Populations abandoned Soviet socialism only after reform movements were crushed
Evidence
It is equally arguable that the full imperialist triumphs of 1989 were dialectically correlated with the Hungary of 1956, the Czechoslovakia of 1968, and the lapsing of the Khrushchev reforms within the Soviet Union; all available evidence seems to suggest that it was not in the age of Stalin himself but after the suppression of the reform movements that increasingly larger sections of the Soviet and East European populations and intelligentsias actually gave up on regimes of ‘existing socialism’ – and that despite the very considerable improvement in the economic conditions of their lives. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 42
Categorization
- QUESTION: The counterintuitive claim that abandonment of ‘existing socialism’ peaked after Stalin, not under him, is worth verifying against other Soviet historiography.
- XREF: connects to: Post-Soviet ‘convergence’ of sorts happened only via dismantling the Soviet state — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1544