Khrushchev’s secret speech, (February 25, 1956), in Russian history, denunciation of the deceased Soviet leader Joseph Stalin made by Nikita S. Khrushchev to a closed session of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The speech was the nucleus of a far-reaching de-...
After the death of Joseph Stalin on 5th March 1953, the USSR finally achieved the kind of collective leadership which its people had always been entitled to expect. Since Lenin, the Soviet state’s totalitarian control had created terror in the population, but over time a worse fear and mistr...
Mikhail Gorbachev was one of those who supported Khrushchev's actions: "Khrushchev's secret speech at the XXth Party Congress caused a political and psychological shock throughout the country. At the Party krai committee I had the opportunity to read the Central Committee information bulletin, ...
Reaction of the people of the Soviet Union to the congress; Information on the role of Alexei Vladimirovich Snegov and Olga Grigorevna Shatunovskaya in the Soviet Communist Party; Details of how Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union delivered his speech ...
The assembled comrades were about to listen to Khrushchev's Secret Speech, also called The Cult of the Individual Speech. Without announcing any agenda for the session, Khrushchev dove right into the subject and didn't take a breath for the next four hours. With eyes and mouths wide open, ...
Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin allowed Poland to move from Stalinist rule to a more moderate regime in a relatively nonviolent manner. Khrushchev's secret speech intensified the tensions between Communist reformers and Stalinists as well as the population's disaffection with the Stalinist regime,...
A critical examination of the published evidence and accounts contradicts this version and suggests a number of points: the Secret Speech was not secret; Israel was not the single and perhaps not the first source for the text to reach the West; the speech was intended by Khrushchev and the ...
He became very close with Soviet dictatorJoseph Stalin, who at the time was forcing collectivization of agriculture and imprisoning people in Gulag labor camps. After Stalin’s death in 1953, Khrushchev became even more powerful. In a “secret speech” in 1956, he announced that he would try...
Emboldened by Khrushchev’s so-called “secret speech,” protestors took to the streets in the Soviet satellites of Poland and Hungary. The Polish revolt was resolved fairly peacefully, but the Hungarian revolt was violently suppressed with troops and tanks. In all, at least 2,500 Hungarians ...
(See also Khrushchev’s secret speech.) Khrushchev’s rule was not without its dark side—including an intensified persecution of religion. Nonetheless, by smashing the repressive icon of Stalinism and the mentality of terror that had been imposed on the general population, Khrushchev inspired a ...