Khrushchev's anti-Stalin speech was mistake

Times

07-07-2025

When Nikita Khrushchev spoke out against Joseph Stalin's rule of terror at a Communist Party congress in 1956, his words sent shock waves throughout the Soviet Union and ushered in a thaw of Kremlin policies.
Almost 70 years on, amid President Putin's ruthless crackdown on domestic dissent, Russia's modern-day Communist Party has declared that Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin was a mistake.
At its own congress, held near Moscow at the weekend, the party described Khrushchev's landmark speech as 'erroneous and politically biased' and alleged it contained 'falsified facts and false accusations' against the man responsible for the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens.
Although it has not held power since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Communist Party remains the country's second biggest political party after Putin's ruling United Russia. It is a vocal supporter of Russia's war in Ukraine.
Khrushchev's 'secret' speech, 'On the Cult of Personality and its Consequences', was delivered behind closed doors and caused some Communist Party members who were present to faint with shock.
Besides denouncing Stalin's deadly purges, Khrushchev also criticised the dictator who ruled from 1924 to 1953 for seeking to become 'akin to a god'. He also revealed that Vladimir Lenin, the first Soviet leader, had warned against appointing Stalin as his successor.
The speech was later read out at party meetings and slowly became public knowledge. Under Khrushchev, the Soviet Union embarked on a campaign of de-Stalinisation, tearing down statues to the Soviet tyrant and renaming streets, squares and cities that had been named in his honour.
Stalin's name was almost taboo in Russia until 2000, when Putin, a former KGB officer, took power and orchestrated a revival of his reputation. More than 100 monuments of Stalin have appeared across Russia during Putin's rule, opposition journalists have reported. Most of them have been erected since 2014, when Moscow's relations with the west plunged to a new low after the Kremlin's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
In May a life-sized replica of a Stalin statue, which was torn down from the Moscow metro in the Sixties, was unveiled at the city's Taganskaya station, less than two miles from the Red Square. Videos showed passers-by laying flowers next to it. One man was even seen praying at the statue, apparently unconcerned by Stalin's anti-religion campaign between 1928 and 1941.
Kirill Martynov, the editor of Novaya Gazeta Europe, a Russian opposition website that has been banned by the Kremlin, said the Communist Party's move to denounce Khrushchev was part of a struggle with ultra-Orthodox Christians. 'They are proving to Putin that it is their interpretation of the past that will best contribute to his eternal power,' he wrote.
Nina Khrushcheva, an international relations analyst in New York who is the great-granddaughter of Khrushchev, said the Communist Party was trying to curry favour with Putin to maintain its status as a Kremlin-funded pseudo-opposition party.
'The Kremlin is not ready to fully cancel Khrushchev, though they do not like him, but the Communist Party decided to try out those waters,' she told The Times.
'With people being arrested and prosecuted in Russia now with little legal basis, the 'secret speech' could become inconvenient and get banned from the top. Also, the speech questions Stalin's heroic role in the Second World War, which also could become a reason to ban it.'