Khrushchev’s Speech
Next Friday will mark the 50 years since Nikita Khrushchev made his famous “secret speech” at the 20th Communist Party Congress. The speech, which can be found here, denounced the Stalin’s “cult of personality,” his use of mass repression, ethnic deportations, and bungling during the War. Among the many detailed examples Khrushchev used to disclose Stalin’s crimes, he said:
Stalin acted not through persuasion, explanation and patient cooperation with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed this concept or tried to prove his viewpoint and the correctness of his position was doomed to removal from the leading collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation. This was especially true during the period following the 17th Party Congress, when many prominent party leaders and rank-and-file party workers, honest and dedicated to the cause of Communism, fell victim to Stalin’s despotism.
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