A grant from the Aits and Humanities Research Board supported the research and writing of this article. I would like to thank those who commented on earlier versions of this paper presented at the AAASS 34th National Convention in Pittsburgh and at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (University College London) in November 2002, in particular Geoffrey Hosking, Pete Duncan, Wendy Slater, Maya Haber, Bettina Weichert, and Sheila Fitzpatrick. Especial thanks go to Susan Morrissey who read and commented on this article in several earlier forms. I am also grateful to the two anonymous referees at Slavic Review for their helpful suggestions.

1 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, “How People Read One Day: A Survey of Letters,” in Labedz, Leopold, ed., Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (Harmondsworth, 1974), 50.Google Scholar While many readers addressed letters to the editors of Novyi mir (now preserved at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art), others wrote directly to the author himself. Small snippets of these letters are printed in Labedz's collection.

2 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, “Odin den’ Ivana Denisovicha,” Novyi mir, 1962, no. 11: 8–74 Google Scholar.

3 Solzhenitsyn, “How People Read One Day,” 50.

4 See for example Simonov, Konstantin, “O proshlom vo imia budushchego,“ hvestiia, 18 November 1962, 5;Google Scholar “Vo imia pravdy, vo imia zhizni,” Pravda, 23 November 1962, 7–8; N. Kruzhkov, “Tak bylo, tak ne budet,” Ogonek, 2 December 1962, 28–29; Fomenko, Lidiia, “Bol'shie ozhidaniia,” Literaturnaia Rossiia, 11 January 1963, 6–7;Google Scholar “V redaktsiiu Literatnrnoi gazety,” Literaturnaiagazeta, 22January 1963, 3; Chapchakhov, Fedor, “Nomera i liudi,” Don 7, no. 1 (January 1963): 155–159;Google Scholar Sergovantsev, N., “Tragediia odinocbestva i 'sploshnoi byt,'” Oktiabr'40, no. 4 (April 1963): 198–206;Google Scholar Lakshin, V., “Ivan Denisovich, ego druz'ia i nedrugi,” Novyi mir, 1964, no. 1:223–245.Google Scholar

5 A year earlier, Novyi mir had already published Viktor Nekrasov's Kira Grigorievna, a tale recounting the difficulties encountered by a gulag survivor upon returning home. Nekrasov, Viktor, “Kira Grigorievna,” Novyi mir, 1961, no. 6:70–126.Google Scholar

6 Condee, Nancy, “Cultural Codes of the Thaw,” in Taubman, William, Khrushchev, Sergei, and Gleason, Abbott, eds., Nikita Kivrushchev (New Haven, 2000), 160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Krylova, Anna, “The Tenacious Liberal Subject in Soviet Studies,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eastern European Studies 1, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 119–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Hayward, Max, “Solzhenitsyn's Place in Contemporary Soviet Literature,” Slavic Review 23, no. 3 (September 1964): 433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Cohen, Stephen F., “The Friends and Foes of Change: Reformism and Conservatism in the Soviet Union,” in Cohen, Stephen F., Rabinowitch, Alexander, and Sharlet, Robert, eds., The Soviet Union Since Stalin (Bloomington, 1980), 14.Google Scholar

10 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (RGALI), f. 1702 (Novyi mir), op. 9, d. 109 (Readers’ letters about works published in the journal), 1. 123.

11 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI), f. 560 (Special fond of manuscript materials relating to the violation of legality in the years of Stalin's cult of personality), op. 1, d. 44,1.1. Having worked as a prison guard for fifteen years, this party member wrote to the Central Committee, convinced that in the camps where he had served there were indeed significant numbers of “inveterate [ot'iavlennye] enemies of Soviet power, traitors, German collaborators [nemetskie posobniki], henchmen [karateli], bandits,” and not only the innocent victims he found in Solzhenitsyn's work.

12 This article primarily uses three dela from the Novyi mir fond at RGALI, f. 1702 (Novyi mir), op. 9, d. 107-109, which contain letters from the very end of 1962 through to the summer of 1963. Letters continued to be received in the second half of 1963, but these were often more general responses to Solzhenitsyn's publications and reputation, rather than specifically related to his first work, “Odin den'Ivana Denisovicha.” In the three dela explored, about twenty letters were copied. Of these twenty, only two supported the work unequivocally, while one questioned the necessity of publishing such works at all (the sister of a purge victim, Comrade Spasskaia was distressed to read of the horrors her brother had endured, d. 107, 11. 34–35). The majority, however, were more equivocal. The other seventeen letters examined all claimed to accept the process of de-Stalinization, whilst challenging certain important aspects of Solzhenitsyn's work. At least eight of the letters criticized Solzhenitsyn's use of language. Five letters came from men still serving prison sentences for nonpolitical crimes.

13 The camp population was 2,466,914 on 1 April 1953, falling to 781,630 by January of 1956 and as low as 550,000 in 1960. See Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), f. 7523 (Supreme Soviet), op. 89 (Documents relating to the review of pardon appeals), d. 4408, 1. 82; and GARF, f. 7523, op. 95 (Group for the preparation of pardon appeals), d. 109,1.27.

14 In the Secret Speech, Khrushchev depicts the returnees almost exclusively as high-ranking party members victimized by Stalin's terror. Western observers have tended to follow his example, focusing predominantly on the rehabilitation of political prisoners and paying only fleeting attention to the millions of nonpolitical zeks (zakliuchennye: prisoners, slang) allowed to return in the first post-Stalin years. For a recent example of this focus, see Adler, Nanci, The Gulag Survivor: Beyond the Soviet System (New Brunswick, N.J., 2002).Google Scholar

15 Amnesties were passed in 1953, 1954, 1955, 1957, and 1959. In addition, the “work-day” system, established in 1919 but abandoned under Stalin, was reintroduced in July 1954, allowing prisoners who met their targets to win early release. On the “work-day“ system, see GARF, f. 7523, op. 89, d. 4403,11. 12–17.

16 Cited in Aleksandr Tvardovskii's preface to “Odin den’ Ivana Denisovicha,” Novyi mir, 1962, no. 11:8.

17 Two Russian emigres later wrote that “the undoubted bestseller of the Soviet press of the 1960s was Khrushchev's concluding speech at the Twenty-Second Party Congress, which drew on the dramatic conflict between his desire to tell the truth and the intention of Molotov-Kaganovich to hide it.” Petr Vail'and Aleksandr Genis, 60-e: Mir sovetskogo chebveka (Ann Arbor, 1988), 139.

18 “Rech’ tovarishcha D. A. Lazurkinoi,” Pravda, 31 October 1961, 2.

19 The main thrust of Adler's work is to demonstrate the ongoing difficulties endured by “the Gulag survivor,” but she admits that in the early 1960s, the Soviet press was ready to print returnees’ memoirs. The texts chosen for publication invariably showed a communist who had never lost faith in the party that had rejected him. See for example the memoirs of Boris D'iakov, published in the March 1963 issue of Zvezda. He began by saying, “My chief aim is to show true communists always remain communists no matter what terrible experiences are thrown at them.” The recollections of A. V. Gorbatov, published in 1964 in Novyi mir, embody a similarly heroic martyrdom. A Red Army general briefly repressed at the height of the purges, Gorbatov had returned to take up a leading position in the Soviet Army. Adler, Gulag Survivor, 215; D'iakov, Boris, “Perezhitoe,” Zvezda, 1963, no. 3:177;Google Scholar Gorbatov, A. V., “Gody i voiny,” Novyi mir, 1964, no. 3:133–56; no. 4:99–138; no. 5:106–53.Google Scholar

20 Arkhiv “Memoriala,” Moscow, f. 2 (Memoir collection), op. 1, d. 68 (personal file of Aleksandr Nikonorovich Zuev), 1. 2.

21 Aleksei Kondratovich wrote to Boris Oliker, a rehabilitated party member from Minsk, in May 1963. RGALI, f. 1702, op. 9, d. 109,1. 20.

22 The fond mentioned is now housed at RGASPI, f. 560, op. 1. For a fuller exploration of these memoirs, see Miriam Dobson, “Refashioning the Enemy: Popular Beliefs and the Rhetoric of Destalinisation, 1953-1964” (PhD diss., University of London, 2003), 225–41.

23 “Doklad N. S. Khrushcheva,” Pravda, 18 October 1961: 9; “Doklad N. S. Khrushcheva,“ Pravda, 19 October 1961, 1; “Rech’ tovarishcha G. D. Dzhavakhishvili,” Pravda, 31 October 1961, 2; “Rech’ tovarishcha P. N. Demicheva,” Pravda, 20 October 1961, 2; “Rech'N. V. Podgornogo,” Pravda, 20 October 1961, 4.

24 RGALI, f. 1702, op. 9, d. 109,1. 152.

25 Ibid., 1. 153.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid., d. 107,11. 97-100.

28 See Hoffmann, David L., Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917-1941 (Ithaca, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Hagenloh, Paul M., “'Socially Harmful Elements’ and the Great Terror,” in Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed., Stalinism: New Directions (London, 2000), 286–87.Google Scholar

30 The gulag had initially been imagined as a site of redemption. Katerina Clark identifies the years 1931 to 1935 as the period in which this vision of the gulag prevailed. Under Maksim Gor'kii's tutelage, there appeared several accounts of how social aliens were dispatched to hard labor within the camp system, given intensive reeducation, thereby “re-forged” as decent citizens. Belomor, the literary work edited by Gor'kii, contained the bold claim that “as the result of twenty months of work, the country has a few thousand skilled builders who have gone through a hard but formative experience and have been cured of the creeping infection of petty bourgeois society.” The motif of redemption was to recede, however, with the escalation of terror in the second half of the decade. See Clark, Katerina, The Soviet Novel: History As Ritual, 3d ed. (Bloomington, 2000), 118–19;Google Scholar Gor'kii, Maksim, Auerbach, L., and Firin, S. G., Belomor: An Account of the Construction of the Neiu Canal between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea, trans. Williams-Ellis, Amabel (London, 1935), 338.Google Scholar

31 Statistics from the Ministry of the Interior suggest increased criminal activity in the years following Stalin's death. As a result of the March amnesty, 1953 witnessed a particularly grave crime wave, and though 1954 saw a brief lull, there was a steady rise in crimes recorded over the coming years. By 1957, the overall number of crimes registered was 39 percent higher than in even 1953. The figures for murder are particularly startling, with the number doubling between 1953 and 1957. GARF, f. 7523, op. 89, d. 7494, 1. 54.

32 Tvardovskii's preface to “Odin den'Ivana Denisovicha,” Novyi mir, 1962, no. 11:9.

33 Fomenko, “Bol'shie ozhidaniia.“

34 Chapchakhov, “Nomera i liudi.“

35 RGALI, f. 1702, op. 9, d. 108,11. 10–12.

36 Ibid., d. 107,1. 71.

37 Ibid., 1.65.

38 Ibid., 11. 58–61.

39 Grigorii Chukhrai, director, Chistoe nebo (Moscow: Mosfil'm, 1961).

40 Georgii Shelest', “Samorodok,” Izvestiia, 6 November 1962, 6. In the story, four purged party members sent to the Kolyma gold mines exhibit true communist behavior. Having unearthed a huge nugget of gold, they are tempted to hide it in order to then sliver off small pieces each day, thus meeting their targets with less exertion. They resist, however, and hand it all in immediately in order to help the war effort.

41 Boym, Svetlana, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1994), 42, 64.Google Scholar

42 Vadim Volkov, “The Concept of Kuiturnost': Notes on the Stalinist Civilizing Process,“ in Fitzpatrick, Stalinism: New Directions, 223.

43 RGALI, f. 1702, op. 9, d. 107,1. 76.

44 In his work on swearing in late imperial Russia, Steve Smith has suggested that for “conscious” workers striving to acquire kul'turnost', swearing was so strongly associated with a perceived “lack of culture” it came to serve as a “recognised marker of Russian ethnicity.“ It is revealing that half a century after the revolution, Mel'nikov associated bad language with a hangover from the past, an unsavory kind of behavior that was Russian and not Soviet. See Smith, S. A., “The Social Meanings of Swearing: Workers and Bad Language in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia,” Past and Present, no. 160 (August 1998): 181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 The Supreme Court simply forwarded the letter to the Novyi mir editors.

46 RGALI, f. 1702, op. 9, d. 109,1. 66.

47 Many citizens set pen to paper to contest the regime's commitment to “correction“ and “reeducation.” The growing tide of letters was frequently noted in reports from government officials. In March 1961, Kalinychev and Savel'ev, senior figures within the Supreme Soviet, wrote to its chairman, Leonid Brezhnev, voicing concerns not only about rising crime but also the outcry it had generated. They noted that the number of crimes reported had again risen steeply in 1960 and with it the influx of letters. See GARF, f. 7523, op. 107 (Documentary materials from the structural subdivision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet), d. 189,1. 73; GARF, f. 7523, op. 95, d. 99,11. 49–53.

48 “Rech’ N. S. Khrushcheva na III s'fezde pisatelei 22 maia 1959 goda,” Pravda, 24 May 1959, 1–3.

49 “Voluntary Militia and Courts,” Soviet Studies 11, no. 2 (October 1959): 214–17.

50 The “community organization” could apply for “guardianship” of an offender during the police investigation, or if the matter came to trial, the judge could decide on this as a form of social rehabilitation.

51 GARF, f. 7523, op. 95, d. 109,1. 27.

52 “Doklad N. S. Khrushcheva,” Pravda, 18 October 1961, 11.

53 RGALI, f. 1702, op. 9, d. 107,1. 76.

54 “V redaktsiiu Literaturnoi gazety,” Literaturnaia gazeta, 22 January 1963, 3.

55 RGALI, f. 1702, op. 9, d. 107,11. 49–51.

56 Ibid., 1. 79.

57 Ibid., d. 108,1. 5.

58 Ibid., 1. 2.

59 Ibid., 1.7.

60 Jeffrey Brooks's comments on the importance of honor (chest1) within Soviet culture are astute. He notes that “every society sets boundaries to identify insiders and outsiders“ and considers chest’ as a key marker in the setting of these social boundaries. However, Brooks goes on to interpret Soviet honor in rather exclusive terms, discussing the role of official honors such as state prizes and titles. I would like to suggest instead that the adjective chestnyi was often used in the Soviet context to denote ordinary, decent colleagues and neighbors, not those singled out for their achievements. Brooks, Jeffrey, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton, 2000), 127.Google Scholar

61 RGALI, f. 1702, op. 9, d. 109,1. 139.

62 Ibid., 1. 141.

63 Remenson, A. L., Vobshchestve, stroiashchem kommunizm, ne dolzhno byt’ mesta pravonarusheniiam i prestupnosti (Moscow, 1963), 64.Google Scholar RGAL1, f. 1702, op. 9, d. 107,11. 8–14.

65 Ibid., 1. 12.

66 Ibid., 1. 7.

67 Ibid., 11. 1-6.

68 Solzhenitsyn, “How People Read One Day,” 56.19.

69 RGALI, f. 1702, op. 9, d. 109,11. 10–17.

70 Cited in Cohen, Stephen F., “The Stalin Question since Stalin,” in Cohen, Stephen F., ed., An End to Silence: Uncensored Opinion in the Soviet Union from Roy Medvedev's Underground Magazine “PoliticalDiary” (New York, 1982), 27.Google Scholar

71 Another key aspect of de-Stalinization was, of course, the revised status of Stalin himself. The year 1956 saw the Soviet public respond extremely passionately to his dethronement. Here too, however, reactions cannot be easily categorized as either pro or contra de-Stalinization. For a more detailed exploration of this, see Dobson, “Refashioning the Enemy,” 129-72.

72 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I., The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, trans. Whitney, Thomas P., 3 vols. (New York, 1974–78), 2:505.Google Scholar

73 GARF, f. 7523, op. 95, d. 109,11. 25–27.