Towards the end of the Khrushchev era, a major Soviet initiative was launched to rekindle popular enthusiasm for the revolution, which eventually gave rise to over 150 biographies and historical novels (The Fiery Revolutionaries/Plamennye revoliutsionery series), authored by many key post-Stalinist writers and published throughout late socialism until the Soviet collapse. What new meanings did revolution take on as it was reimagined by writers, including dissidents, leading historians, and popular historical novelists? How did their millions of readers engage with these highly varied texts? To what extent does this Brezhnev-era publishing phenomenon challenge the notion of late socialism as a time of 'stagnation', and how does it confirm it? By exploring the complex processes of writing, editing, censorship, and reading of late Soviet literature, Revolution Rekindled highlights the dynamic negotiations that continued within Soviet culture well past the apparent turning point of 1968, through to the late Gorbachev era. It also complicates the opposition between 'official' and underground post-Stalinist culture by showing how Soviet writers and readers engaged with both, as they sought answers to key questions of revolutionary history, ethics and ideology. Polly Jones reveals the enormous breadth and vitality of the 'historical turn' amongst the late Soviet population. Revolution Rekindled is the first archival, oral history, and literary study of this unique late socialist publishing experiment, from its beginnings in the early 1960s to its collapse in the early 1990s. It draws on a wide range of previously untapped archives, including those of the publisher Politizdat, of Soviet institutions in charge of propaganda, publishing, and literature, and of many individual writers. It also uses in-depth interviews with Brezhnev-era writers, editors, and publishers, and assesses the generic and stylistic innovations within the series' biographies and novels.

About the Author
Polly Jones is Associate Professor of Russian and Schrecker-Barbour Fellow at University College, University of Oxford. She has published widely on Soviet cultural history, including Myth, Memory, Trauma: Rethinking the Stalinist Past in the Soviet Union, 1953-70 (2013) and edited volumes including Writing Russian Lives: The Poetics and Politics of Russian Biography (2018) and The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization: Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era (2006).

Reviews
this is an extremely valuable work which should be read by everyone interested in the USSR and in what has occurred there since its collapse. * Martin Dewhurst, Slavonic & East European Review *
This authoritative book compels attention for three substantial achievements. It is a case study of an important phenomenon in the Soviet publishing industry (the 'Fiery Revolutionaries' series of biographies introduced in 1968 to 'rekindle' post-Thaw readers' socialist enthusiasm); a study of late Soviet reading habits; and an analysis of how Soviet publishing actually functioned. The tightly organized chapters are informed by numerous interviews with former industry insiders as well as impressively thorough archival research, making extensive use of committee minutes and other official documents to illuminate late-Soviet decision-making mechanisms. Polly Jones' book upsets various ideological assumptions and reveals unexpected paradoxes: for example, the fact that this relatively experimental, at times daringly liberal book series was one of the first publishing initiatives to founder during the market transformation of the 1990s. * BASEES Women's Forum Book Prize *
Revolution Rekindled will complicate the picture of post-Stalinist publishing and intellectual life even for those who have studied the period closely. Jones's nuanced discussions of editorial and writerly motivations, and of responses to the series by critics and readers, present a fascinating portrait of the era. * Boris Dralyuk, Los Angeles Review of Books, TLS *


Awards
Winner of Honorable Mention for the Women's Forum Prize from the British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies Shortlisted for the 2020 AATSEEL Best Book in Literary/Cultural Studies.



Book Information
ISBN 9780198804345
Author Polly Jones
Format Hardback
Page Count 320
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 600g
Dimensions(mm) 242mm * 162mm * 23mm