Abstract; Chapter 3 analyzes the dynamics of Khrushchev’s Thaw in the national republics of the USSR in the 1950s and 1960s, when non-Russian writers began to challenge the Russocentric cultural policy of the late Stalin era. Like their Russian peers, village writers in the national republics rejected Stalinist attitudes toward the “backward” peasantry and began portraying peasants as a source of national character and values, an important step in the development of rural nationalism in literature. The chapter follows the rocky literary débuts of three writers: Ion Druță of Moldova, Chingiz Aitmatov of Kyrgyzstan, and Hrant Matevosyan of Armenia. Facing opposition from Stalinist elites in their native republics, they traveled to Moscow to study at the Gorky Literary Institute and rally support from Moscow’s cultural elites. With the support of newfound allies in Moscow, these writers became the foremost prose writers in their republics. The chapter also considers the careers of two writers, Ukrainian prose writer Oles’ Honchar and the Lithuanian poet and prose writer Justinas Marcinkevičius, who managed to succeed without going to Moscow because of the more tolerant cultural policies of local Party leaders. Ultimately, Moscow played a central role in the early stages of the development of rural nationalism in the non-Russian republics.
