On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences
"On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" (Russian: «О культе личности и его последствиях», «O kul'te lichnosti i yego posledstviyakh»), popularly known as the "Secret Speech" (Russian: секретный доклад, sekretnïy doklad), was a report by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956. Khrushchev's speech was sharply critical of the rule of the deceased General Secretary and Premier Joseph Stalin, particularly with respect to the purges which had especially marked the last years of the 1930s. Khrushchev charged Stalin with having fostered a leadership cult of personality despite ostensibly maintaining support for the ideals of communism. The speech
- Comment
- en"On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" (Russian: «О культе личности и его последствиях», «O kul'te lichnosti i yego posledstviyakh»), popularly known as the "Secret Speech" (Russian: секретный доклад, sekretnïy doklad), was a report by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956. Khrushchev's speech was sharply critical of the rule of the deceased General Secretary and Premier Joseph Stalin, particularly with respect to the purges which had especially marked the last years of the 1930s. Khrushchev charged Stalin with having fostered a leadership cult of personality despite ostensibly maintaining support for the ideals of communism. The speech
- Depiction
- Has abstract
- en"On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" (Russian: «О культе личности и его последствиях», «O kul'te lichnosti i yego posledstviyakh»), popularly known as the "Secret Speech" (Russian: секретный доклад, sekretnïy doklad), was a report by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956. Khrushchev's speech was sharply critical of the rule of the deceased General Secretary and Premier Joseph Stalin, particularly with respect to the purges which had especially marked the last years of the 1930s. Khrushchev charged Stalin with having fostered a leadership cult of personality despite ostensibly maintaining support for the ideals of communism. The speech was leaked to the West by the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet, which received it from the Polish-Jewish journalist Wiktor Grajewski. The speech was shocking in its day. There are reports that the audience reacted with applause and laughter at several points. There are also reports that some of those present suffered heart attacks and others later took their own lives due to shock at the revelations of Stalin's use of terror. The ensuing confusion among many Soviet citizens, raised on panegyrics and permanent praise of the "genius" of Stalin, was especially apparent in Georgia, Stalin's homeland, where the days of protests and rioting ended with the Soviet army crackdown on 9 March 1956. In the West, the speech politically devastated organised communists; the Communist Party USA alone lost more than 30,000 members within weeks of its publication. The speech was cited as a major cause of the Sino-Soviet split by China (under Chairman Mao Zedong) and Albania (under First Secretary Enver Hoxha) who condemned Khrushchev as a revisionist. In response, they formed the anti-revisionist movement, criticizing the post-Stalin leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for allegedly deviating from the path of Lenin and Stalin. Mao strengthened his own cult of personality equivalent to Stalin. In North Korea, factions of the Workers' Party of Korea attempt to remove Chairman Kim Il-sung by criticizing him for not "correcting" his leadership methods, developing a personality cult, distorting the "Leninist principle of collective leadership" and "distortions of socialist legality" (i.e. using arbitrary arrest and executions) and use other Khrushchev-era criticisms of Stalinism against Kim Il-sung's leadership. The attempt to remove Kim failed and the participants were arrested and later executed, allowing Kim to further strengthen his own cult of personality as well. The speech was a milestone in the Khrushchev Thaw. It possibly served Khrushchev's ulterior motives to legitimize and consolidate his control of the Soviet Union's party and government after political struggles with Georgy Malenkov and firm Stalin loyalists such as Vyacheslav Molotov, who were involved to varying degrees in the purges. The Khrushchev report's "Secret Speech" name came because it was delivered at an unpublicized closed session of party delegates, with guests and members of the press excluded. The text of the Khrushchev report was widely discussed in party cells in early March, often with the participation of non-party members. The official Russian text was not openly published until 1989, during the glasnost campaign of the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
- Hypernym
- Report
- Is primary topic of
- On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences
- Label
- enOn the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences
- Link from a Wikipage to an external page
- digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/115995
- news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4723942.stm
- archive.org/details/B-001-027-599-ALL
- www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/apr/26/greatspeeches4
- archive.org/details/the-anti-stalin-campaign-and-international-communism
- archive.org/details/TheCrimesOfTheStalinEraSpecialReportToThe20thCongressOfTheCommunistPartyOfTheSovietUnion.
- mltranslations.org/US/archive/tp2.htm
- Link from a Wikipage to another Wikipage
- 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- 1956 Georgian demonstrations
- 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
- Allen Dulles
- Anti-revisionism
- Arbitrary arrest and detention
- August Faction Incident
- Averky Aristov
- Bolsheviks
- Category:1956 in international relations
- Category:1956 in the Soviet Union
- Category:1956 speeches
- Category:Cold War speeches
- Category:Cults of personality
- Category:De-Stalinization
- Category:Documents of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
- Category:February 1956 events in Europe
- Category:Political repression in the Soviet Union
- Category:Shin Bet
- Category:Speeches by Nikita Khrushchev
- Category:Works about Joseph Stalin
- Central Intelligence Agency
- China
- Collective leadership
- Communism
- Communist Party of the Soviet Union
- Communist Party USA
- Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union
- Doctors' plot
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Eastern Bloc
- Eastern Europe
- Eastern Front (World War II)
- Edward Ochab
- Enemy of the people
- Enver Hoxha
- File:First edition of Krushchev's %22Secret Speech%22.jpg
- First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party
- Free World
- General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
- Geoffrey Roberts
- Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic
- Georgy Malenkov
- Glasnost
- Great Purge
- History of the Jews in Poland
- Intensification of the class struggle under socialism
- Israel
- J. Arch Getty
- James Jesus Angleton
- John Rettie
- Joseph Stalin
- Joseph Stalin's cult of personality
- Karl Marx
- Khrushchev Thaw
- Kim Il-sung
- Komsomol
- Kremlin Wall Necropolis
- Lavrentiy Beria
- Lazar Kaganovich
- Le Monde
- Lenin's Testament
- Lenin Prize
- Leszek Kołakowski
- List of leaders of the Soviet Union
- Mao Zedong
- Mao Zedong's cult of personality
- Marxism–Leninism
- Mikhail Gorbachev
- Mikhail Suslov
- Mingrelian affair
- Moscow Kremlin
- Nadezhda Krupskaya
- Nikita Khrushchev
- Nikolai Bulganin
- Nikolai Shvernik
- NKVD
- Nomenklatura
- North Korea
- North Korean cult of personality
- Old Bolshevik
- Panegyric
- People's Socialist Republic of Albania
- Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
- Political repression in the Soviet Union
- Population transfer in the Soviet Union
- Pospelov Commission
- Premier of the Soviet Union
- Purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
- Pyotr Pospelov
- Reuters
- Revisionism (Marxism)
- Shin Bet
- Sino-Soviet split
- Socialist realist
- Stalin's cult of personality
- Stalinism
- State Anthem of the Soviet Union
- Stockholm
- The Guardian
- The New York Times
- The Observer
- Trotskyism
- Vyacheslav Molotov
- Wikt:impeccably
- Workers' Party of Korea
- World War II
- Zhdanovism
- SameAs
- Acerca del culto a la personalidad y sus consecuencias
- Despre cultul personalității și consecințele sale
- Discurso secreto
- Discurso Secreto
- Discurs Secret
- Discursu secretu
- DSiv
- Gizli nitq
- Gizli söylev
- Hitzaldi Sekretua
- Hruštšovi kõne XX Kongressil
- Khrushchev's Secret Speech
- m.0400r7
- O kulcie jednostki i jego następstwach
- O kultu osebnosti in njegovih posledicah
- Om personkulten och dess konsekvenser
- Om personkulten og dens konsekvenser
- Om personkulten og dens konsekvenser
- Over persoonsverheerlijking en de gevolgen ervan
- Perihal Kultus Individu dan Konsekuensi-konsekuensinya
- Pri la kulto de personeco kaj ĝiaj konsekvencoj
- Q1165372
- Salainen puhe
- Sul culto della personalità e le sue conseguenze
- Über den Personenkult und seine Folgen
- Về sùng bái cá nhân và những hậu quả của nó
- Аб кульце асобы і яго наступствах
- За култа към личността и неговите последици
- О култу личности и његовим последицама
- О культе личности и его последствиях
- Про культ особи та його наслідки
- הנאום הסודי
- گزارش محرمانه خروشچف
- ว่าด้วยลัทธิบูชาบุคคลและผลลัพธ์ของมัน
- スターリン批判
- 关于个人崇拜及其后果
- 인격 숭배와 그 결과
- Subject
- Category:1956 in international relations
- Category:1956 in the Soviet Union
- Category:1956 speeches
- Category:Cold War speeches
- Category:Cults of personality
- Category:De-Stalinization
- Category:Documents of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
- Category:February 1956 events in Europe
- Category:Political repression in the Soviet Union
- Category:Shin Bet
- Category:Speeches by Nikita Khrushchev
- Category:Works about Joseph Stalin
- Thumbnail
- WasDerivedFrom
- On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences?oldid=1123379820&ns=0
- WikiPageLength
- 22599
- Wikipage page ID
- 39903039
- Wikipage revision ID
- 1123379820
- WikiPageUsesTemplate
- Template:Authority control
- Template:Communist Party of the Soviet Union
- Template:Fact
- Template:History of the Soviet Union
- Template:Italic correction
- Template:Joseph Stalin
- Template:Khrushchev sidebar
- Template:Quote
- Template:Redirect
- Template:Reflist
- Template:Short description
- Template:Use dmy dates
