Novel
The Thaw
Оттепель
Ilya Ehrenburg · 1954
Synopsis
In a large industrial city, in the aftermath of the Stalin era, a readers' conference discusses the first novel of a local author; the engineer Dmitri Koroteyev judges its love plot false. The schoolteacher Lena Zhuravleva has grown apart from her husband, Ivan Zhuravlyov, the factory director and a despot, since his cruel words at the time of the doctors' plot. Around them, Dr Vera Scherer lives in the anguish born of that affair, the painter Pukhov earns his living with commissioned canvases, and his colleague Saburov paints without success.
Context
The story appeared in 1954 in the journal Znamya, and the first printing in volume form sold out in a single day. At the Second Congress of Soviet Writers, a few months later, Konstantin Simonov criticised it publicly. Its title gave its name to the period of liberalisation that followed Stalin's death, and Larousse counts it among the first books to criticise Stalinism. Manya Harari's English translation appeared in 1955.
Who it is for
A short novel, made of private lives and conversations, which reads as a testimony on the Soviet Union of 1954.
Prizes and reception
An immediate bookshop success, and a fierce controversy in the Soviet press, according to Britannica.
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