ABSTRACT
The top leadership of the Soviet Union after 1953 confronted the dilemma of reformers everywhere: how to change the regime without destroying it. On the one hand, that leadership had benefited from the Stalinist system and certainly believed that Soviet socialism was capable of creating a strong, prosperous, and just nation. Most prominent among these earlier reformers was Nikita Khrushchev, whose de-Stalinization efforts dismantled the most repressive aspects of the Stalinist system. Khrushchev's reforms encompassed not only politics and culture but also the economy. The Khrushchev 'thaw' had a deep impact on the thinking of young professional people, among who was Tatyana Zaslavskaya, whose sociological research later shaped Gorbachev's perestroika. The dual processes of urbanization and educational growth gave rise to a far more differentiated society and one less amenable to control from above than ever before in Soviet history. In the post-Stalin years the Russian intelligentsia began to express fears that something uniquely Russian was in danger.
