On the Personality Cult and its Consequences: Encyclopedia II - On the Personality Cult and its Consequences - History

On the Personality Cult and its Consequences - History

The issue of mass repressions was recognized before the speech. In fact, the speech was prepared based on the results of a special party commission (Pospelov, Komarov, Aristov, Shvernik (chairman)), known as the Shvernik Commission, arranged at the session of the Presidium of the Party central committee on January 31, 1955. A direct goal of the commission was to investigate the repressions of the delegates of the XVII Party Congress. This commission presented evidence that during 1937–1938 (the peak of the period known as the Great Purge) over one and a half million Party members were convicted for "anti-Soviet activities", of whom over 680,000 were executed. These numbers were compiled from the execution lists signed by Stalin. The actual death toll of the Great Purge was much larger. The XVII congress was selected for investigations because it was known as "the Congress of Victors" in the country of "victorious socialism", and therefore the enormous number of "enemies" among the participants demanded explanation.

On March 5, 1956, the Party Presidium ordered the reading of Khrushchev's Report at the meetings of all Communist and Komsomol organizations, with the invitation of non-members as well. Thus the contents of the report had become widely known in the country already in 1956, and the name "Secret Speech" is a misnomer. But as noted above, the full text was not officially released to the public until 1989.

However, the contents of the speech were only slowly disclosed in the Eastern European countries. The contents were never disclosed to Western communist party members by their leaders, and most Western communists became aware of the contents of the speech after an American newspaper published a copy in mid 1956.

Despite the denouncing of political repressions, the process of rehabilitation of Old Bolsheviks was slow, although the release of political prisoners from labor camps started soon after Stalin's death. Still, the victims of the Moscow Trials were cleared of all charges only in 1988.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki