About Lyudmila Alexeyeva: Coming of Age During the Soviet Thaw

In Ludmilla Alexeyeva's book The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalinist Era she relates her story of disappointment within the Soviet system. She wanted to modify aspects of the governmental policies while retaining Russia's socialist background. She was part of a group that labeled themselves the new intelligentsia after the intelligentsia prior to the Bolshevik revolution. The new intelligentsia's ambitions of altering the Soviet government were done with literature not violence. Alexeyeva and her colleagues wanted glasnost or openness from the government on social issues and they tried to accomplish this at great personal risks to themselves. She did not let pressure from the Communist Party interfere with her personal ethics. Alexeyeva was undoubtedly an inevitable by-product of Stalinist modernization. The effects of this modernization provoked her endeavor to change the Socialist society of Communist Russia.…