Private Life and Communist Morality in Khrushchev’s Russia

The Author: Deborah A. Field received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan and is Associate Professor of History at Adrian College in Michigan.

«Deborah A. Field opens a window into private life in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev. In the years after Stalin’s death, at a time when Westerners and even some Soviets would have had a hard time imagining a private sphere in the lives of Soviet citizens, social and personal relations were in fact becoming more vital and varied. Field shows how ideas of Communist morality shaped, constrained, and were in turn shaped by emerging new thinking about and practices of sexuality, childrearing, and privacy. Yes, Virginia, there was romantic love and personal relationships in the collective life of the USSR!» (Ronald Grigor Suny, Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History, The University of Michigan; Professor Emeritus of Political Science and History, The University of Chicago)