ABSTRACT
The question of how Soviet workers perceived, and responded to, Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization, has yet to be adequately researched. We know that the dictator’s death lowered the threshold at which popular anger could erupt into violence against local officials and police, or against perceived outsiders. In Novocherkassk, in 1962, discontent with food price rises led to a full-fledged workers’ revolt which the Khrushchev leadership brutally suppressed.1 Yet such events, though revealing and dramatic, never involved more than a small proportion of workers, and then only at climactic moments. How de-Stalinization affected the vast majority of workers and their families at a more quiet, day-to-day level, is another matter. Historiography still awaits a thorough study of how workers understood and articulated their own position within society at large and within the workplace, as subjects of the production process.
