Foreword

A decade ago, it was still possible to be surprised by historians’ lack of interest in late Socialism. Since then, the world of historiography has greatly changed. That period is the object of a frenzy of research, with frequent seminars and edited volumes. As happened with the Khrushchev Thaw in the early 2000s, the Brezhnev years have become a happy hunting ground for researchers. The twenty years (1964-1985) between the Thaw and perestroika were a formative period for the “last Soviet gene..