Khrushchev, brakes the ice in l956
The cult of Stalin, which has reached nauseating proportions, was tuned down.
Emphasis was laid on collective leadership. Then, on the night of February 24-25, 1956, came the bombshell that shook and shocked communists around the world-the bitter denunciation of Stalin by Khrushchev at the Twentieth Congress of the Russian Communist Party. It was as devastating a speech as was ever delivered by one man against another.
Copies of the speech, no made public in Russia, found their way to the west and in June, 1956, were released by our own Department of State.
Khrushchev denounced Stalin, the “great Stalin” who had been idolized by all communists as a man who could no do wrong, as a murderer, pathological liar, and perverted of Marxism-Leninism. In fiery language and with specific names and dates, Khrushchev accused Stalin of mass terror, deporting whole population, forging false evidence against alleged enemies, being a coward during World War II, and possessing a vanity that led him to believe he was God.
Khrushchev in his systematic destruction of Stalin dealt with such matters as :
Mass terror: Stalin acted not through persuasion, explanation, and patient cooperation with people, but imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed this concept or tried to prove his viewpoint, and the correction of his position was doomed to….subsequent moral and physical annihilation.
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Stalin put the Party and the NKVD ( secret police) up to the use of mass terror….
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Mass arrest of Party, Soviet, economics and military workers caused tremendous harm to our country and to the cause of Socialist advancement.
2. Suspicion and distrust: Stalin was a very distrustful man, sickly suspicious; we knew this from our work with him. He could look at a man and say : “Why are your eyes so shifty today”? or “Why are you turning so much today and avoiding to look at me directly in the eyes”? . The sickly suspicion created in him a general distrust even toward eminent Party workers whom he had known for years. Everywhere and in everything he saw “enemies”, “two faces” and “spies”.
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“It has happened sometimes that a man goes to Stalin on his invitation as a friend. And when he sits with Stalin, he does not know where he will be sent next, home or to jail”.
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After the war….Stalin became even more capricious, irritable and brutal; in particular his suspicion grew. His persecution mania reached unbelievable dimensions.
Many workers were becoming enemies before his very eyes. After the war Stalin separated himself from the collective even more. Everything was decided by him alone without any consideration for anyone or anything.
3. Illegal arrests : ( In one case, Stalin curtly told an official ) - “If you do not obtain confessions from the doctors we will shorten you by a head”
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When Stalin said that one or another should be arrested, it was necessary to accept on faith that he was an “enemy of the people”….And how is it possible that a person confesses to crimes which he has not committed? Only in one way because of application of physical methods of pressuring him, with tortures, bringing him to a state of unconsciousness, deprivation of his judgment, taking away of his human dignity. In this manner were “confessions” acquired.
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4. Abuse of power : It is clear that here Stalin showed in a whole series of cases his intolerance, his brutality and his abuse of power. Instead of proving his political correctness and mobilizing the masses, he often chose the path of repression and physical annihilation, not only against actual enemies, but also against individuals who had not committed any crimes against the Party and the Soviet government.
5. Isolation from people : Stalin separated himself from the people and never went anywhere. This lasted tens of years. The last time he visited a village was in January 1928 when he visited Siberia in connection with grain deliveries. How then could he have known the situation in the provinces ?
6. Love of self : You should have seen Stalin’s fury ! How could it be admitted that he, Stalin, had no been right ! Everyone can be erred, but Stalin considered that he never erred that he was always right. He never acknowledge to anyone that he made any mistake, large or small, despite the fact that he made not a few mistakes in the matter of theory and in his practical activity.
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The cult of the individual acquired such monstrous size chiefly because Stalin himself, using all conceivable methods, supported the glorification of his own person……
Khrushchev, telling how Stalin,, in his own hand, wrote flattering statements about himself for his own biography, said : “This book is an expression of the must dissolute flattery, an example of making a man into a Godhead , of transforming him into an infallible sage, “the greatest leader”, sublime strategist of all times and nations.
Finally no others words could be found with which to lift Stalin up to the heavens.
And then Khrushchev says, Stalin even had the audacity to add, again with his own pen, “Stalin never allowed his work to be married by the slightest hint of vanity, conceit or self adulation”.
No mention was made by Khrushchev of any anti-Semitic crimes committed by Stalin. However, on April 4 1956, an article entitled “Our Pain and Our Solace” appeared in the Warsaw Yiddish-language newspaper Folks-Shimmed, with charged that Jewish culture had been largely liquidated under Stalin and many Jewish leaders executed. To date these allegations have never been denied by the Kremlin and American communists have reluctantly accepted then as true.
On April 13 1956, the East Coast communist paper, the Daily Worker, in an editorial entitled “Grievous Deeds” made mention of the earlier Polish “disclosures….that a large number of Jewish writers and other Jewish leaders were framed up and executed and that Jewish culture was virtually wipe out” in the Soviet Union.
These monstrous deeds of anti-Semitism in Russia have had profound repercussions among communist in the United States.
Not single event in Party history so unnerved communists abroad and inside Russia too- as did the Khrushchev attack. Where did it leave communist leaders who year after year had fawned upon Stalin as the greatest of all leaders ? Weren’t they also responsible for such terrible perversions? What was this system called communist, represented as noble, when its chief exponent was a murderer, falsifier and bigot..?
History alone can tell the reasons for, and the ultimate effects of, this violent denunciation. We know about the growing unrest within Russia and the eagerness of the government to appease demands for higher standard of living. We know how communists like to find scapegoats on whom they can place the people’s hate, guilt and distrust, especially if the scapegoat is dead. We know of the jealous jockeying for power that is inevitable in any communist hierarchy.
Moreover, there also appeared to be an effort to rid communism of the growing
“dead hand” of Stalin who, in his old age, had become capriciously tyrannical and personally maniacal.
His successors saw how this crust of sludge, through fear, terror and ossification of communism doctrine, was crushing initiative.
But the essential elements of Stalinism, brutality, illegality, ruthlessness, remain.
In October 1956, the Hungarians revolted against their puppet government, only to be violently attacked by Soviet tanks and troops. Nothing could illustrate better the unrepentant Soviet heart. Moscow still firmly controls her satellite empire. Nowhere in a communist country have truly free elections been held. Communist subversion against the free world continues. Atheism remains dominant doctrine. Unremitting support for Moscow is still demanded of communist everywhere. Speaking before the East German Parliament, Khrushchev made this point clear by stressing the “holy duty” of every communist to help strengthen the communist world.
Apparently realizing he had gone too far in criticizing Stalin, Khrushchev backed up and started to praise the late dictator, showing that in actual fact Khrushchevism was actually Stalinism in a different dress.
At a diplomatic reception in Moscow in early 1957, Khrushchev commented boldly :
As a communist fighting for the interest of the working class, Stalin was a model Communist….We have criticized Stalin, we still criticize him and if necessary we will do it again. But we do not criticize Stalin as a bad Communist as far as the interests of the working classes are concerned…..God grant that every Communist should fight for the interest of the working class as Stalin did.
What can we expect in the future ? Let Khrushchev himself answer:
“Those who expect us to abandon communism will have to wait until a shrimp learns to whistle”
What will the (Soviet) policy be like ? ….We will do the same, but with more emphasis.
This is the enemy we face today, never change.
Excerpt from the book :
Masters of Deceit by J. Edgar Hoover
Published, June 1958, 1959, and 14th printing, January 1962
