In 1956, Poland experienced a brief political and cultural thaw.

He burst onto the stage in the cultural "thaw" that followed Stalin's death in 1953.

Like many Soviet intellectuals, he is both intoxicated by the cultural thaw under way here and fearful whether it will endure.

On the other hand, he wrote songs which clearly carried in themselves an imprint of the cultural thaw of the 1960s, such as "Smile!"

You have a cultural thaw under way which is quite serious.

It is easy to imagine Leningrad's cultural scene would prosper under the cultural thaw.

The policy of partial Ukrainisation also led to a cultural thaw within Ukraine.

By then, Khrushchev had been ousted and the short-lived cultural thaw had given way to outright persecution of intellectual dissidents.

Górecki became a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde during the post-Stalin cultural thaw.

But recent events have shown there are definite limits to the cultural thaw.