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De-Stalinization (Russian: десталинизация, romanized: destalinizatsiya) comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the thaw brought about by ascension of Nikita Khrushchev to power, [1] and his 1956 secret speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its ...
The Khrushchev Thaw (Russian: хрущёвская о́ттепель, romanized: khrushchovskaya ottepel, IPA: [xrʊˈɕːɵfskəjə ˈotʲːɪpʲɪlʲ] or simply ottepel) [1] is the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were relaxed due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization [2] and peaceful coexistence with other nations.
De-Stalinization had a late start in Czechoslovakia. The KSČ leadership virtually ignored the Soviet law announced by Nikita Khrushchev 25 February 1956 at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
After Stalin died in March 1953, he was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and Georgy Malenkov as Premier of the Soviet Union. However the central figure in the immediate post-Stalin period was the former head of the state security apparatus, Lavrentiy Beria.
In 1956, he denounced Joseph Stalin and proceeded to ease controls over the party and society. This was known as de-Stalinization. Moscow considered Eastern Europe to be a critically vital buffer zone for the forward defence of its western borders, in case of another major invasion such as the German invasion of 1941.
The Brezhnev generation — the people who lived and worked during the Brezhnev Era — owed their rise to prominence to Joseph Stalin's Great Purge in the late 1930s. In the purge, Stalin ordered the execution or exile of nearly all Soviet bureaucrats over the age of 35, thereby opening up posts and offices for a younger generation of Soviets.
The speech marks the beginning of the De-Stalinization. March 20: Tunisia becomes independent from France. June 28: in Poznań, Poland, anti-communist protests lead to violence. July: the United States and the United Kingdom cancel offers of aid on the construction of the Aswan Dam in Egypt due to its arms purchases from the Eastern Bloc.
In light of de-Stalinization, the CPSU's changed ideological orientation – from Stalin's confrontation of the West to Khrushchev's peaceful coexistence with it – posed problems of ideological credibility and political authority for Mao, who had emulated Stalin's style of leadership and practical application of Marxism–Leninism in the ...