Overview

Drawing on previously inaccessible records, this book discusses love, sex, marriage, divorce, and child-rearing during Khrushchev's thaw of the 1950s and early 1960s. It analyses the Soviet government's attempts to supervise private life and enforce communist morality, and it describes the diverse ways in which people responded to official prescriptions. Written in a lively and accessible style, this book provides an innovative exploration of the interactions between Soviet ideology and everyday life.

Full Product Details

9780820495026

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Reviews

Deborah A. Field opens a window into private life in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev. In the years after Stalin's death, at a time when Westerners and even some Soviets would have had a hard time imagining a private sphere in the lives of Soviet citizens, social and personal relations were in fact becoming more vital and varied. Field shows how ideas of Communist morality shaped, constrained, and were in turn shaped by emerging new thinking about and practices of sexuality, childrearing, and privacy. Yes, Virginia, there was romantic love and personal relationships in the collective life of the USSR! (Ronald Grigor Suny, Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History, The University of Michigan; Professor Emeritus of Political Science and History, The University of Chicago)

« Deborah A. Field opens a window into private life in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev. In the years after Stalin's death, at a time when Westerners and even some Soviets would have had a hard time imagining a private sphere in the lives of Soviet citizens, social and personal relations were in fact becoming more vital and varied. Field shows how ideas of Communist morality shaped, constrained, and were in turn shaped by emerging new thinking about and practices of sexuality, childrearing, and privacy. Yes, Virginia, there was romantic love and personal relationships in the collective life of the USSR!

Author Information

The Author: Deborah A. Field received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan and is Associate Professor of History at Adrian College in Michigan.

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