ON THIS DAY ·
Khrushchev’s Secret Speech denounces Stalin
In a closed session of the Twentieth Party Congress, Khrushchev spends four hours denouncing Stalin’s “cult of personality” — a speech meant to stay secret that was soon read across the Soviet Union.
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The moment in context
Stalin’s death exposed how his colleagues had experienced his rule. On 1 March 1953 he suffered a stroke at his dacha, or country house, at Kuntsevo outside Moscow and lay for hours before doctors were called, because his guards feared to disturb him; he died on 5 March. His successors, Georgy Malenkov, Beria, Khrushchev, Molotov and Nikolai Bulganin, at once formed a collective leadership, rule by a committee of supposed equals, and moved quickly. The amnesty of 27 March freed about 1.2 million prisoners, mostly those with short sentences, and on 4 April the Doctors’ Plot, the charge that Kremlin doctors had murdered Soviet leaders, was declared a fabrication. In June the others arrested Beria, fearing that his control of the police made him a new Stalin, and he was shot in December. The speed of these changes shows that Stalin’s heirs had wanted reform for years and had not dared to propose it.
From Death of Stalin and de-Stalinisation, chapter 12 of The Soviet Union under Stalin, 1924–1953 (1956).
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — The system depended on one man. Stalin had concentrated power so completely that his death removed the force holding the system’s extremes in place. His colleagues had approved and…
- The turn — The Secret Speech, 25 February 1956. Khrushchev’s speech is the hinge of the epilogue because it turned Stalin from infallible leader into official criminal within the communist world,…
- What it changed — The return of the prisoners. Hundreds of thousands of political prisoners were released between 1954 and 1960, and many were formally rehabilitated, often after death. Their…
Then ask the room: Was Stalinism the creation of one man, or of the Soviet system and society? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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