The Thaw (Russian: Оттепель, Ottepel) is a short novel by Ilya Ehrenburg first published in the spring 1954 issue of Novy Mir. It coined the name for the Khrushchev Thaw, the period of liberalization following the 1953 death of Stalin. The novel marked a break both from Ehrenburg's earlier purely pro-Soviet work, and from previous ideas about socialist realism. Source: Wikipedia (en)