How Two Little-Known Officials Dismantled the Stalinist System. A Pavel Lobkov Film / Redaktsiya

70 years ago, Joseph Stalin’s allies, who had grieved for him at his funeral shortly before, started dismantling Stalinism. Later, that period of liberalization following de-stalinization would be referred to as the Thaw, yet there is a very important part of the story of de-stalinization that doesn't seem to have been fully acknowledged. Ironically, it wasn’t Stalin’s opponents who ordered or inspired de-stalinization, it was the faithful Stalinists of yesterday. The ones who had been directly involved in repression were now also in charge of rehabilitation.
In our latest episode, Pavel Lobkov spoke to some of the witnesses to those events and unveiled the detective story of the Mulder and Scully of the Soviet Thaw.
Contents:
00:00 Introduction
02:46 In what way did the stories of victims and their executioners intertwine in the USSR?
06:28 How did the nation react to Stalin’s death?
10:22 Who started the fight against Stalin’s personality cult and how did they do it?
13:42 1953: Concessions in prison
17:40 17 years of camps and large-scale amnesty
23:32 Who is Olga Shatunovskaya?
26:42 How was the rehabilitation of political prisoners carried out?
30:52 How Stalin’s allies became his opponents
34:12 Aleksey Snegov, Shatunovskaya’s partner
38:04 Revisiting cases from the 1930s
42:28 Khrushchev vs Stalin’s personality cult
51:55 Who was trying to rehabilitate Trotsky?
53:32 Kirov’s case: is it true that Stalin masterminded the assassination of his ally?
58:44 Snegov and Shatunovskaya’s resignation
1:02:11 Why did Brezhnev pull the plug on de-stalinization?
1:07:42 What became of those who fought against Stalin’s personality cult?