Crisis in North Korea The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956 (Hawai'i Studies on Korea) (Hawai'i Studies on Korea) Hardcover - 2004

From the publisher

North Korea remains the most mysterious of all Communist countries. The acute shortage of available sources has made it a difficult subject of scholarship. Through his access to Soviet archival material made available only a decade ago, contemporary North Korean press accounts, and personal interviews, Andrei Lankov presents for the first time a detailed look at one of the turning points in North Korean history: the country's unsuccessful attempts to de-Stalinize in the mid-1950s. He demonstrates that, contrary to common perception, North Korea was not a realm of undisturbed Stalinism; Kim Il Sung had to deal with a reformist opposition that was weak but present nevertheless. Lankov traces the impact of Soviet reforms on North Korea, placing them in the context of contemporaneous political crises in Poland and Hungary. He documents the dissent among various social groups (intellectuals, students, party cadres) and their attempts to oust Kim in the unsuccessful August plot of 1956. His reconstruction of the Peng-Mikoyan visit of that year - the most dramatic Sino-Soviet intervention into Pyongyang politics - shows how it helped bring an end to purges of the opposition. The purges,