On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences: Difference between revisions
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[[File:First edition of Krushchev's "Secret Speech".jpg|thumb|''O kulcie jednostki i jego następstwach'', Warsaw, March 1956, first edition of the Secret Speech, published for the inner use in the [[PUWP]]. The CIA Director [[Allen Dulles]] remembered how "the speech, never published in the U.S.S.R., was of great importance for the [[Free World]]. Eventually the text was found — but many miles from Moscow, where it had been delivered. [...] I have always viewed this as one of the major coups of my tour of duty in intelligence."<ref>Allen Dulles: ''The Craft of Intelligence''; 1963; p. 80.</ref>]]
"'''On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences'''" ({{lang-ru|«О культе личности и его последствиях»}}, «''O kul'te lichnosti i yego posledstviyakh''»), also popularly known as the "'''Secret Speech'''" ({{lang-ru|секретный доклад}}, ''sekretnïy doklad''), was a report by [[List of leaders of the Soviet Union|Soviet leader]] [[Nikita Khrushchev]], [[General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|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 reign of the deceased General Secretary and [[Premier of the Soviet Union|Premier]] [[Joseph Stalin]], particularly with respect to the [[Purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|purges]] which had especially marked the [[Great Purge|last years]] of the 1930s. Khrushchev charged Stalin with having fostered a leadership [[Stalin's cult of personality|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
The speech was shocking in its day. There are reports that the audience reacted with applause and laughter at several points.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/06/world/soviets-after-33-years-publish-khrushchev-s-anti-stalin-speech.html|title=Soviets, After 33 Years, Publish Khrushchev's Anti-Stalin Speech|work=New York Times|author=Francis X. Clines|date=6 April 1989|accessdate=29 February 2016}}</ref> There are also reports that some of those present suffered heart attacks and others later committed suicide due to shock at the revelations of Stalin's use of terror.<ref>{{cite AV media|title=From Our Own Correspondent|publisher=BBC Radio 4|date=22 January 2009}}</ref> The ensuing confusion among many Soviet citizens, bred on the [[panegyric]]s and permanent praise of the "genius" of Stalin, was especially apparent in [[Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic|Georgia]], Stalin's homeland, where the [[1956 Georgian demonstrations|days of protests and rioting]] ended with the Soviet army crackdown on 9 March 1956.<ref name="Suny">[[Ronald Grigor Suny]], ''The Making of the Georgian Nation''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994; pp. 303–305.</ref> In the West, the speech politically devastated the organised left; the [[Communist Party USA]] alone lost more than 30,000 members within weeks of its publication.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/29/opinion/sunday/when-communism-inspired-americans.html|title=When Communism Inspired Americans|author=Vivian Gornick|newspaper=New York Times|language=en|access-date=1 May 2017|date=29 April 2017}}</ref>
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