Denis Kozlov is Assistant Professor of History at Dalhousie University.

Writing to the papers was a surprisingly common activity in the USSR. It brought results: in the 1930s, a reader’s letter was either printed or sent, as unprintable, to the NKVD so that the author could be dealt with. After Stalin’s death, at least for readers of Novyi mir, there was no danger of the author being suppressed together with his or her letter. Given the paucity of outlets to express feelings and views, the 12,000 letters to Novyi mir that Kozlov has studied give unprecedented insight into the often confused and contradictory reactions aroused by the revelations, however guarded, of the horrors and lies of the past… Kozlov’s book becomes not just an excellent study of a Soviet journal, its readers and letter-writers and the editorial responses they received, but also of a very complex and eventually admirable man [poet Aleksandr Tvardovsky, chief editor of Novyi mir for much of the 1950s and all of the 1960s] torn between his inner knowledge and his sense of duty.

Denis Kozlov is Assistant Professor of History at Dalhousie University.

Writing to the papers was a surprisingly common activity in the USSR. It brought results: in the 1930s, a reader’s letter was either printed or sent, as unprintable, to the NKVD so that the author could be dealt with. After Stalin’s death, at least for readers of Novyi mir, there was no danger of the author being suppressed together with his or her letter. Given the paucity of outlets to express feelings and views, the 12,000 letters to Novyi mir that Kozlov has studied give unprecedented insight into the often confused and contradictory reactions aroused by the revelations, however guarded, of the horrors and lies of the past… Kozlov’s book becomes not just an excellent study of a Soviet journal, its readers and letter-writers and the editorial responses they received, but also of a very complex and eventually admirable man [poet Aleksandr Tvardovsky, chief editor of Novyi mir for much of the 1950s and all of the 1960s] torn between his inner knowledge and his sense of duty.

Denis Kozlov is Assistant Professor of History at Dalhousie University.

Writing to the papers was a surprisingly common activity in the USSR. It brought results: in the 1930s, a reader’s letter was either printed or sent, as unprintable, to the NKVD so that the author could be dealt with. After Stalin’s death, at least for readers of Novyi mir, there was no danger of the author being suppressed together with his or her letter. Given the paucity of outlets to express feelings and views, the 12,000 letters to Novyi mir that Kozlov has studied give unprecedented insight into the often confused and contradictory reactions aroused by the revelations, however guarded, of the horrors and lies of the past… Kozlov’s book becomes not just an excellent study of a Soviet journal, its readers and letter-writers and the editorial responses they received, but also of a very complex and eventually admirable man [poet Aleksandr Tvardovsky, chief editor of Novyi mir for much of the 1950s and all of the 1960s] torn between his inner knowledge and his sense of duty.