About the personality cult and its consequences
About the personality cult and its consequences ( Russian О культе личности и его последствиях ), also known as Khrushchev's secret speech , is a speech given by Nikita Khrushchev on February 25, 1956 at the end of the 20th party congress of the CPSU . As party leader of the CPSU , Khrushchev sharply criticized Stalin . He accused him of having staged a personality cult , condemned the reign of terror of his predecessor, who died in 1953, and called for a return to Leninism . In addition, Khrushchev strove to assert himself in the power struggle within the CPSU against the loyal Stalin supporters Molotov and Malenkov .
The five-hour speech marked the beginning of de-Stalinization and the associated thaw period . In the Soviet Union , the document was only made available to the public in 1989 as part of Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost campaign .
prehistory
The results of a special commission of the party chaired by Pospelow , which also included Aristov and Schwernik and which met on January 31, 1956 during a meeting of the Politburo , served as a template for the speech . The aim of the commission was to investigate the repressive measures against the delegates of the 17th party congress of the CPSU . That convention had taken place in 1934 and the commission was able to show that during the Great Terror 1937–1938 over 1.5 million people were arrested for “anti-Soviet activities”, of which 680,000 were executed.
After the report was presented to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU on February 9, 1956 , some of the members demanded that the matter be placed on the agenda of the upcoming party congress. In the discussion that followed, Khrushchev identified Stalin as the main culprit of the terror, while Molotov wanted Stalin's role as a great leader to be emphasized. In the end, another item on the agenda was approved in camera and without subsequent discussion and first Pospelov, on February 13, one day before the opening of the party congress, and then Khrushchev was appointed as the speaker. Pospelow and Aristow first worked out a draft of the speech, which was further processed by Khrushchev, who gave his personal testimony and made his moral judgment.
Summary
Khrushchev condemns Stalin's personality cult with reference to the following points:
- Karl Marx in a letter to Wilhelm Blos
- Lenin's testament and two quotations from letters from Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya
- Stalin's use of the term enemy of the people
- Stalin's violation of the party norms on collective leadership: Of the 1966 delegates to the 17th party congress, 1108 were declared counterrevolutionaries , of which 848 were executed; 98 out of 139 members and candidates of the Central Committee were declared enemies of the people
- The role of the NKVD in suppressing the opposition, "under the dictates of the investigating magistrates working with forgeries"
- Exaggeration of Stalin's role in the Great Patriotic War
- The " Leningrad Affair ", of which Voznesensky was one of the victims, was staged by Beria and Abakumov
- Deportations of entire nationalities: Karachay , Kalmyks , Chechens , Ingush , Balkar ...
- Doctors conspiracy
- Examples of personality cult: songs, city names, etc.
- Hymn of the Soviet Union , in which Stalin is glorified as the "educator of the people"
- No Lenin Prize has been awarded since 1935 .
consequences
After 1989, listeners reported that the audience had taken the speech in complete silence and with paralyzing horror. There was no debate. The delegates were forbidden to pass on what they had heard orally or in writing. Only loyal party members were allowed, journalists were banned. Copies of the speech were sent to the heads of state in the Eastern Bloc in March 1956 . The Polish President and party leader Bolesław Bierut suffered a heart attack while reading the speech and died two and a half weeks later in Moscow.
Viktor Grajewski , Polish communist and editor of a government magazine, was friends with a secretary of the politician Edward Ochab at the time . He happened upon Khrushchev's secret speech on her desk. He went to the Israeli embassy in Warsaw and had the sheets photocopied there. The embassy passed the copies on to the Shin Bet Israeli secret service . Its boss Amos Manor sent the bundle to the CIA with the permission of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion . The document reached President Dwight D. Eisenhower through James Jesus Angleton and CIA chief Allen Dulles , whereupon it was published on June 4, 1956 in the New York Times . One year later, in 1957, Grajewski emigrated to Israel .
literature
- Vladimir Naumov: On the history of NS Khrushchev's secret speech on the XX. Party conference of the CPSU, in: Forum for Eastern European Ideas and Contemporary History 1 (1/1997), pp. 137–177.
- Dmitri Antonowitsch Volkogonow : The Seven Leaders. Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire. Translated by Udo Rennert. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2001. ISBN 978-3-7973-0774-3 .
- Wladislaw Hedeler : Nikita Chruščev's lecture “On the personality cult and its consequences” at the 20th party congress of the CPSU in 1956 and its history. Considerations in the light of new sources , in: Year Book for Research on the History of the Labor Movement , Volume I / 2006.
Web links
- German translation
- Die Zeit, February 16, 2006
- Viktor Grajewski brought Khrushchev's secret speech to Israel Jüdische Allgemeine , October 25, 2007
Individual evidence
- ↑ Prezidium CK KPSS 1954-1964. Tom 1: Černovye protokol'nye zapisi zasedanij, Moskva 2004, pp. 95-106.
- ↑ Vladimir Naumov: On the history of NS Khrushchev's secret speech on the XX. Party conference of the CPSU, in: Forum for Eastern European Ideas and Contemporary History 1 (1/1997), pp. 137–177, here pp. 165–172.
- ↑ Die Zeit: Secret Speech
- ↑ Jüdische Allgemeine: Spy against his will