About Ludmilla Alexyeva: Coming of age During the Soviet Thaw.

In Ludmilla Alexeyeva's book The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalinist Era she relates her story of disappointment within the Soviet system. She wanted to modify aspects of the governmental policies while retaining Russia's socialist background. She was part of a group that labeled themselves the new intelligentsia after the intelligentsia prior to the Bolshevik revolution. The new intelligentsia's ambitions of altering the Soviet government were done with literature not violence. Alexeyeva and …

…and risked imprisonment while attempting to change the political system. The Soviet government, which had enabled her to become a member of the new intelligentsia, was stifling her rights and she did not want to be idle and let it happen. Her attempts at changing the Russian government were fueled by Stalinist modernization. Without Stalin's cruel and hindering quest for modernization the injustices that Alexeyeva and the new intelligentsia fought against would not have existed.