Friday, May 10, 2019

"Khrushchev's Thaw"

"Like Khrushchev, who was at once fascinated by America and suspicious of it, Soviet audiences met Western art with a complex array of emotions, attachments, and fears, a potent brew that still characterizes much of Russia’s sentiments (and resentments) toward the West today. As Gilburd reminds us, the Thaw Era impulse to measure progress by one's engagement (or lack thereof) with the West came from a longstanding tradition in Russia, going back to the era of Peter the Great, the country's great Westernizer who forged a European capital in his name, Saint Petersburg (his 'window to the west'). 'Both in Imperial and Soviet societies,' Gilburd writes, 'the West had been alternatively a tool for self-examination, an exemplar, or a bogeyman.'"

Jennifer Wilson at The New Republic reviews Eleonory Gilburd's To See Paris and Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture.

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