ABSTRACT
The treatment of Stalin in Soviet literature did not change in the immediate post-Stalin period. Stalin's death was marked by an effusion of tributes in prose and verse, written in the style of the 'personality cult' in many of the languages of the USSR, which combined great grief at the leader's death with confidence in his immortality. The years 1962-4 marked the climax of de-Stalinisation in Soviet literature, but even after Khrushchev's fall the tide was so strong that it could not be halted immediately. Frank appraisals of Stalin's wartime leadership such as those of Alexander Rozen and V. Sokolov could only appear during the confused interval between the fall of Khrushchev and Brezhnev's consolidation of power. After the death of Chernenko in March 1985 the new leadership under Gorbachev at first did little to promote reappraisal of the Stalinist past, because Stalin's name was linked with preparations to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the end of the war.
