface impressions of East-West cordiality, leaders photographed together smiling, exchanging toasts, etc., would cloak the absence of any real thaw of the cold...
While ideological thaw crept through the satellites in the wake of the 20th Party Congress, East Germany's Socialist Unity (Communist) Party remained the iceberg of the Communist world. Goat-bearded First Secretary Walter Ulbricht, 64, an old-line Stalinist, kept his party and his nation under tight control. Intellectuals or students showing signs of "liberalism" were summarily jailed...
Last week the iceberg suddenly cracked. Without warning, Ulbricht fired three of his top associates, labeled them members of "an opportunistic group trying to change the political line of the party." In short, the three had shown signs of thaw. "Others" in the party, added the announcement, were associated with the group-a sign that a good-sized purge was in progress...
Cracking down on the critics who had risen in the thaw after his own attacks on Stalin, he persuaded Gomulka to stifle the young bloods who had stirred Poland. "We are all Stalinists," he announced. "God grant that every Communist be able to fight as Stalin fought." ("We say the name of God," explains Khrushchev, "but that is only a habit. We are atheists.") To Westerners who predicted that his destalinization program could be used to topple the Soviet empire, he shouted: "You will no more succeed at this than you will succeed in seeing your ear without a mirror...
During the temporary thaw of destalinization, some fascinating literary floes have broken loose from the icecap of Soviet culture and drifted into open water. Last year Moscow allowed the serialization of Not by Bread Alone, Vladimir Dudintsev's harsh novel of genius frustrated by Red bureaucracy (TIME, Oct. 21), later condemned the book but could not prevent publication in the West. Now another furor is brewing over the appearance in Italy of a novel by distinguished Russian Poet-Translator Boris Pasternak. Reason why the Italian publication is "unauthorized"' by Moscow is evident from lines such as these: "Marxism...