Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’ to the 20th congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union was delivered behind closed doors. Called On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, it was leaked to the west three weeks later.
Lenin praised, not Stalin
From A Student of Soviet Affairs
25 February 1956
A resolution passed yesterday by the Soviet Communist party congress endorses the Central Committee’s report, as presented to it by Khrushchev. The resolution shows, with even greater clarity than Khrushchev’s speech, that the Soviet Union will now concentrate its greatest efforts on winning friends in the colonial countries and on influencing people in the neutral, or potentially neutral, countries.
The condemnation of the personality cult is vigorous, but Stalin is not expressly blamed. This revision of Leninism is coupled with an insistence on the importance of Lenin.
The resolution has “instructed” the ruling organs of the party and government to adhere to the five principles of peaceful coexistence and to ensure their adoption by the rest of the world. This suggests that Soviet diplomacy will now challenge the western countries to subscribe formally to these principles and will exploit any sign of hesitation to persuade the uncommitted countries of the essential wickedness of the west.
Continue reading.
Shedding new light on the Stalin regime
17 March 1956
A bitter attack on Stalin accusing him of responsibility for massacre and torture during his 30 years in power has been made by Mr Khrushchev, according to reports from reliable Communist sources reaching here [Bonn]. These reports said that he charged Stalin with crimes never before mentioned in the Soviet Union.
The attack on Stalin came in a long speech by the Communist party leader to the security session of the recent party congress on 25 February, the day before the congress ended. During the session Khrushchev is said to have painted a vivid picture to the delegates of the regime of “suspicion, fear and terror” through which Stalin ruled.
He also held Stalin responsible for Soviet failure in the early stages of the war both by ignoring warnings and by “weakening” the country’s morale and economy in the great pre-war purges.
Continue reading.
The cult of the individual
Nikita Khrushchev
(The speech delivered to the 20th congress of the Communist party of the USSR in Moscow on 25 February 1956)
Comrades! In the party central committee’s report at the 20th congress and in a number of speeches by delegates to the congress a lot has been said about the cult of the individual. After Stalin’s death, the central committee began explaining that it is foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to elevate one person, to transform him into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics, akin to those of a god. Such a man supposedly knows everything, sees everything, thinks for everyone, can do anything, is infallible in his behaviour.
Such a belief about a man, and specifically about Stalin, was cultivated among us for many years. The objective of this report is not a thorough evaluation of Stalin’s life and activity. Concerning Stalin’s merits, an entirely sufficient number of books, pamphlets and studies had already been written in his lifetime. Stalin’s role in the execution of the socialist revolution, in the civil war, and in the construction of socialism is universally known.
At present, we are concerned with how the cult of Stalin has been gradually growing, the cult which became the source of a whole series of exceedingly serious perversions of party principles, of party democracy, of revolutionary legality. The central committee considers it absolutely necessary to make material pertaining to this matter available to the 20th congress.
Read the full speech.
Debunking the Stalin cult: the ‘unrewriting’ of Soviet history
From A Student of Soviet Affairs
20 March 1956
Khrushchev’s condemnation of Stalin has still not been published in the Soviet press, but yesterday’s Pravda made an oblique reference to it in a leading article which said that party meetings throughout the country were “welcoming enthusiastically” the recent steps taken by the Central Committee.
These steps, the paper said, included “reintroducing the Leninist, principles of internal party life and above all the principle of collective leadership, and widely disseminating the Marxist view on the part played by the individual in history and on the need to do away with the cult of the individual, which is foreign to Marxist-Leninist thinking.” For “individual,” of course, Pravda’s readers will read “Stalin.”
According to dispatches sent from Moscow by correspondents of western communist newspapers – who are being treated more leniently by the censorship than their non-Marxist colleagues – Khrushchev’s stark condemnation of Stalin was relieved by the tributes he paid to the dead leader’s role up to 1934, when the 17th party congress took place. After that all discussion of policy in the party was subordinated to the dictator’s whims.
Continue reading.
A Student of Soviet Affairs was the Kremlinologist Victor Zorza, a regular Guardian contributor who joined the staff in May 1956.
