"On the cult of personality and its consequences."

>> Khrushchev begins his speech by establishing that the glorification of the individual leader runs counter to the Marxist-Leninist doctrine that the Communist Party cherished. He cites Karl Marx (1818 - 83), coauthor of The Communist Manifesto (1848) - the foundational document of communism. He also quotes Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870 - 1924), leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution that overthrew czarist rule and founder of the communist Soviet state.

Khrushchev Attacks Stalin's Character and Actions
Khrushchev quotes Lenin and then shifts to a direct attack on Stalin's character. Lenin had said that Stalin was not temperamentally fit to serve as the party's secretary general (the most influential party position). Khrushchev contrasts the leadership styles of Lenin, whom he praises, and Stalin, whom he criticizes harshly.

Khrushchev next turns to Stalin's purges. He claims Stalin began to cause serious damage to the party beginning with the 17th party congress in 1934. Khrushchev describes how Stalin eliminated more than two-thirds of the Central Committee - a body elected by the party congress to carry out work until the next congress - and more than half of the party congress.

As Khrushchev relates it, Stalin's allies imposed new rules that allowed for rapid trials with no appeals. These "show trials" were designed to influence public opinion, and convictions were followed immediately by executions.

Khrushchev dismisses the pretext for carrying out this purge. Stalin's supporters claimed that it was necessary to eliminate the influence of the supporters of Leon Trotsky (1879 - 1940). Trotsky had struggled with Stalin to control the party after Lenin's death in 1924. In addition, Stalin's supporters claimed they needed to eliminate supporters of Grigory Zinoviev (1883 - 1936), a one-time ally of Stalin's. Khrushchev points out that the Trotskyites and Zinovievites were dwarfed by the number of loyal party members. Thus, Stalin was punishing party loyalists, not Trotskyites.

Khrushchev describes the treacherous methods used by Stalin's forces to carry out the purges. These methods included faked evidence, forced false confessions, and torture. Khrushchev highlights two particular cases - those of comrades Robert Indrikovich Eikhe (1890 - 1940) and Rozenblum, whose exact identity has never been established - to reveal sham confessions and unjust trials.<<. http://www.coursehero.com/lit/...quences/plot-summary/

I thought that this was interesting for a few reasons. First, the Soviet Union began as country of laws and rules. They were a response to a czar and serfs where the wealth gap was incredibly wide and deep. The haves were gone and that have nots were in control. They wanted institutional fairness for everyone, at least in theory. But Rusis was a huge land mass with many competing ethnicities. Enter Stalin. A strong leader capable of uniting the new communist experiment. Stalin came to power under a country with rules and laws.

Those laws and rules were obliterated because Stalin claimed that every problem he had with his dissenters was an extraordinary circumstance that allowed him to disregard the rules. This made every purge and political action by Stalin beyond review of the courts and judges until those courts and judges were irrelevant and intimidated. Everything Stalin did was legal, based upon emergency exceptions. Every rule preventing Stalin from exercising absolute power died a death of exceptions. The exceptions became the rules and Stalin did whatever he wanted. That is how the Soviets became communist serfs subject to a communist Czar who killed 20 million of his own people.

It's also interesting because Kruschev made this "secret" speech at a time when he could have seen a firing squad the same day. It took real courage at a very dangerous time. In the vacuum of power, his speech exhibited a strength that ultimately made him the leader and he filled that void. This was a tipping point for the soviets. Kruschev's secret speech was published and read well beyond the communist party and most of the poor working class had literally no idea that their deified Stalin was such a petty mass murderer. The Soviets learned who Stalin really was and what he really did.

It's also interesting that while Kruschev was better, an improvement, he was by no means good. He continued to use the propaganda and power of Stalin's power to consolidate his own power, control all media and silence all dissent, albeit not as murderously ambitious as Stalin's purges. The "tipping point" did not usher in a new age born of the lessons from Stalin. The Soviet Union still had to block its borders to keep its citizens from escaping, and what better measure of a government's failure is there?

But there are lessons from Kruschev about the cult of personality and how it overcame every protection designed to prevent its cancerous growth from killing the country. These are valuable lessons today. The parallels are compelling. The fake trials, the fake evidence, the demonization of entire groups of people, the characterization of those dissenters, refuseniks, as military threats or domestic terrorists. Maybe now is a good time to read those old communist czar's playbooks.


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"One of the reasons why propaganda tries to get you to hate government is because it's the one existing institution in which people can participate to some extent and constrain tyrannical unaccountable power." Noam Chomsky.