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Khrushchev greatly admired the dictator and treasured informal meetings with him and invitations to Stalin's dacha, while Stalin felt warm affection for his young subordinate. [41] Beginning in 1934, Stalin began a campaign of political repression known as the Great Purge , during which many were executed or sent to the Gulag .
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. [2]
During his opening speech at the CPSU's 22nd Party Congress on 17 October 1961 in Moscow, Khrushchev once again criticized Albania as a politically backward state and the Albanian Party of Labour as well as its leadership, including Enver Hoxha, for refusing to support reforms against Stalin's legacy, in addition to their criticism of ...
Khrushchev shocked his listeners by denouncing Stalin's dictatorial rule and his cult of personality as inconsistent with communist and Party ideology. Among other points, he condemned the treatment of the Old Bolsheviks , people who had supported communism before the revolution, many of whom Stalin had executed as traitors.
Khrushchev went on to say that such a mistake had been made about Stalin. He himself had been guilty of what was, in essence, a distortion of the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism . The attention of the audience was then drawn to Lenin's Testament , copies of which had been distributed, criticising Stalin's "rudeness".
Nikita Khrushchev in his "Secret Speech" to the 20th Party Congress in February 1956, claimed that Stalin had personally added by hand to the manuscript of the hagiographical Short Biography of Stalin, published in 1948, passages such as: "Although he performed his task as the leader of the party and the people with consummate skill and enjoyed ...
Khrushchev succeeded Stalin as the USSR's ruler, and articulated de-Stalinization in his secret speech to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. At this point, censorship finally began to diminish; this was known as the "Khrushchev Thaw." Film output grew to 20 pictures in 1953, 45 in 1954, and 66 in 1955. [16]
On 25 February 1956, at a closed session of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev delivered a "secret speech" in which he criticized actions taken by the Stalin regime, particularly the purges of the military and the upper Party echelons, and the development of Stalin's cult of personality, while maintaining support for other ideals ...