As for many writers of his generation, the war was a formative experience for Nekrasov: in addition to combat, the close comradeship he observed there among soldiers of different backgrounds and classes changed his understanding of Soviet society.

After Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, Nekrasov took advantage of the first wave of destalinization to publish In the Home Town (1954), a novel which marked a departure from the Stalin-era socialist realism in Soviet literature.

A travelogue of his experiences in Italy in 1957 and the United States in 1960, Both Sides of the Ocean, which was unusually open for its time, was published in 1962 and denounced by Nikita Khrushchev in 1963.

After Khruschev's ouster in October 1964, Nekrasov joined other Soviet intellectuals in protesting what he saw as the new government's gradual restoration of Stalinism.

He signed numerous open letters protesting government policies in 1966-1973 and was expelled from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1973.