Khrushchev's speech on the cult of personality. Essay on the topic “Report of N.S. Khrushchev “On the cult of personality and its consequences”: an ambiguous assessment.” Distribution of the report text

During his speech, Nikita Khrushchev improvised a lot, but the text of the report “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences” was prepared by Pospelov. Photo: Vasily Egorov/TASS Photo Chronicle

The emotional party leader hurled his accusations at the “father of the people” and the “leader and teacher,” and there was silence in the hall, punctuated, as the stenographers recorded, with “the noise of indignation.” Then there was lukewarm applause. Those present were shocked. It is believed that from that moment the country began to see the light. The era of the cruelest ideological pressure and physical reprisals against “enemies of the people” has ended, and the victims of the Gulag have been rehabilitated. Who wrote the report? Was Khrushchev settling scores with Stalin? What gave rise to the "cult"? The director of the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, Andrei Sorokin, answers these questions.

Andrey Konstantinovich, when did the idea arise to tell the country about the repressions?

Andrey Sorokin: The public conversation about the repressions of the late 1930s (and only about them, we emphasize) actually took place for the first time at the 20th Congress of the CPSU. It should be understood that immediately after Stalin’s death, the top political leadership of the USSR launched the process of rehabilitation of various groups of unreasonably repressed people. On April 4, 1953, Beria himself, the then Minister of Internal Affairs, signed order 0068, which admitted that “in the investigative work of the MGB, there were gross distortions of Soviet laws, arrests of innocent citizens, unbridled falsification of investigative materials, and widespread use of various methods of torture,” and the use of any coercive measures or physical coercion against those arrested was prohibited.

1956 Time magazine cover. Khrushchev's report, classified in the Soviet Union, was first published in the West. Historians suggest that the Soviet leadership deliberately leaked information. Photo: RGASPI

After the arrest and execution of Beria, the Central Committee and personally addressed to Khrushchev, who was elected first secretary of the Central Committee in the fall of 1955, began to receive numerous requests for a review of the cases of those repressed. The question also arose about the rehabilitation of victims of the open trials of the late 1930s. It must be admitted that a consensus was reached in the top political leadership to abandon the excesses of repressive policies. The first action in this series was the termination of the “doctors’ case” and the release of those under investigation.

But the figure of Stalin remained outside the brackets? When did the question of "cult" arise?

Andrey Sorokin: Yes, the question of revising the attitude towards Stalin’s personality has not yet arisen. The same Khrushchev in September 1953 signed the resolution of the Central Committee “On the Stalin Museum”, the creation of which was completed just before the 20th Congress. The question of finally formulating an attitude towards Stalin before the Presidium of the Central Committee (as the Politburo was called during this period) did not arise immediately. Neither the note from the First Secretary of the Central Committee Khrushchev to the members of the Presidium dated April 7, 1955 on the convening of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, nor the decision of the Presidium dated April 8 raises the issue of the cult of personality. Only in the working minutes of the Presidium meeting of November 5 do we find a section entitled “On December 21.”

Leader's 76th birthday...

Andrey Sorokin: Yes, the occasion was another birthday anniversary, which it was decided to “celebrate only in the press, not to hold meetings.” Apparently, it was at this meeting that for the first time a general open conversation took place, so far only among members of the top political leadership. And opinions were divided. Khrushchev was in favor of not holding celebrations.

Further - more. At the meeting of the Presidium on December 31, Nikita Sergeevich brought out the famous letter from Olga Shatunovskaya to Mikoyan, where she wrote about the involvement of GPU workers in the murder of Kirov in 1934. On the same day, the Pospelov commission (at that time secretary of the Central Committee) was formed. And on February 1, at a meeting of the Presidium, a serious discussion took place, summing up the results of which Khrushchev summarizes:

"Intensify the attack on the cult of personality."

On February 9, the Central Committee Commission sent a report to the Presidium “to establish the causes of mass repressions against members and candidates for membership of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, elected at the XVII Party Congress.” On the same day, after hearing this report at a meeting of the Presidium, Khrushchev made the decision: “we need to tell the congress about everything.”

Did Khrushchev participate in writing the report?

Andrey Sorokin: He improvised a lot during his speech, but the draft report of the 1st Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee to the 20th Congress was prepared by Pospelov. And the handwritten original of this report is kept today in RGASPI.

And yet they write a lot about the fact that even for Khrushchev’s inner circle, the report on the cult of personality was a “bomb”?

Andrey Sorokin: As we see, he was no secret for the members of the Presidium of the Central Committee, despite widespread speculation.

The draft report was sent to members of the presidium; a number of copies retained their edits.

Did Nikita Sergeevich have personal motives for participating so actively in the preparation of the “shelling of the personality cult”? What was his relationship with the leader?

Andrey Sorokin: Personal motives to go against Stalin, even posthumously? Tragedies of this kind, such as, for example, in the Molotov family, whose wife Polina Zhemchuzhina was arrested on false charges in January 1949 and spent four years in a camp, or the brother of Lazar Kaganovich, who committed suicide without waiting for his arrest in the family Khrushchev, of course, was not there.

But there were personal humiliations for this youngest member of Stalin's inner circle. More than once he was awarded the “highest wrath.” In the fall of 1946, being the 1st Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, Khrushchev sent several notes to Stalin about problems in the republic. Stalin answered him that with such unfounded notes, some dubious political figures were fencing themselves off from the Soviet Union in order not to carry out the party’s assignments. “I warn you,” wrote Stalin, “that if you continue to stand on this non-state and non-Bolshevik path, things may end badly.” The warning was by no means addressed only to Khrushchev. Stalin sent this note to "members and candidates of the Politburo." So the clouds gathered over Khrushchev’s head more than once.

But at the same time, the future head of state moved up the career ladder very successfully...

Andrey Sorokin: His career growth was controlled by Stalin himself. For example, it is known that in April 1937, Yezhov received from the NKVD department of the Ukrainian SSR in the Donetsk region interrogation protocols indicating that Khrushchev belonged to the Trotskyist organization in his youth. It is unlikely that Nikita Sergeevich was lucky to survive, as he wrote about it later. I think it was Stalin, who personally controlled the development of repressions in the center (and in many ways locally), who saved up the incriminating evidence and ordered not to touch the young, energetic, not very educated, but devoted party leader.

The speaker at a closed meeting that went down in history exaggerates quotes from Lenin about Stalin being rude... Probably a quarter of the report is devoted to this.

Andrey Sorokin: Lenin’s statement about Stalin’s rudeness is known, made in a letter to the XII Congress of the RCP (b). Lenin wrote about the “immense power” that Stalin, “having become General Secretary, concentrated in his hands,” and the intolerance of Stalin’s retention because of his rudeness in such a post.

As for the cult of personality, historians are well aware that already in the early Soviet period there were many cults of the “leaders” of the revolution, to which almost the entire top of the Bolshevik Party belonged. The cult of Stalin did not grow out of nowhere. And with his “debunking” he did not disappear. In a purely centralized, thoroughly ideological management system, the authority of the supreme leader is a necessary anchor, a kind of “keystone.” Take it out and the arched structure of power begins to crumble. Therefore, there was a cult of Khrushchev himself, and a cult of Brezhnev, and even a cult of Gorbachev.

Besides Lenin, did anyone else warn about the danger of the cult of the leader under socialism?

Andrey Sorokin: For example, in 1956, the patriarch of the world communist movement, Palmiro Togliatti, leader of the Italian Communist Party (one of the largest and most authoritative at that time), spoke about the possibility of generating a cult of personality by the Soviet system itself.

He associated the roots of this phenomenon with an excessive increase in the role of the bureaucracy, primarily in the party, but also in the economic and political life of the Soviet Union as a whole.

Here Nikita Sergeevich reads: “It has been established that out of 139 members and candidates for members of the Central Committee of the Party, elected at the 17th Party Congress, 98 people were arrested and shot (mainly in 1937-1938), that is, 70 percent. In the report there is a remark: “The noise of indignation in the hall.” Was the speaker not embarrassed by the fact that he also signed execution lists?

Andrey Sorokin: The top leadership of the party, debunking the cult of personality, was concerned with shifting responsibility for the repressions to Stalin. And in order not to find ourselves under attack, on the one hand, and not to give grounds to question the “socialist choice” itself, on the other. But the question of the involvement of the political leadership of the USSR in repressions arose already in the same 1956 during a campaign to familiarize itself with the report of members of the CPSU and the Komsomol at closed party meetings.

Today these questions have been sufficiently studied. The RGASPI stores numerous “execution lists” signed personally by Stalin and members of the Politburo. Khrushchev also voted for the exclusion of prominent government and military figures from the ranks of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the transfer of their affairs to the NKVD; he was, although not for long, part of the so-called troikas “for checking anti-Soviet elements on the ground” in the Moscow region.

It was through the decisions of these and a number of other extrajudicial bodies that hundreds of thousands of people across the country were repressed, including executed.

Members of the Presidium of the Central Committee were mentally prepared for the effect of a bomb exploding. How did the country perceive such truth? Only three years have passed since many sincerely wept during the funeral of the “father of nations”...

Andrey Sorokin: The report caused shock. In 1989, the “Bulletin of the Central Committee of the CPSU” published (for the first time in the Soviet Union) a version of the transcript that is replete with remarks like “applause,” “noise of indignation in the hall,” and the like. However, according to the recollections of the congress participants, deathly silence reigned in the hall. So the report really achieved the effect of a bombshell. Neither in Soviet society nor in the world communist movement was it received unambiguously positively. Opinions were divided. Moreover, the reaction to the report was such that Khrushchev made a number of backward movements. For example, at the New Year's Eve 1957 meeting in the Kremlin's St. George's Hall, in the presence of the diplomatic corps, he raised a glass in honor of Stalin. And half a month later, at a reception at the Chinese embassy, ​​he said that the name of Stalin is inseparable from Marxism-Leninism.

Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, head of the PPR government Jozef Cyrankiewicz, first secretary of the Central Committee of the PUWP Vladislav Gomulka and others during negotiations on the situation in Hungary. Photo: RGASPI

The attitude of Khrushchev and other members of the so-called “collective leadership” towards Stalin was ambivalent. “Stalin is really great, I confirm this even now...” writes Nikita Sergeevich in his memoirs, without, however, abandoning the main points of his criticism of him.

Nikita Sergeevich named numbers, for example, he said that, according to the NKVD, the number of “spies” and “saboteurs” in our country increased more than tenfold in 1937 compared to 1936. Accordingly, execution sentences. And what account do modern historians present to Stalin?

Andrey Sorokin: When people remember Stalin, most often the conversation comes down to the number of people repressed during his reign. Which, of course, takes the discussion somewhat to the side. In my opinion, Russian society today needs debates not so much about personalities - Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, but about the Soviet period of history, about its undoubted achievements, but also about the price of these achievements, about failures, mistakes and crimes, which, unfortunately, also took place. And estimates of the scale of repression vary greatly depending on what we mean by the concepts of “repression” and “repressed.” Some include among them primarily those convicted of “counter-revolutionary crimes”, others include among them dispossessed peasants and deported peoples exiled to special settlements, while others also include those who have been subjected to excessively cruel punishments under criminal articles (for example, under the “spikelet law”).

What documents do archivists rely on?

Andrey Sorokin: In February 1954, a certificate signed by Prosecutor General Rudenko, Minister of Internal Affairs Kruglov, and Minister of Justice Gorshenin was sent to Khrushchev, which stated the number of people convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes for the period from 1921 to 1953. Apparently, it was based on a certificate from the 1st Special Department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, signed by the head of the accounting and archival department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Pavlov. According to this certificate (the figures of which are slightly higher than those reported to Khrushchev), a total of 4,060,306 people were convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes by judicial and extrajudicial authorities, of which 799,455 people were sentenced to death. The total number of arrests is 4,835,937. This and other documents have been published several times. In reality, work on researching this topic by our society has not been done in full.

From your point of view, what else besides the report on the debunking of the cult of personality will be considered history for Nikita Sergeevich?

Andrey Sorokin: First of all, he opened the gates of the Gulag camps, releasing hundreds of thousands of innocently convicted people, who were given back their civil rights, and rehabilitated the majority (unfortunately, not all) of the deported peoples. And this is his undoubted merit, regardless of the motives that guided him. Khrushchev created opportunities to search for alternatives to social development. Although these alternatives were very limited. The famous “thaw” was not part of Khrushchev’s plans, becoming a side effect of his policy, the result of the perception by part of the Soviet intelligentsia of the “new course,” for which he was not ready, many times declaring that “the thaw is not our slogan.” However, this internally contradictory and inconsistent policy gave a powerful impetus to the development of Soviet culture, the emergence of generally recognized highly artistic works in the field of literature, theater, cinema, and music.

Quote from the report of the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Comrade. Khrushcheva N.S. XX Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

About the murder of Kirov

“It should be said that the circumstances surrounding the murder of Comrade Kirov still conceal a lot of incomprehensible and mysterious things and require the most thorough investigation. There is reason to think that Kirov’s killer, Nikolaev, was helped by someone from the people responsible for protecting Kirov. A month and a half before the murder, Nikolaev was arrested for suspicious behavior, but was released and not even searched. It is extremely suspicious that when a security officer assigned to Kirov was taken for interrogation on December 2, 1934, he was killed in a car “accident.” none of the people accompanying him were harmed. After the murder of Kirov, the leading employees of the Leningrad NKVD were removed from work and subjected to very mild punishments, but in 1937 they were shot to cover up the traces of the organizers of Kirov’s murder.” (Movement in the hall.)

Nikolay Fedotov

Anti-scientific methodology of liberalism

Part 1. Report “on the cult of personality and its consequences”: a lie on a global scale

The current liberalism has shredded. Representatives of liberal ideology, for all their declared progressiveness, for all their talk about the “backwardness of Russia” and the “advanced democratic West,” in fact, are not much different from sectarians. The capitalist class, overgrown with fat and mired in depravity, is no longer capable of producing ideologists who would be worth even the little finger of Rousseau, Voltaire, or Montesquieu. But the bourgeoisie has created a huge manipulative apparatus that makes it possible to introduce myths into the mass consciousness, influencing only people’s emotions. In addition, an entire ersatz science has even been created that is dedicated to substantiating these myths for those who consider themselves adherents of the “scientific approach.” The general philosophical and methodological illiteracy of the modern bourgeois intelligentsia precisely contributes to the fact that pseudoscientific works, replete with skillfully disguised falsifications, are easily accepted by those who consider themselves intellectuals at face value.

If the above-mentioned founders of liberalism had a certain positive program, then the main feature of the ideology of modern liberals is anti-communism. Moreover, this anti-communism has absolutely no scientific justification in the form of at least attempts to refute Marxism from a scientific position. Liberals completely reject scientific methodology, which requires, in order to refute a particular theory, to refute the system of objective laws on which it is based, and to create a new theory, with a new system of such laws. No, on the scientific and theoretical front, liberals avoid fighting communism. Gentlemen liberals reduce any conversation about communism to criticism of their own versions of the history of the USSR. In fact, the only “argument” that they have left against the communists is supposedly the “bloody Soviet past” with “millions of innocently repressed”, “peasants doomed to starvation”, again “millions of Soviet soldiers whom the bloody Soviet military leaders persecuted into a war for slaughter in senseless attacks,” and, naturally, with a shortage of sausage so dear to the liberal heart. According to liberals, thus, “history itself has proven the impossibility and destructiveness of communism.”

Paradoxically, modern liberal anti-communist mythology has its roots in Soviet times. Its cornerstones were laid back in the mid-50s. Relatively speaking, Khrushchev, with his report at the 20th Congress, awakened Solzhenitsyn and Co., who launched anti-communist agitation in an even more deceitful, ignorant and arrogant form. Well, after the bourgeoisie came to power, the methodology of the anti-Sovietists was adopted by numerous “scientific” servants of the bourgeoisie, who filled the shelves with anti-Soviet literature. Moreover, some of this literature, indeed, is quite skillfully, in compliance with all design requirements, disguised as scientific works.

In this work, I will not set as my goal the identification of objective truth regarding certain phenomena in Soviet history. This, ultimately, is the job of historians, who in due time will get to the bottom of the truth from a truly scientific position of materialist dialectics. My task is to demonstrate the unscientific nature of the methodology used by the tribunes of anti-communism and certified lackeys of the bourgeoisie to criticize the Soviet period.

As you know, the favorite topic of all anti-communists is the Stalinist period. It is presented in the form of a kind of “concentrated horror” for which communists must repent and which, according to liberal logic, is “proof” of the “bestial essence” of communism and communists. It would not be an exaggeration to say that anti-Stalinist mythology is the cornerstone of all modern anticommunism. After all, in theoretical terms, liberals cannot oppose anything to Marxists. And the cornerstones of the anti-Stalinist mythology were laid by none other than the “communist” Khrushchev. It’s funny, while repeating to this day theses from his infamous report “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences,” liberals somehow forget that they were formulated by one of the “Stalinist executioners” (according to the liberal classification).

In fact, the falsity of this report is an established fact. For example, American researcher Grover Furr in his book "Anti-Stalin meanness" convincingly refuted all the anti-Stalinist “arguments” expressed by Khrushchev. Moreover, he did this not even from the standpoint of Marxism, but simply on the basis of facts.

It is noteworthy that in modern liberal anti-communist discourse the question of the truth/falsity of the Khrushchev report is not raised at all. Its “world-historical significance” as a “blow against communism” comes to the fore. The liberal gentlemen are not the least bit embarrassed that this “blow” was dealt with the help of an outright lie. Here, for example, is what the famous anti-communist Svanidze says at one of the liberal conferences.

“This is a report that shocked the imagination. The first country of socialism. A country that personifies an almost ready-made paradise on earth. And then the head of state and party says this from the rostrum. He talks about a man equal to God. Who was prayed for just now".

They say it doesn’t matter that he lied. The main thing is that it “shocked the imagination.” And indeed, in conditions when mass ignorance had not yet been overcome, despite all the successes of mass education, this lie was accepted by many at face value. And the fact that the leader of the world’s first socialist state, who stood at the head of the world class struggle of the proletariat, suddenly appeared before the whole world as a liar, certainly caused enormous harm to the cause of communism.

Although those who are particularly “stubborn” still carry this report around as if it were a sack and they even re-release.

So, let's turn to the text of the report. I will not analyze it in as much detail as Grover Furr did. I will dwell only on some key places.

A thoughtful reading of this opus leads to the idea that it is intended for some primitive people who are ready to accept absolutely unproven theses on faith. One gets the impression that it was written by political strategists whose goal was not to prove Stalin’s guilt, but to convince the audience that Stalin was “bad.” For this purpose, the widest range of manipulative techniques was used: opposition (Lenin to Stalin), logical manipulation (taking as an axiom what needs to be proven), appeal to emotions (when, for example, the number of repressed party members is called without regard to the analysis of their guilt), etc. p. Finally, all this is seasoned with the author’s blatant scientific and theoretical illiteracy and outright opportunism.

The formula of the Khrushchev report consists of four “constants”: “cult of personality” and “repression”, which are contrasted with “collective leadership” and “socialist legality”. Let's start with the first one:

“After the death of Stalin, the Central Committee of the Party began to strictly and consistently pursue a policy of explaining the inadmissibility of exalting one individual, alien to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism, turning him into some kind of superman possessing supernatural qualities, like a god. This man seems to know everything, sees everything, thinks for everyone, can do everything; he is infallible in his actions.

This concept of man, and, more specifically, of Stalin, has been cultivated among us for many years.”

A Marxist, in principle, cannot pose the question in such an abstract and metaphysical way when considering any phenomenon. If someone is endowed with some kind of supernatural qualities, then the key question for a communist is whether this serves the cause of communism or not. That is, the “cult” of someone or something cannot be bad “at all.” Is it bad, for example, the cult of science or the cult of knowledge? But the cult of health can serve reactionary goals in some conditions (as in Nazi Germany) and progressive goals in others (USSR). A Marxist should have structured his study of this issue in the following way. First, you need to understand the essence of the phenomenon. That is, to what extent the positive characteristics attributed to Stalin and his activities did not correspond to objective reality, that is, Stalin’s real contribution to the cause of communism. Secondly, if it turns out that they did not comply, then determine what harm the “cult” caused to the cause of communism. Thirdly, if such harm is proven, then identify the objective and subjective reasons for the formation of such a “cult.” This would be the correct, scientific approach.

What is Khrushchev doing? He poses the question abstractly. They say, “the cult of personality is bad,” apparently, only for reasons of abstract “justice.” Khrushchev does not analyze the role of Stalin in the cause of communist construction, does not try to prove the inadequacy of the “cult” and does not even find out its reasons. Why he does this is understandable. After all, both the speaker himself and his comrades in the Politburo were themselves conductors of this “cult” and repeatedly praised Stalin in their speeches.

Khrushchev acts like a manipulator. Having just accused Stalin of “likening God,” he likens Lenin to God and quotes him, thoughtlessly, as if it were “holy scripture.” His entire “logic” is based on the selection of quotes in such a way as to present Stalin’s actions as contrary to Lenin’s precepts.

For example, supposedly Lenin spoke about relying on the masses, and Stalin decided everything himself.

“Lenin taught that the strength of the party lies in its inextricable connection with the masses, in the fact that the people follow the party - workers, peasants, intelligentsia. “Only he will win and retain power,” said Lenin, “who believes in the people, who plunges into the spring of living folk creativity.” (V.I. Lenin, vol. 26, p. 259)»

Khrushchev just forgets that this “inextricable connection with the masses” and calls to “plunge into the spring of folk creativity” are by no means identical to tailism and do not at all prove that Lenin placed the PRINCIPLE of decision-making above the CORRECTNESS of these decisions. The connection with the masses consists, first of all, in the objective role of the scientific vanguard played by the Bolshevik Party, in the recognition of this role by the masses, and not in the fact that the masses themselves made decisions. The vanguard role of the party and its monopoly on making the most important decisions was never questioned by Lenin.

Stalin's "cult of personality" is contrasted with Lenin's "collective leadership":

“During Lenin’s lifetime, the Central Committee of the Party was the true expression of the collective leadership of the Party and the country. Being a militant Marxist revolutionary, always irreconcilable on fundamental issues, Lenin never forced his views on his fellow workers. He convinced and patiently explained his opinion to others. Lenin always strictly ensured that the norms of party life were implemented, the Party Charter was observed, and party congresses and plenums of the Central Committee were convened in a timely manner.”

What kind of “beast” is “collective leadership”? And why was it necessary to reinvent this terminological wheel when Khrushchev was probably familiar with the term “democratic centralism”? Apparently, because Stalin’s violation of the principles of democratic centralism would have to be proven, but this would be difficult to do, since these principles were stated very clearly and were well known to the party masses. And under the violation of the incomprehensible principle of “collective leadership” anything can be summed up.

The term “collective leadership”, in fact, is an “ideologeme”, that is, a concept with an arbitrary, easily changeable meaning, “separated” from the phenomenon. By “collective leadership” we mean “leadership in the Leninist way.” But what does “in Lenin’s way” mean? According to Khrushchev, this is “not to forcefully impose your views, to convince, to explain.” However, by convincing and explaining, Lenin more than once imposed his views on the majority. For example, on the issue of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty. And Stalin, as Khrushchev says below, played a big role in the ideological defeat of the Trotskyists and Bukharinites. That is, he still managed to explain to the party masses the hostility of these platforms without resorting to administrative measures. Both Lenin and Stalin found themselves in conditions where “convictions and explanations” did not help, and they had to push through their decisions one way or another. As Proryv has repeatedly written about this, the principle of democratic centralism with this approach was, in fact, a formality, since it was not difficult to obtain collective approval of a decision whose correctness had been impeccably proven. In such and only in such conditions, the destructive potential of democratic leadership is neutralized by the high level of scientific development of the party leadership. However, as soon as, with the help of one or another formal democratic manipulation, mediocrities make their way into the leadership of the party and decisions begin to be made by voting, the scientific quality of these decisions very quickly declines.

Khrushchev’s thesis that Stalin neglected “collective leadership” is just a demagogic statement, since “collective leadership” is the essence of God knows what. What Stalin neglected is not clear.

So, the first “argument”. Stalin, according to Lenin’s “political testament”, “rude”, “concentrated enormous power in his hands” and in general “consideration should have been given to removing him from this position and replacing him with someone else.”. True, Lenin never proposed a candidate for the post of General Secretary, and the Central Committee, having considered it, did not find a more suitable candidate for this position.

The falsity of this argument is exposed by Grover Furr in the study mentioned above. In fact, the “Letter to the Congress” mentioned by Khrushchev is not any kind of “political testament”. It was never considered such in the Bolshevik Party; Trotsky first called this letter a “political testament” in 1934 in an article "Lenin's Testament".

In addition, it turns out that Stalin (oh, horror!) allowed himself to be rude to Lenin’s wife Krupskaya, after which Lenin wrote a letter to Stalin demanding an apology. From this the following conclusion is drawn:

“If Stalin could behave this way during Lenin’s life, could treat Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya this way, whom the party knows well and highly values ​​as a loyal friend of Lenin and an active fighter for the cause of our party from the moment of its inception, then one can imagine how Stalin treated with other employees."

But what, exactly, does rudeness have to do with assessing Stalin’s activities? Moreover, the reason for the specific “rude attack” against Krupskaya is never told to us. Here we are dealing with a typical attempt to manipulate the audience. Such “argumentation” was subsequently picked up by “debunkers” of communism from the bourgeois pulpit, who began to delve into the personal lives of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, playing on the emotions of the average person who was not inclined to think critically. Unable to do anything to oppose Marxism as a science, these would-be scientists, by order of their class masters, began to create “negative images” of the largest Marxists. By the way, in the mentioned book by Ferra, evidence is provided that, despite the possible reality of this episode of rudeness, good relations between Krupskaya and members of Lenin’s family with Stalin remained for many years.

"Argument" second. Stalin dealt too harshly with the “Trotskyists-Bukharinites-Zinovievites.” Khrushchev does not question Stalin’s merits in defeating these anti-party movements. True, he does this bashfully, declaring that “the party destroyed”, “the party exposed”, etc. The reproach boils down to the fact that ideological defeat was quite enough, and “repressing” them did not make the slightest sense.

“The struggle was carried out on an ideological basis. But a few years later, when socialism was already basically built in our country, when the exploiting classes were basically eliminated, when the social structure of Soviet society radically changed, the social base for hostile parties, political movements and groups was sharply reduced, when ideological opponents of the party were politically defeated long ago, repressions began against them.”

And here Khrushchev once again demonstrates his misunderstanding of Marxist dialectics. He looks at the situation like a typical metaphysician. They say that since the number of kulaks and bourgeois elements has become smaller, the “social base” for hostile movements has become smaller. He believes that an exiled kulak or a banned NEP speculator instantly became conscientious Soviet citizens and began to work diligently for the cause of communism. And in the shortest possible time, literally in one decade. Here Khrushchev demonstrates a misunderstanding of the law of intensification of class struggle as we move towards communism. Even if the social base for bourgeois movements has shrunk quantitatively, this does not mean that these movements have weakened. No, they simply took other forms, their representatives got jobs in Soviet bodies and moved on to sabotage work. In addition, it is necessary to take into account the class balance of forces on a global scale, that is, the international situation in which the groups of Bukharinites and Trotskyists-Zinovievites were physically destroyed. If within the country a serious blow was dealt to the remnants of the exploiting classes, then in the international arena, on the contrary, fascism intensified. It was absolutely clear that a world war would begin in the near future. So, qualitatively, in such conditions, even ideologically defeated enemies, whose social base has decreased, become no less, but more dangerous.

However, Khrushchev avoids the question of the essence and danger of these trends at that specific historical moment. This technique will also be used many times in the future by anti-Soviet dissidents. The emphasis is not on proving the wrongness of the chosen preventive measure for adherents of anti-party lines, but on abstract moralizing in the spirit of “you cannot kill people for their views.” It would seem, what could be simpler? Certain figures were convicted, their trials were open, and all case materials were published in the press. If Khrushchev raises the question that the preventive measure was chosen incorrectly, then it is necessary to “only” prove that the investigation was guided by falsified data, therefore such a severe punishment was unnecessary. But the whistleblower of the “cult of personality” does nothing of the sort. He continues to influence the audience's emotions with unsubstantiated claims.

“Stalin introduced the concept of “enemy of the people.” This term immediately freed you from the need for any proof of the ideological wrongness of the person or people with whom you were arguing: it gave the opportunity to anyone who disagreed with Stalin in some way, who was only suspected of hostile intentions, anyone who was simply slandered, subjected to the most brutal repressions, in violation of all norms of revolutionary legality.”

So he lies and doesn’t blush. Well, yes, there was such a concept as “enemy of the people,” but it was not a legal term. No one was convicted with the wording “enemy of the people”; this concept is not used anywhere in the Criminal Code. Declaring someone an “enemy of the people” was not a source of legal consequences, but, on the contrary, the presence of evidence of hostile activity was the reason for declaring a particular figure an “enemy of the people.” In addition, here Khrushchev clearly contradicts himself, since above he himself claims that the “Trotskyist-Bukharinites” were exposed precisely ideologically. That is, it was ideological exposure that preceded the declaration of “enemies of the people,” and not vice versa.

Well, then Khrushchev’s favorite technique is used again - contrasting Stalin with Lenin, “supported” by quotes. They say that Lenin preferred to convince those who were mistaken, while Stalin simply destroyed them. The following Leninist statement is cited as “proof”:

“As a special task of the Control Commission, to recommend an attentive and individualized attitude, often even a kind of direct treatment in relation to representatives of the so-called opposition who have suffered a psychological crisis due to failures in their Soviet or party career. We must try to calm them down, explain the matter to them in a comradely manner, find them (without any way of showing) a job suitable for their psychological characteristics, give advice and instructions at this point from the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee, etc.”

In general, while reading Khrushchev’s report, there is a strong feeling of a kind of deja vu. Well yes, of course! After all, the reasoning of our contemporary opportunists is like two peas in a pod, in terms of the level of argumentation they are similar to Khrushchev’s idle talk.

It is unclear what the author meant by this quote. It is obvious to any dialectical materialist that the question of the attitude towards dissidents in the party must be resolved concretely and historically, and not abstractly, as Khrushchev does, elevating Lenin’s recommendation of 1920 to the rank of dogma, valid for all times and for all cases.

The fact is that in 1920, specific historical conditions required a different approach to non-Bolshevik elements, and personnel shortages dictated the need to use even these people in the interests of building communism until the actual Bolshevik cadres or these cadres themselves were trained will not switch to Bolshevik positions. But even later they did not disdain ideologically defeated oppositionists.

The opposition was ideologically defeated by the end of the 1920s. Which, in fact, Khrushchev also speaks approvingly of. Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, etc. were shot by court verdict. were in 1936-1938. But from the moment of the ideological defeat to the execution, they tried to use these people in responsible positions. Thus, Bukharin, until his arrest, held the position of editor-in-chief of Izvestia, Zinoviev worked on the editorial board of the Bolshevik magazine, Kamenev was also quite officially engaged in editorial work. That is, Stalin acted with personnel completely in accordance with Lenin’s recommendations.

They were shot only when it became clear that these cadres, despite the ideological defeat, continued to carry out anti-party work, that is, to cause harm. Moreover, in extremely difficult conditions, when internal enemies turned to sabotage and terror, inspired by the strengthening of the reaction in Europe. There was not the slightest point in convincing them again.

Grover Furr writes regarding this “argument”:

“During his entire life, Stalin did not have at least one case when someone was “expelled from the leadership team” only because of disagreement with his opinion. It is noteworthy that Khrushchev’s report does not contain a single such specific example.

It is worth recalling: Stalin was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks; he had only one vote in the Central Committee and the Politburo. The Central Committee could release him at any time, and Stalin himself tried to resign as General Secretary four times. But each time his resignation requests were rejected. The last attempt of this kind was made at the 19th Party Congress in October 1952. She was also rejected, like all the others.”

“But Lenin used such measures against real class enemies, and not against those who make mistakes, who are mistaken, who can be led by ideological influence on them and even retained in the leadership.”

Nevertheless, that the Bukharinites, Trotskyists, and Zinovievites were just such “good” enemies is not proven in any way, but is presented as an axiom. Khrushchev not only knew about the trials of these groups, but he himself fought against them, demanding the shooting of enemies at rallies. Then, in 1936-1938, for some reason it did not seem to him that they could be “re-educated.” By the way, in his report at the 20th Congress, he did not admit that he was mistaken then, and did not even prove that he was misled by the allegedly falsified case materials.

In fact, whatever one may say, if Stalin is a “criminal,” then Khrushchev and his gang are accomplices in “crimes.” After all, they were in the leadership together with Stalin and approved all the “criminal decisions.” The reference to the fact that they were “afraid” puts an end to Messrs. Khrushchev and Co. as communists. Here Furr gives a remarkable fact:

“Some in the communist movement astutely noted how unworthy such an excuse looks: “When Soviet leader Anastas Mikoyan, at the head of the CPSU delegation to China, attended the Eighth Congress of the CPC in 1956, Peng [Dehuai] asked him privately why only Now the Soviet party has condemned Stalin. Mikoyan allegedly replied: “We did not dare to express our opinion at that time. To do so meant death." To this Peng [Dehuai] objected: “What kind of communist is he who is afraid of death?”

That's it. The fact is that under Stalin these gentlemen were afraid. But they were afraid not just to speak out, but to lie and talk irresponsible nonsense. History has convincingly proven the role these resourceful mediocrities played in relation to the cause of communism. The results of their policies are well known.

Well, then again comes the “hymn to collective leadership.” They say, “Lenin never made decisions alone,” “always consulted with the Central Committee,” “regularly convened congresses,” and in general “sacredly observed the principle of democratic centralism.” I will not go deeper into criticism of this principle. Fortunately, Proryv published a whole series of articles devoted to this issue. I will only emphasize that here Khrushchev again pays attention not to the essence of the decisions made, but to the form of their adoption. In fact, there is no difference here. If Lenin formulated a decision, and the majority approved it, then in practice it was Lenin’s decision that was still implemented, due to its CORRECTNESS, that is, the opponents’ lack of ability to refute the correctness of this decision from a scientific point of view. On the good side, Khrushchev needed to show which decisions were made by the majority and at the same time differed from Lenin’s, proving that the truth in Lenin’s Central Committee was determined by voting. But this did not happen in practice. In practice, both under Lenin and Stalin, the principle of scientific centralism dominated the party, despite the proclaimed principle of democratic centralism. It is absolutely unimportant that Lenin, due to specific historical circumstances, was forced to make formal concessions and receive majority approval for each of his decisions, while Stalin no longer had such a need due to other conditions, when the authority of the party was further strengthened and the fight against opportunism led to his serious defeat. Therefore, congresses were convened less frequently. Instead of proving the wrongness of Stalin's decisions, Khrushchev only focuses on the form of their adoption.

“The commission reviewed a large number of materials in the archives of the NKVD, with other documents and established numerous facts of falsified cases against communists, false accusations, flagrant violations of socialist legality, as a result of which innocent people died. It turns out that many party, Soviet, and economic workers who were declared “enemies” in 1937-1938 were never actually enemies, spies, saboteurs, etc., that they, in essence, always remained honest communists, but were slandered, and sometimes, unable to withstand the brutal torture, they slandered themselves (under the dictation of falsifying investigators) all sorts of grave and incredible accusations. The commission submitted to the Presidium of the Central Committee a large amount of documentary material about the mass repressions against the delegates of the XVII Party Congress and members of the Central Committee elected by this congress. This material was reviewed by the Presidium of the Central Committee."

What catches your eye here? Yes, lack of specifics. “Numerous facts” - how much? 10 out of 100 is one thing, 10 out of 10,000 is qualitatively different. “Many innocent people died” - again, how many? And from what does their “innocence” follow? As is known, guilt, like innocence, is determined by the court. If someone has been found guilty by a court verdict, then to prove innocence it is necessary to prove the falsification of the case materials, find the specific culprits and punish them.

However, Khrushchev “proves” his innocence in a very unique way. For example, he states that “out of 139 members and candidates for members of the Central Committee of the Party, elected at the XVII Party Congress, 98 people, that is, 70 percent, were arrested and shot (mainly in 1937-1938)”. At the same time, instead of proving the innocence of those executed, he indulges in lengthy reflections, saying that 80% of the congress delegates joined the party before 1920, that is, during the years of the underground and the Civil War. And in general, “It was unthinkable that a congress of such composition would elect a Central Committee in which the majority would turn out to be enemies of the party”.

Well, why was this “unthinkable”? In the end, it turned out to be very “conceivable” that an active whistleblower of “enemies of the people”, that is, a direct participant in those very “repressions”, Khrushchev came out with slanderous fabrications against Stalin and, moreover, began to pursue an openly opportunistic policy that had nothing in common with communist construction. And after all, practically no one from the Khrushchev Central Committee was able to oppose anything to this policy. That is, the principle of democratic centralism in the mid-50s was quite able to work against communism, but in the mid-30s, in a much more complex domestic and foreign political situation, according to Khrushchev’s logic, it could not.

Whatever one may say, it is necessary to prove the innocence of the “repressed”. However, Khrushchev does this in a very unique way; he begins to give examples of “innocent victims.” Thus, he cites as an example a former candidate for member of the Central Committee Eikhe. Khrushchev states from the very beginning that the Eikhe case was falsified and was generally conducted in violation of Soviet legality. They say that he was forced under torture to sign pre-drawn interrogation protocols, and in general he is completely innocent. As proof of all this, there is... a letter from Eikhe himself to Stalin, in which he naturally insists on his innocence. And there is an interesting fragment there. Eikhe claims that he gave evidence about his counter-revolutionary activities after he was subjected to torture by investigators Ushakov and Nikolaev. And they, in turn, as stated in the footnotes to the report, were shot in January 1940, that is, even before Eikhe himself was shot. This means that their sabotage activities were exposed by the NKVD, and if only the materials obtained by these investigators had proven Eikhe’s guilt, he should have been acquitted. However, he was still shot. So not everything is as simple as it turns out for Khrushchev. This is not to mention the fact that proving the innocence of the accused with his own testimony is savagery. Even if torture took place, this does not mean that absolutely all the testimony was false. And what are the grounds for believing reports of torture from an interested party, that is, from the accused? After all, he has the direct intent to lie, trying to prove his innocence. As Furr correctly noted:

“In one of the fragments of the transcript of the trial in 1940, Yezhov states that he was subjected to savage torture in order to obtain false testimony from him. And, nevertheless, Yezhov’s guilt in falsifying confessions, beatings and torture, fabricating cases and the physical destruction of many innocent people is beyond doubt.”

Nevertheless, based on this fact, for some reason Khrushchev does not draw a conclusion about Yezhov’s innocence, but regarding Eikhe and others, he easily does.

Such pseudo-evidence is enough for Khrushchev to declare: “It has now been indisputably established that Eikhe’s case was falsified, and he has been posthumously rehabilitated.”.

If this was established “indisputably”, then it could somehow be more convincingly demonstrated. Let’s say we raise the cases of the same investigators Ushakov and Nikolaev, convincingly expose the absurdity of Eikhe’s own testimony, allegedly given under torture. Again, if the case was falsified, then by whom exactly and in what specific way? If the investigators are Ushakov and Nikolaev, then the execution of Eikhe looks absurd. If by someone else, then we need, as they say, “names, appearances, surnames.” But there is nothing.

Khrushchev at the XX Congress of the CPSU.
Meanness and stupidity sanctified by democratic procedure.

Moreover, there is one nuance that is worth dwelling on in more detail. Khrushchev declares that Eiche has been “posthumously rehabilitated.” But the point is that in Soviet criminal procedural legislation there was no such term as “rehabilitation”. The verdict could be overturned, which implied the person’s innocence, but the overturning of the verdict is the prerogative of the court. Moreover, falsification of materials in a criminal case, if the person was found innocent, is also a serious criminal offense, in accordance with Soviet criminal law.

So, one might ask, why, instead of the procedure for overturning a sentence prescribed in Soviet legislation, was it necessary to reinvent the wheel with “rehabilitation”? Yes, because the procedure was greatly simplified. What is most interesting is that Khrushchev is outraged by the summary trial procedure, but the simplification of the procedure for overturning the verdict does not bother him at all. Although in the first case, innocent people could suffer, and in the other, outright enemies could be released.

Khrushchev's “rehabilitation” was carried out out of court. This task was entrusted to certain “rehabilitation commissions” “composed of: the prosecutor of the republic, territory, region (chairman), members of the commission: the Minister of Internal Affairs of the republic, the head of the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the territory, region, the head of the Department of the State Security Committee for the republic, territory, region, the Minister of Justice of the republic, the head of the Department of the Ministry of Justice , edges, regions" ("Rehabilitation: How it happened" )

Moreover, serious problems arise regarding the motivation for each of the “rehabilitation” decisions. In the same collection of documents cited above, one can see the following formulations of such decisions:

“The USSR Prosecutor’s Office has established that the case about the existence of the counter-revolutionary organization “National Center” in the USSR Academy of Sciences was fabricated in 1938 on the instructions of the now exposed enemies of the people Beria and Kobulov.” (Ibid. P.35)

That's all. No details or evidence are provided. No documents or references to them, although such work should have been carried out, all necessary investigative actions should have been carried out to expose the falsifiers. And it would be very nice to give these documents wide publicity. This was entirely in Khrushchev's interests. But nothing of the kind happened.

In general, it is very strange that the collection of documents regarding “rehabilitation” does not contain documents regarding the verification of case materials. As a rule, a sufficient condition for “rehabilitation” was the testimony of the accused that they were subjected to torture. And if there were testimonies of other witnesses in the case and they also stated about torture, then their testimonies were also declared invalid.

Of course, it is stupid to argue with the fact that in Stalin’s times, violations were committed during the investigation of cases. However, under Stalin, work was carried out to expose enemies, including in the internal affairs bodies. Their leaders such as Yagoda and Yezhov were convicted and shot, along with many lower-ranking employees.

It is not within the scope of this article to determine the guilt or innocence of those individuals whom Khrushchev mentions in his report. However, the fact is that both in this report and in the collections of documents published to date, the “evidence” of the absence of guilt is extremely superficial. This is not to mention the controversial nature of the term “rehabilitation” itself, which was absent in Soviet criminal procedural legislation. Apparently, “rehabilitation” is the recognition as innocent of those who claimed violations of “Soviet legality” (that is, testifying under torture), while categorically denying their guilt and swearing allegiance to Soviet power. Criticizing Stalin for the fact that under him confession was supposedly the “queen of evidence,” Khrushchev himself, when considering the issue of innocence, relies on the same confessions. All those “norms of Soviet legality” that Khrushchev accused Stalin of violating were also violated by himself during the so-called “rehabilitation”.

In fact, overturning a sentence is quite a difficult task. Case materials sometimes occupy more than one volume. Review of cases and proof of falsification, if approached in good faith, also requires appropriate documentation. Here the difference between the Stalinist and Khrushchevian approaches is striking. The most high-profile trials of 1936-1938, as well as the “Leningrad Case,” were conducted openly, and case materials were published in central newspapers. At the same time, not a single trial of the “Stalinist executioners”, like Beria and Abakumov, was open. The case materials of key “rehabilitated” figures, such as Postyshev, Kosior, Rudzutak, Kosarev and the same Eikhe, were not published, nor was evidence of the falsification of their cases published.

If Khrushchev’s goal was to restore justice, then, on the contrary, the evidence of innocence should have been impeccable and available for study to every Soviet citizen. But it seems that the motive was different, namely, the “rehabilitation” of a number of openly opportunistic theses. For example, the thesis that the value of a party member is determined by his merits. They say that the status of an “old Bolshevik” provides eternal guarantees against a slide into opportunism. The law formulated by Stalin on the growth of class struggle as we move towards communism is subject to an absolutely unsubstantiated revision. The principle of democratic centralism is raised to an absolute level, which involves determining the truth by voting and equalizing the rights of all opinions, regardless of their compliance with objective truth. Certain “Leninist norms of party life” are openly metaphysically sanctified. Although, if Khrushchev had mastered materialist dialectics, he would have understood that there could be no norms of party life given once and for all, that these norms are determined exclusively by specific historical conditions. We must understand that the goal of communists is not compliance with the “Leninist norms” formulated by Khrushchev, but real communism. The norms of party life must serve the cause of communism. If they hinder communist construction, then they must certainly and creatively be investigated, tested and promptly replaced. History has convincingly demonstrated how adherence to the “norms of party life” attributed to Lenin by Khrushchev, that is, the same “principles of democratic centralism,” without regard to the quality of the party itself, not only did not hinder, but even contributed to the restoration of capitalism.

Every now and then the author of the report slides into empty and abstract moralizing. For example, on the issue of torture. Khrushchev categorically stated that torture is a “violation of Soviet legality” and cannot, in principle, be permissible. The typical position of a metaphysician-moralist, not a Marxist. Any Marxist understands that one cannot simply rule out once and for all in principle one or another method of exposing enemies and criminals. Since the methods are again determined by specific historical conditions.

It is noteworthy that it was during the “heyday of liberal freedoms”, in the 90s, that torture became most widespread in Russia. The racketeer's iron and soldering iron are still considered unofficial symbols of that decade. However, law enforcement officers did not disdain them either. Of course, gentlemen liberals, they can argue that all this was illegal and they are, of course, against torture. However, it would not be out of place to ask liberals to prove in philosophical detail how the situation when torture is used by both legal and illegal structures (the difference between which was only formal) with almost impunity is qualitatively different from the one when the use of torture is still regulated by law. On the one hand, these gentlemen shout that “you cannot torture,” on the other hand, their actions have more than once led to the use of torture on the widest scale. Be it Pinochet's Chile, the Russian Federation in the 90s or modern Ukraine.

Yes, of course, allowing such methods opens up certain opportunities for arbitrariness by internal affairs officers. But here again the Marxist must turn to such a category as “measure”. What was more dangerous for the cause of communism in the 1930s? The possibility of condemning the innocent or avoiding punishment by outright enemies? Khrushchev had to prove that the use of torture in those conditions was inappropriate and did more harm than good. Khrushchev’s entire argument boils down to the fact that there was more harm, since “many honest party members suffered.” But there is no “evidence” of their “honesty”. It all boils down to the fact that they were “slandered” and “forced under torture to slander themselves,” and were assigned crimes that they did not commit. However, the political physiognomy of these party members is completely ignored. The allegations that the destruction of these party members caused damage to the party are therefore completely unfounded. For some reason, for example, Rokossovsky did not slander anyone, but firmly proved to the investigation that he was right.

After all, it’s enough to look at those figures whom Khrushchev cites as examples as “innocent victims.”

Kosior, apparently, is a rather mediocre manager, not to say mediocrity. He frankly failed collectivization in Ukraine, and, in general, did not note any special achievements in industry. There is nothing to say about Kosior’s scientific Marxist work. She simply doesn't exist.

Postyshev. This generally has one “merit”. “Rehabilitated” the New Year tree. Again, no scientific work, no outstanding achievements. But he mixed with right-wing Trotskyists.

Rudzutak - everything is the same. There are no special merits either on the labor or scientific front.

Eiche. This guy was appointed People's Commissar of Agriculture in 1937, and was already arrested in 1938. It’s hard to believe that he did a good job at his post.

What’s most interesting is that they are all active promoters of that very “policy of repression.” However, like Khrushchev himself, who personally signed the so-called “execution lists” (in fact, these were lists indicating the maximum possible preventive measures), since at the time of the peak of “repression” he held the position of first secretary of the Moscow and regional city party committees.

But let's return to the text of the report. The next “argument” against Stalin boils down to the fact that he is supposedly to blame for the losses that the USSR suffered during the Great Patriotic War. Especially in the initial period. These accusations are still repeated in different ways by anti-communists of all stripes, so let’s look at them in more detail.

So, the first accusation. “Everyone warned Stalin about the attack, they even named the dates, but he “rested on his laurels” and did nothing.”

“During the war and after it, Stalin put forward the thesis that the tragedy that our people experienced in the initial period of the war was allegedly the result of the “suddenness” of the German attack on the Soviet Union. But this, comrades, is completely untrue. As soon as Hitler came to power in Germany, he immediately set himself the task of defeating communism. The fascists spoke about this directly, without hiding their plans.”

This article has already given several examples of Mr. Khrushchev’s scientific illiteracy. Moreover, this illiteracy is of an unceremonious, impudent nature. Here too, apparently, he takes his audience for complete idiots, so openly substituting concepts. He first argues that Stalin's surprise attack thesis is incorrect. However, he “proves” it by the fact that “the fascists never hid their hostility to communism.” Yes, they didn't hide it. And Stalin understood this perfectly. And hardly anyone in the Soviet leadership doubted that there would definitely be a war against fascism. But we were talking about surprise. So, neither Stalin nor anyone else in the Soviet leadership could know the EXACT time of the start of this war and the form in which it would begin. Knowing about hostile intentions is one thing, but knowing how and when these hostile intentions will be realized is quite another.

It was easy, of course, to think this way 15 years after the start of the war, when there was already knowledge about where, who, when and with what forces the enemy attacked. But immediately before the start of the war, such knowledge could not have existed. There was a complex international situation and many possible scenarios for the development of events and intelligence reports, which often contradicted each other.

However, Khrushchev continues to insist that Stalin did everything wrong, when, in fact, supposedly there were every opportunity to “prepare for war.”

“If our industry had been timely and truly mobilized to provide the army with weapons and the necessary equipment, then we would have suffered immeasurably fewer casualties in this difficult war. However, such mobilization was not carried out in a timely manner. And from the very first days of the war it became clear that our army was poorly armed, that we did not have enough artillery, tanks and aircraft to repel the enemy.

Before the war, Soviet science and technology produced magnificent examples of tanks and artillery. But mass production of all this was not established, and we began rearmament of the army essentially on the very eve of the war. As a result, at the time of the enemy’s attack on Soviet soil, we did not have the required quantities of either the old equipment that we were removing from service, or the new equipment that we were going to introduce. The situation with anti-aircraft artillery was very bad; the production of armor-piercing shells for fighting tanks had not been established. Many fortified areas turned out to be helpless at the time of the attack, since the old weapons had been removed from them, and new ones had not yet been introduced.”

Well, this is quite a kindergarten. What is “on time and for real”? Khrushchev could not have been unaware of what specific measures to expand industrial production were taken in 1939-40. This includes increasing the length of the working day and working week, and the adoption of strict laws against absenteeism, and the construction of backup enterprises beyond the Urals. Yes, we didn’t have time to do a lot. But in what interesting way would Khrushchev be able to jump over his head in industrial mobilization? He does not name any specific mistakes of Stalin in preparing the production base for war. “They didn’t have enough tanks and artillery”... Okay. But how could it be possible to produce more under those conditions without losing quality? He doesn't offer anything specific. Were there real opportunities to provide the army with “magnificent examples of tanks and artillery” in full and earlier than “on the very eve of the war”? It seems that Khrushchev either has no idea how difficult it was to reduce these deadlines and rearm the army, or he knows, but is deliberately lying. The fact that already when he was the head of the Soviet state the nickname of a voluntarist stuck to him speaks, rather, of the first. In economic matters he was an outright layman. If Khrushchev had been in power in those years, instead of Stalin, they would have had “expanded production” of low-quality tanks. How he solved the issues of “expanded production” can be seen, for example, by the way he “solved the housing problem”, when in a relatively short time they produced a lot of square meters of low-quality housing with a short service life.

By the way, how did Khrushchev himself “prepare for war” and how did he behave in his responsible post as first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine? In his report he complains:

“By the time of the war, we did not even have a sufficient number of rifles to arm the people conscripted into the active army. I remember how in those days I called comrade from Kyiv. Malenkov and told him:

The people joined the army and demanded weapons. Send us weapons.

To this Malenkov answered me:

We cannot send weapons. We’ll transfer all the rifles to Leningrad, and you arm yourself.”

In fact, here Khrushchev discredits himself as a top-level leader. After all, it is his direct responsibility to be aware of whether there are enough or not enough rifles. He states that Stalin poorly prepared the country for war. Okay, let's assume. But Khrushchev, in his post, had every opportunity to prepare better, at least within the framework of the Ukrainian SSR. Why doesn’t he quote his letters from the pre-war period, in which he reported on unpreparedness, shortage of rifles, etc.? Yes, because there were no such letters. Grover Furr quotes Vasilevsky, who presents this point quite differently:

“...The Supreme Commander-in-Chief said that he would take all measures to provide assistance to the Southwestern Front, but at the same time asked them to rely more on themselves in this matter.

It would be unreasonable to think, he said, that everything will be served to you ready-made from the outside. Learn to supply and replenish yourself. Create spare parts for the armies, adapt some factories for the production of rifles and machine guns, move around as you should, and you will see that you can create a lot for the front in Ukraine itself. This is what Leningrad is doing at the present time, using its machine-building bases, and it is succeeding in many ways and is already having great successes. Ukraine could do the same. Leningrad has already managed to establish the production of eres. This is a very effective mortar-type weapon that literally crushes the enemy. Why don't you do this too?

Kirponos and Khrushchev reported:

Comrade Stalin, all your instructions will be carried out by us. Unfortunately, we are not familiar with the structure of eres. We ask for your order to send us one sample of eres with drawings, and we will organize production at our place.

The answer was:

Your people have the drawings, and the samples have been available for a long time. But your inattention to this serious matter is to blame. Okay, I will send you a battery of eres, drawings and production instructors... All the best, I wish you success.”

Issues of preparatory measures in the pre-war period and the organization of defense in the initial period of the war were within the competence of Khrushchev, that is, he had the necessary powers to resolve these issues.

In general, the favorite polemical technique of modern anti-communists is to criticize the measures of the Soviet government, armed with “after-knowledge”. But, in fact, there was no knowledge that German troops would attack on June 22 as early as June 21. There was an understanding that war was inevitable, and there were numerous and contradictory intelligence reports about the date of the attack. As, however, there were the same intelligence data in favor of the fact that the concentration of troops on the border of the USSR was a bluff before landing in Great Britain. The study of this issue is beyond the scope of this article. However, scientific works on this issue publicly available.

Khrushchev in his report only meanly, like a cheater, manipulates the facts. From a long list of intelligence reports, he selects those that contained information about the attack on June 22, and brandishes them, accusing Stalin in the spirit of “they told him, but he didn’t believe him.”

But Khrushchev does not stop there. He goes out of his way to “prove” that Stalin had no merit in the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief. The “arguments” he uses for this are again openly false. Here's an example:

“It would be wrong not to say that after the first severe setbacks and defeats at the front, Stalin believed that the end had come. In one of his conversations these days, he stated:

What Lenin created, we have lost all of it irrevocably.

After this, for a long time he did not actually direct military operations and did not get down to business at all, and returned to leadership only when some members of the Politburo came to him and said that such and such measures must be immediately taken in order to improve the situation at the front "

He lies, as they say, “like Trotsky.” And he lies deliberately. As the head of state, he had the opportunity to access the archive to familiarize himself with the notebook of the persons received by Stalin and see what the flow of visitors was like these days. Now this notebook is in open access.

And here is another “argument”, once again testifying to Khrushchev’s scientific and theoretical illiteracy:

“Stalin was very far from understanding the real situation that was developing at the fronts. And this is natural, since during the entire Patriotic War he was not on a single sector of the front, in any of the liberated cities, except for the lightning-fast departure to the Mozhaisk highway when the front was in a stable state.”

Obvious nonsense. That is, according to his logic, it turns out that in order to understand the situation at the fronts, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief needs to “visit the front,” so to speak, to see and “touch” everything with his own eyes. Khrushchev apparently does not recognize other ways of understanding. Just like a real positivist. Why doesn’t he remember Lenin here? After all, for many years he successfully led the party from exile, and during the Civil War he was also not on any sector of the front. And, on the contrary, Khrushchev’s practice of “traveling from place to place” during his time as General Secretary did not lead to anything good. An administrative system in which nothing is decided without the direct participation of the first person is rotten, as they say, by definition.

As “proof” of Stalin’s “mediocrity” as a military leader, Khrushchev cites the “Kharkov Operation” of 1942 as an example.

“When in 1942 extremely difficult conditions developed for our troops in the Kharkov region, we made the right decision to stop the operation to encircle Kharkov...

What came of it? But it turned out the worst of what we expected. The Germans managed to encircle our military groups, as a result of which we lost hundreds of thousands of our troops. Here’s Stalin’s military “genius”, here’s what he cost us.”

Exactly the same lie as all other “arguments”. Firstly, there is again no evidence of Stalin’s guilt. Khrushchev asks Bagramyan, the same one who was the chief of staff of the Southwestern Front, which conducted an unsuccessful campaign, to confirm his words. It is noteworthy that Stalin laid the blame for the failure of the operation on him, Timoshenko and Khrushchev in a directive note dated June 26 1942. This is quite logical, since it was not Stalin who developed the operation plan. This was done by the leadership of the front, that is, Timoshenko, Khrushchev and Bagramyan. Consequently, they should bear direct responsibility for failure. Modern studies of the Kharkov operation also confirm the correctness of Stalin’s conclusions. The operation was not initially a failure or poorly planned. On the contrary, at a certain moment it was very close to success, and it was precisely the wrong actions of the front line that led to defeat. command.

With this, it seems to me, we can finish quoting Khrushchev’s report. Its deceitful essence is quite obvious, proven and, in general, not disputed even by the majority of bourgeois researchers. All Khrushchev's accusations against Stalin are unfounded. The author of the report, when analyzing the Stalinist period, completely ignored the Marxist dialectical method; the “facts” were taken out of the historical context of the most acute phase of the class struggle or were simply distorted.

It is only necessary to once again emphasize the negative role that this report played in the cause of communist construction. Here the anti-communist gentlemen are right. The damage was enormous.

Firstly, the world communist movement was faced with a serious challenge, which consisted in the fact that it became obvious: at the head of the Communist Party, which organized and directed the world communist movement, there was an absolutely illiterate figure in scientific and theoretical terms, capable of lying to the whole world, throwing mud at one of the most authoritative Marxists who successfully led communist construction in the USSR. Moreover, he found himself in power completely in accordance with the principles of democratic centralism. Unfortunately, the world communist movement was unable to discern the deadly power of this principle for communism. He contributed to the gradual victory of the opportunists in other countries of the socialist camp.

Secondly, Khrushchev rendered a huge service to the class enemy. The bourgeois press of all countries happily circulated a speech in which the “communist” Khrushchev tried to discredit Stalin with lies. The bourgeoisie benefited from the fact that this criticism came from the first person of the USSR, and the fact that this first person was lying. Both worked against communism. Inside the USSR, class enemies saw the Khrushchev report as a signal to action. They say that now you can not only criticize Stalin, but do it in the style of Khrushchev, that is, lie, ignore objective conditions, appeal to emotions about thousands of supposedly “innocently killed.” And at the same time, but still carefully, kick communism as such.

Finally, thirdly, neither the CPSU nor the world communist movement, unfortunately, found the strength to decisively defeat Khrushchev’s opportunism. And this testified to the scientific and theoretical weakness of the communist movement. Which, of course, could not but please the bourgeoisie.

If communism, in its most global sense, is science, then opportunism is stupidity. Khrushchev's report marked the tactical victory of stupidity over science, which had the saddest impact on the fate of the first attempt to build communism in the history of mankind.

To be continued…

January-February 2016

The Khrushchev period in the history of the USSR (including the “thaw”) cannot be separated from the speech of the party leader at the 20th Congress of the CPSU. In many ways, it was this congress that became a turning point in the life of Soviet society and changed the emphasis in the political life of the entire state.

Until now, the history of Khrushchev’s report in February 1956 has generated numerous discussions among historians. It is known that no transcript of his speech was kept. The report itself was read out after the end of the main work of the 20th Congress, when Khrushchev was re-elected party secretary. That is, it was impossible to remove him from the top post in the near future. Foreign guests were not invited to the closed meeting. During the speech, none of those present uttered a word. According to eyewitnesses, there was such silence that you could hear a fly flying by. No debate on the report was opened. Despite this “secrecy,” immediately after the 20th Congress, delegates spoke at factories, district and regional party committees with information about the main points of Khrushchev’s speech. Almost immediately, the report and its contents became known abroad. How was the report prepared? Why did Khrushchev take such a step as “exposing the cult of personality”? Let us highlight the main points in the history of this event.

DESTALINIZATION

Khrushchev initially took a cautious approach to debunking Stalin's personality cult, focusing his main attention on condemning the misdeeds of his political opponents in the struggle for power. But since 1953, despite the fact that Stalin's body was placed in a mausoleum next to Lenin's body, the praise of his personality occurred more by inertia. It was clear to the new leaders that it was almost impossible to automatically transfer the tradition of honoring the first person to any of them. People simply wouldn't accept it. But both Malenkov and Khrushchev wanted to quickly get out of the leader’s shadow, and therefore, it was necessary to do something that would “set them apart” from the “collective leadership.” And if Malenkov focused on popular measures in the economic sphere, then for Khrushchev the main concern was the political sphere. However, any decision here affected the personality of Stalin, the system of power he created and, of course, the issue of repressions of previous years. The events themselves pushed Khrushchev to increasingly active actions - that is, to a process that is often called “de-Stalinization.”

In addition to the MGB, other changes in the punitive agencies took place in the KGB. In September 1953, the Special Meeting under the NKVD was liquidated. The criminal law established that punishment could only be imposed by a court verdict. By the mid-50s, the Gulag system and the entire camp economy as a special economic mechanism began to collapse. In 1956, the Gulag was liquidated

In 1953-54. The main political affairs related to post-war repressions were reviewed. Due to partial rehabilitation and amnesty, political prisoners gradually began to be released after the expiration of their sentences. Even though their number was still small, the very fact of their release made us think about what would happen in the future. When the flow of those serving time under Article 58 increases, they will begin to say how and why they were imprisoned, prove their innocence and, most likely, rightly blame not only Stalin for their tragedy, but also those leaders who stood next to him in 1930 -40s. Serious questions could arise regarding the involvement of members of the “collective leadership” in the repressions, incl. Khrushchev himself, in particular during the period when he headed party organizations in Moscow and Ukraine. But leaving political prisoners in camps for the country’s leaders was also dangerous - a negative climate for them could be created in society and a rumor could spread that they were the main instigators of illegal repression, afraid of retribution. At the same time, in 1953-54. In many camps there were mass actions of disobedience by prisoners.

This situation could threaten Khrushchev with both political and physical death and forced him to take the initiative into his own hands, leading a campaign to accuse Stalin of organizing all the lawlessness. If he won, Khrushchev received a double prize. Provided an alibi regarding involvement in repressions (a person who organized such a high-profile process could not not feel innocence, and incriminating documents could then be destroyed!). Thanks to his courage and activity, he bypassed his political competitors in the struggle for sole power in the Kremlin.

Many historical works also examine those versions of the reasons for exposing the cult of personality, which emphasize the fatigue of society itself from the harsh mobilization regime that prevailed under Stalin, and the consideration of such sentiments by Soviet leaders, and above all Khrushchev. In addition, it talks about Khrushchev’s personal qualities, his firm conviction in the correctness of the party line, on the one hand, and commitment to the just ideals of communism, on the other. Natural humanism and peasant ingenuity helped him overcome indecision and speak out against the injustice that existed in previous years.

Considering all possible versions regarding the widespread rehabilitation and exposure of the cult of personality that began in the mid-50s, we note that in Khrushchev’s behavior one can notice both selfish and sincere motives, and apparently the true reasons for his decisions (if we ever talk about them we find out) lie in the interweaving of a number of circumstances that influenced this extraordinary personality.

REPORT ON THE CULT OF PERSONALITY

Let us turn to Khrushchev’s speech on February 25, 1956. At the end of 1955, on Khrushchev’s instructions, a commission on rehabilitation issues was created, headed by one of the secretaries of the Central Committee, P.N. Pospelov. She reviewed many cases of political prisoners and made recommendations for their revision. At the same time, the question arose about communicating the results of the commission’s work to the 20th Congress in the form of a report. Khrushchev, Malenkov, A. Aristov were for this decision. Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich - against. In preparing for the 20th Congress, Khrushchev also involved some old Bolsheviks who had returned from the camps, with whose help he hoped to change the mood of the delegates.

Khrushchev was not satisfied with the original version of the report “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences” and as a result of its editing, the result was actually a new one - a tougher and more revealing speech. The report on the cult of personality recognized the numerous lawlessness of previous years and the scale of repression. Khrushchev spoke about Stalin's complete disregard for the principles of collective leadership and about his personal involvement in repressions. The names of those who were illegally convicted and executed on the eve of the war were announced, incl. Tukhachevsky. However, the names of political oppositionists (Trotsky, Bukharin, Rykov, Kamenev) were not mentioned. Moreover, in the report, the reasons for the emergence of mass repressions were explained solely by the personality of Stalin (i.e., subjective reasons), emphasizing that there could be no objective preconditions for lawlessness in the USSR, and the political course since 1917 was absolutely correct. Moreover, the party itself suffered first of all from the repressions. Khrushchev also blamed Stalin for his unpreparedness for war and the brutal defeats of 1941 and 1942. It was pointed out that at the beginning of the war, Stalin fell into confusion and allegedly planned operations on the globe, which was an obvious fiction.

FROM THE REPORT OF N.S. KHRUSHCHEV

Comrades! We need to resolutely, once and for all, debunk the cult of personality, and draw appropriate conclusions both in the field of ideological-theoretical and in the field of practical work.

To do this you need:

First, in a Bolshevik manner, condemn and eradicate the cult of personality as alien to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism and incompatible with the principles of party leadership and the norms of party life, and wage a merciless struggle against any and all attempts to revive it in one form or another. To restore and consistently implement in all our ideological work the most important provisions of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism about the people as the creator of history, the creator of all the material and spiritual wealth of mankind, about the decisive role of the Marxist party in the revolutionary struggle for the transformation of society, for the victory of communism. In this regard, we have to do a lot of work to critically examine and correct, from the standpoint of Marxism-Leninism, the widely circulated erroneous views associated with the cult of personality in the field of historical, philosophical, economic and other sciences, as well as in the field of literature and art. In particular, it is necessary to carry out work in the near future to create a full-fledged Marxist textbook on the history of our party, compiled with scientific objectivity, textbooks on the history of Soviet society, books on the history of the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War.

Secondly, to consistently and persistently continue the work carried out in recent years by the Central Committee of the Party to strictly observe in all party organizations, from top to bottom, the Leninist principles of party leadership and, above all, the highest principle - the collectivity of leadership, to observe the norms of party life enshrined in the Charter of our party , on the deployment of criticism and self-criticism.

Thirdly, to fully restore the Leninist principles of Soviet socialist democracy, expressed in the Constitution of the Soviet Union, to fight against the arbitrariness of persons who abuse power. It is necessary to completely correct the violations of revolutionary socialist legality that have accumulated over a long period as a result of the negative consequences of the cult of personality.

An eyewitness to the events, A.N. Yakovlev: “There was silence in the hall. There was no creaking of chairs, no coughing, no whispering. No one looked at each other - either from the surprise of what had happened, or from confusion and fear. The shock was incredibly deep."

CONSEQUENCES OF THE XX CONGRESS

Many delegates to the congress, and after them the Soviet people who learned the main content of Khrushchev's report, were undoubtedly shocked. Overnight, the harmonious and integral concept of Stalin’s role both in the life of the entire state and in the fate of each individual person collapsed. This was not followed by mass protest throughout the USSR. However, people increasingly wondered how it all happened and why it had not been talked about before. Society was divided into those who wanted to further debunk the cult, and those who saw this as a gross mistake by the leadership. Demolitions of monuments to the “leader” began throughout the country, but in Georgia this was met with widespread protest and rallies, at which nationalist slogans were already heard. Khrushchev and his associates began to fear new unrest. Then, on June 30, 1956, the already open resolution of the CPSU Central Committee “On overcoming the cult of personality and its consequences” was published. It was less radical. It emphasized Stalin's merits in the fight against hostile groups and in the defense of the socialist state. Among the reasons for his cult of personality were the severity of the struggle against hostile classes (kulaks, landowners, capitalists), the complexity of the international situation, and the threat of war, which required maximum centralization and rigidity of control. At the same time, Stalin’s rudeness and unwillingness to take other people’s opinions into account were pointed out, as was stated in Lenin’s last published works (including “Letter to the Congress”). In conclusion, it was concluded that the cult of personality could not change the character of the Soviet state and the Communist Party.

The result of the 20th Congress was the most important changes in the life of the USSR, which affected its internal life and foreign policy. Hundreds of thousands of people began to be released after rehabilitation. If from 1953 to the beginning of 1956 only about 8 thousand people were rehabilitated, then from 1956 to 1957 - over 500 thousand.

Another immediate consequence of the 20th Congress was Khrushchev’s final victory over a group of his competitors in power. It took place in a bitter struggle. Opponents of the very first secretary of the party, among whom were G. Malenkov, V. Molotov, L. Kaganovich, D. Shepilov, in 1957 made an attempt to remove Khrushchev from power. At a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee on June 18-19, 1957, 7 of the 11 members of the Presidium sharply criticized Khrushchev’s activities, accusing him of hasty reorganization of industry and violation of the principles of collective leadership, which to a certain extent corresponded to reality. Although they saw the main danger in the further exposure of the cult of personality, which threatened both themselves and the country’s authority abroad. Molotov later noted in a confidential conversation that if before the 20th Congress at least the majority of the world could support the USSR, then after the Congress there was no longer any need to talk about this. Despite the condemnation by the Presidium of the Central Committee, Khrushchev was not going to give up. He had a backup option - to convene a Plenum of the Central Committee, where the final decision would be made. Thanks to the support of KGB Chairman I. Serov and Defense Minister G. Zhukov, it was possible to organize the urgent delivery to Moscow (including by air force) of the entire numerous members of the party’s Central Committee, who for the most part supported Khrushchev. The plenum condemned the “anti-party group of Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich” and Shepilov, who “joined them,” and removed them from the party leadership.

Khrushchev's sole leadership strengthened, but the position of Marshal Zhukov, whose personality objectively opposed the power of the party apparatus, also strengthened. Zhukov was extremely popular in the army, and Khrushchev, fearing that the military might at some point go against him, now decided to get rid of the man who had already rescued him twice - in 1953 during the arrest of Beria and in June 1957 - during the plenum of the Central Committee. During the marshal’s visit to Yugoslavia in October 1957, the Central Committee removed him from the Presidium and removed him from the post of Minister of Defense, accusing him of “Bonapartism.” R. Malinovsky became the new Minister of Defense. Such was Khrushchev’s “gratitude” to Zhukov. It should be noted that the defeat of the so-called. “anti-party group” and the resignation of Zhukov objectively contributed to both the strengthening of voluntaristic tendencies in the actions of Khrushchev (who, since 1958, had already combined two posts - first secretary of the Central Committee and chairman of the government), and his dependence on the party apparatus, which was aware of its role in the events taking place . The influence of the party-state nomenklatura in the center and locally subsequently continued to grow.

Preparation

Khrushchev’s report is based on materials prepared by the “Pospelov Commission”, formed on December 31, 1955 by the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee to “examine the question of how mass repressions became possible against the majority of the entire composition of members and candidates of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, elected by the XVII Congress party." The commission included Pospelov, Komarov, Aristov, Shvernik; Employees of the KGB and the USSR Prosecutor's Office were involved in the work (in particular, the chairman of the KGB, General I. A. Serov)

The commission's conclusions were presented on February 9, 1956 at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee. The multi-page document contained only information about repressions against the party and Soviet leadership, and did not touch upon collectivization and “dekulakization”, the problem of Soviet prisoners of war who were repressed after returning from German captivity. Nevertheless, the report clearly outlined a picture of mass repression. The titles of some sections of the report speak for themselves: “Orders of the NKVD of the USSR on mass repressions”, “Artificial creation of anti-Soviet organizations, blocs and various types of centers”, “On gross violations of the law in the investigation process”, “On “conspiracies” in the NKVD bodies” ", "Violations of the law by the prosecutor's office in supervising the investigation in the NKVD", "Judicial arbitrariness of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR", "On extrajudicial consideration of cases."

From the commission’s conclusions it followed that in 1937-1938 more than 1.5 million Soviet and party leaders were repressed, of which 680 thousand were shot. Of the 139 members and candidates for membership of the CPSU Central Committee, 89 were shot. Of the 1,966 delegates to the XVII Congress, 1,108 people were repressed, of which 848 were shot. victory of socialism in the USSR.

The document clearly established Stalin's personal responsibility for the use of torture during interrogations, extrajudicial killings and executions. According to the members of the commission, “the opportunity for massive violations of socialist legality” was opened by the Resolution of the USSR Central Executive Committee of December 1, 1934, adopted with violations of procedure in the first hours after the murder of S. M. Kirov and signed by A. S. Enukidze. Mass repressions intensified sharply from the end of 1936 after a telegram from Stalin and Zhdanov, which spoke of the need to appoint Yezhov to the post of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, since Yagoda “proved not to be up to the task in exposing the Trotskyist-Zinoviev bloc. The OGPU was 4 years late in this matter.”

The commission's report caused heated discussion at the Presidium of the Central Committee. However, on February 13, the day before the start of the 20th Congress, the Presidium of the Central Committee decided to submit to the Plenum a proposal that “at a closed meeting of the congress, make a report on the cult of personality and approve N. S. Khrushchev as the speaker.”

Speech at the congress

A kind of preparation for criticism of Stalin was the speech at the congress of A. I. Mikoyan, who sharply criticized Stalin's Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and negatively assessed the literature on the history of the October Revolution, the Civil War and the Soviet state.

When Khrushchev looked up from the text and, gesticulating in the heat of the moment, said: “And he, Stalin, led the fronts around the globe,” everyone was silent, even the military leaders. They had something to say and something to object to. In another party, they probably would have shouted, couldn’t stand it: “It’s not true!”, but here they remained silent.

N. S. Khrushchev made a closed report on the last day of work, February 25, at a closed morning meeting. What was unusual was the chosen time of holding - after the plenum of the Central Committee on the election of the leading bodies of the party, which usually closed party forums, and the closed nature of the meeting - without the presence of representatives of foreign communist parties invited to the congress, and the order of conduct - the meeting was led by the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, and not elected by the delegates workers' presidium.

As one of the eyewitnesses of the report, A. N. Yakovlev, recalled, “there was deep silence in the hall. There was no creaking of chairs, no coughing, no whispering. No one looked at each other - either from the surprise of what had happened, or from confusion and fear. The shock was unimaginably deep."

It should be taken into account that, as historian R. Pihoya notes: “What Khrushchev read and what Khrushchev said to the delegates of the 20th Congress is not known for certain. It is not possible to establish the degree of correspondence between the printed text of Khrushchev’s report and his oral speech.”

After the end of the speech, N.A. Bulganin, who chaired the meeting, suggested that the debate on the report should not be opened and questions should not be asked.

The congress delegates adopted two resolutions - approving the provisions of the report and on its distribution to party organizations without publication in the open press.

The text of the report contained the following main points:

• Condemnation of Stalin's personality cult;
  • Quotes from the classics of Marxism who condemned the “cult of the individual”;
  • “Letter to the Congress” (Lenin’s will) and notes by N.K. Krupskaya on the personality of Stalin;
• Stalin's use of the term "enemy of the people" as a weapon of political struggle; before that, the fight against the Trotskyists and the opposition was purely ideological;
• Stalin's violation of the rules of collective leadership;
  • Most of the “old Bolsheviks” and delegates of the XVII Congress, who mainly came from workers and joined the CPSU (b) before 1920, were repressed;
  • After these repressions, Stalin completely stopped taking into account the principle of collegiality;
• Details of repressions against prominent party members;
• Demand for large-scale repression: the NKVD was “4 years late” in implementing Stalin’s thesis about “strengthening the class struggle”;
  • Yezhovshchina, mass falsification of cases aimed at fulfilling “plans” for those convicted and executed;
• Exaggeration of Stalin's role in the Great Patriotic War;
• Manifestations of the cult of personality: songs, names of cities, etc.;
  • Text of the USSR Anthem as amended 1944-1956;
• Non-awarding of the Lenin Prize and replacement with the Stalin Prize.

Distribution of the report text

Soon the report was distributed in party cells throughout the country, and at a number of enterprises non-party people were also involved in its discussion; There was also frequent discussion of Khrushchev’s report in the Komsomol cells. Thus, the “secrecy” of the report was conditional.

A “softened” version of the report was published as a resolution of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee on June 30, 1956, entitled “On overcoming the cult of personality and its consequences,” which set the framework for acceptable criticism of Stalinism.

In an abbreviated form, the report was sent to the leaders of the communist and workers' parties of the world.

The report attracted enormous attention around the world; translations of it appeared into various languages, including those distributed in non-communist circles.

• In Poland, from one of the copies of the text, an employee of the Central Committee of the PUWP passed the report to her lover Viktor Graevsky, who, with the help of the Israeli embassy, ​​sent a copy into the hands of the head of the Israeli counterintelligence Shin Bet Amos Manor, and from there it came to the West.

• In June, the report first appeared in print in the United States, first in English and then in Russian.

Political consequences

• On the eve of the anniversary of Stalin's death, rallies were held in Tbilisi (Georgia) against the decisions of the 20th Congress to condemn Stalin's personality cult; on March 9, 1956, they were dispersed by the forces of the Soviet Army with casualties among the protesters. (see Tbilisi events (1956))

Report assessments

It was a long and not entirely honest speech, made behind closed doors in front of the country's leadership, who listened to it with stony faces.
…
The speech was a half-truth. Khrushchev accused Stalin of many crimes, but cleverly kept silent about the crimes in which he himself participated.
…

The purpose of Khrushchev's report was not only the liberation of his compatriots, but also the consolidation of personal power and intimidation of party opponents, who all also took part [in the repressions] with great enthusiasm.

Original text(English)

A long-winded and not entirely honest speech, made behind closed doors, addressed to the stony-faced leaders
...
the speech didn't exactly tell the whole truth. Khrushchev accused Stalin of many crimes, but deftly left out the ones in which he himself had been implicated.
...
Khrushchev's speech was intended as much to consolidate his own power and intimidate his party opponents - all of whom had also collaborated enthusiastically - as it was to liberate his countrymen.

American expert on medieval English literature Grover Furr, in the preface to his book devoted to the analysis of Khrushchev’s report, states:

Of all the statements in the “closed report” that directly “expose” Stalin or Beria, not a single one turned out to be true. More precisely: among all those that can be verified, every single one turned out to be false. As it turns out, in his speech Khrushchev did not say anything about Stalin and Beria that turned out to be true. The entire “closed report” is woven entirely from this kind of fraud.

Original text(English)

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Literature

• Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev CPSU. News of the Central Committee of the CPSU(1989). Archived from the original on May 19, 2012.
• V. P. Naumov. ON THE HISTORY OF N. S. KHRUSHCHEV’S SECRET REPORT AT THE XX CPSU CONGRESS

See also

Links and notes

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

• On the fight against distortions of the party line in the collective farm movement
• On the reduction of gymnasium education

See what “About the cult of personality and its consequences” is in other dictionaries:

Stalin's personality cult- A panel depicting J.V. Stalin at the Narvskaya station of the Leningrad Metro existed until 1961, then it was covered with a false wall. Stalin’s cult of personality; exaltation of the personality of J.V. Stalin by means of... ... Wikipedia

- What was Khrushchev guided by when he initiated the condemnation of Stalin’s personality cult at the 20th Congress of the CPSU?

Already in the first years of his tenure as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party, Khrushchev understood that he would become the real leader of the country only if his policies met the vital interests of the ruling layer of the USSR - the Soviet bureaucracy. And the main thing in this regard, what united reformers and conservatives, that is, all layers of officials without exception, was their desire to make bloody purges among the leading cadres impossible in the future.

Indeed, under Stalin, the power and privileges of Soviet officials were balanced by the constant fear of repression. Khrushchev’s report at the 20th Congress of the CPSU “On the cult of personality and its consequences” and the corresponding resolution of the Central Committee solved this problem in the most reliable way - by political condemnation of Stalin’s purges, primarily by condemnation of his policy “in the field of violation of Soviet legality.”

True, they began to correct the situation even before the 20th Congress: if in February 1954 the number of prisoners convicted in the USSR for counter-revolutionary crimes was 468 thousand people, then in January 1956 - already 114 thousand, and in April 1959 - 11 thousand. According to available archival data, a total of 258 thousand people were rehabilitated in 1954-1962, including many party and military leaders - victims of Stalin's purges.

On the other hand, one should not lose sight of the objective regularity of the de-Stalinization process, which was based on the desire of the bulk of the Soviet population to live freely, without the shackles that the Stalinist political regime imposed on society. As one philosopher aptly noted, Stalin “bent society to suit himself,” but this kind of policy could not continue indefinitely.

FIGHTS AROUND THE REPORT

First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee N.S. Khrushchev speaks at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union - VASILY EGOROV / TASS PHOTO CHRONICLE

- How was the report prepared?

Mountains of literature are devoted to Khrushchev’s “secret” report at the 20th Congress of the CPSU and its assessment, but the preparation of the report, reflecting the mechanism of action of political power in the USSR, became the subject of special study relatively recently. Let me remind you that in the Soviet Union, Khrushchev’s report was first published only in 1989, and in 2002 it was published with all known editions and versions of the text. A study of these editions leads to the conclusion that the various versions of the report reflected the vicissitudes of the complex political struggle that unfolded in the Soviet leadership during de-Stalinization.

So, on December 31, 1955, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee created a special commission headed by the Secretary of the Central Committee, Academician Pyotr Pospelov. The commission was formed “to examine the question of how mass repressions against the majority of the entire composition of members and candidates of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, elected by the 17th Party Congress, became possible.”

Thus, collectivization, persecution of believers, repression of Soviet prisoners of war and many other repressive acts were outside the scope of her analysis - attention was concentrated exclusively on the fate of the party leadership. The work of the Pospelov commission lasted just over a month: before the start of the congress, on February 8, 1956, a final note containing a report on the repressions of the recent past was presented to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee. The next day it was heard at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee. The Pospelov commission noted that “we must show courage, tell the truth to the congress,” but at the same time “think through how to say it, to whom to tell it”...

- How did the members of the Presidium of the Central Committee react to the document?

All members of the Presidium spoke in favor of publishing the report. But opinions were divided regarding its form. Vyacheslav Molotov believed that “it must be said,” but at the same time, emphasize that Stalin led the country for 30 years and industrialization was carried out under him, that he was “the successor of Lenin’s work.” That is, Molotov insisted on a high assessment of the activities of the late leader.

Lazar Kaganovich did not deny that “along with the ideological struggle, there was an extermination of personnel” and it was necessary to “hear the report”, but at the same time do everything so as not to “unleash the elements.” Kliment Voroshilov agreed with their position. A slightly different point of view was expressed by Georgy Malenkov, who argued that “no fight against enemies can explain why the cadres were killed.”

Khrushchev summed up the discussion: among the members of the Presidium there are “no differences” on the question of “what should be said to the congress.” At the same time, taking into account the opinions of Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov and their influence in the party, Khrushchev cautiously noted that the report should “take into account shades.” At the same time, at the meeting of the Presidium the question of who would make the report was not resolved. However, it became clear to Khrushchev that if he showed indecisiveness on the main issue, his political career could end.

On February 13, 1956, the Presidium of the Central Committee made a decision: to make a report on the cult of personality at the congress, and to appoint the first secretary of the Central Committee of the party, Khrushchev, as the speaker. The Plenum of the Central Committee, held on the same day, unanimously approved this decision.

That is, the members of the Central Committee (several hundred people) were aware of what the first secretary would say even before the congress?

That's the thing, no. The report itself on the cult of personality, unlike the report of the Central Committee, which Khrushchev also delivered at the congress, was not presented to either the Presidium or the Plenum of the Central Committee. According to historians, this was a gross violation of party traditions, since a report was approved, “the text of which did not exist at all at that time” and which still “had to be written.”

The draft report “On the cult of personality and its consequences,” which was prepared by the same Pospelov on February 18, 1956, did not satisfy Khrushchev. By this time the congress had already been working for the fifth day. On February 19, Khrushchev dictated his additions to the project to the stenographer. The combination of Khrushchev’s dictations and Pospelov’s project formed the basis of the future “secret” report.

It was read on February 25, the last day of the congress, at a closed morning session. There was no discussion of the report at the congress. The delegates “unanimously” approved the provisions of the report, and the congress concluded its work. Then the Presidium of the Central Committee decided to familiarize all communists, Komsomol members, non-party workers, office workers and collective farmers with the report “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences.” In the party organizations of the country, an already edited, corrected version of Khrushchev’s report was read.

STALIN IS BLAME FOR EVERYTHING

- How would you characterize the essence of this report? What was the most important thing about him for Khrushchev?

The most important goal of the Khrushchev report is to place all the blame for everything bad in the past on Stalin and thereby rehabilitate the Soviet system, socialist ideas and the Communist Party. Khrushchev tried to lead listeners to the idea that some people from among the current political leadership of the country share their share of responsibility for the crimes of the past, but he did not name specific names. A large part of the report was occupied by the theoretical section - condemnation of the cult of personality from the standpoint of Marxism and the so-called “political testament of Lenin” of 1922, which noted the shortcomings of Stalin.

Not everyone in the party leadership agreed that the cult of personality needed to be exposed. Why didn’t they show themselves at all at the 20th Congress?

THE XX PARTY CONGRESS, IN ITS ESSENCE, IS THE POLITICAL PROCESS OF “CPSU AGAINST STALIN.” Khrushchev correctly grasped the interest that united all layers of officials without exception: to make bloody purges of leading cadres impossible in the future.

Molotov, Khrushchev’s most principled political opponent among Soviet leaders, noted that those in the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee who opposed Khrushchev’s reforms “had no unity, no program,” but only a desire to “remove” Khrushchev. The absence of an alternative political reform program in the conservative camp forced Khrushchev's opponents to inaction and empty criticism.

Molotov claimed that he did not openly speak out against Khrushchev’s report at the 20th Congress because he was afraid of a split in the party, but he immediately added: if his group had opposed it, they would have been “simply kicked out.” This valuable recognition irrefutably demonstrates that by 1956 Khrushchev already enjoyed widespread support among the party. His policy of de-Stalinization also enjoyed popular support, in which people saw the opportunity for free development, not constrained by Stalinist dogmas. It was these circumstances that allowed Khrushchev, as he aptly put it, “to correctly seize the moment and insist that such a report be made.”

Why weren’t all the members of the Leninist party leadership repressed by Stalin, Nikolai Bukharin, for example, rehabilitated during the Khrushchev years?

Because Khrushchev, despite all his criticism of Stalin, considered the latter a “real communist.” As for Bukharin, the resolution of the Joint Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated April 23, 1929 condemned the “right-wing opportunist factional activities of Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky” and their views as “incompatible with the general line of the party” in the field of domestic and foreign policy. This was just the beginning. In December 1936, at the Plenum of the Central Committee, Bukharin was accused of counter-revolutionary activities.

Moscow. XX Congress of the CPSU. N.S. Khrushchev, N.A. Bulganin and A.I. Mikoyan (from left to right) among the delegates - TASS PHOTO CHRONICLE

Let’s not forget that Bukharin’s famous slogan “Get rich!” associated with the revival and development of capitalist elements in the countryside. Khrushchev, after the virgin lands epic did not solve the grain problem in the country, and the outflow of rural residents to cities at the turn of the 1950s-1960s only increased, tried with all his might to prevent the development of personal subsidiary plots of village residents, tried to force the peasants to continue to work meekly on collective farms.

Therefore, for Khrushchev the choice was not this: to condemn Stalin and rehabilitate Bukharin as an ideological opponent of super-industrialization and Stalin’s theory of strengthening the class struggle. Ideologically, Khrushchev completely and completely shared the “general line” of the party in the countryside: public farming (collective and state farms) is the basis of the Soviet economic system.

In addition, from the mid-1930s, Khrushchev was a member of the Central Committee of the party, headed the Moscow City Committee, and in these positions he actively fought against the Trotskyists and “rightists.” The rehabilitation of Bukharin (and therefore the Bukharin alternative to Stalinism), and even more so of Leon Trotsky, in the conditions of constant internal party struggle, meant for him a serious political risk with unpredictable consequences.

What was Khrushchev guided by when deciding which of the repressed members of the Communist Party should be rehabilitated and which should not?

Like any politician forced to make a specific decision, Khrushchev was guided by expediency. And what was expedient for him was what contributed to strengthening his personal power and weakening his competitors. Only through the prism of the struggle for power in the USSR did the then leaders consider the possibility of certain reforms.

Hence Khrushchev’s attention to the personality of the murdered Sergei Kirov, in whom the communists in the 1930s saw an alternative to Stalin, to Tukhachevsky, the repressions against whom Khrushchev directly associated with the purges of the leadership of the Red Army, which, in his opinion, was one of the reasons for our failures at the initial stage of the Great Patriotic War. It is known how skillfully Khrushchev played this card in his report, placing all the blame for the military disaster of 1941 on Stalin personally...

"THE FIRST STEP INTO THE Abyss"

- What is the significance and what are the consequences of exposing Stalin’s personality cult?

According to the general recognition of historians, the exposure of Stalin's personality cult at the 20th Congress of the CPSU occupies a key place among Khrushchev's reforms. It was after this that a discussion arose among the progressive part of the communists about the essence of socialism - the system that was created in the USSR. The 20th Congress deprived both the leader himself and the communist ideas of the sacred aura.

Artist V. Govorkov created one of the most famous posters of the era

However, there is still no consensus on the meaning of these changes. Some historians believe that the political system under Khrushchev was unable to get rid of “the worst perversion of socialism” - violence and repression. There is a point of view according to which Khrushchev’s report did not so much criticize Stalin’s personality cult as discredit the past of our country and, in its consequences, was “the first step into the abyss.”

Apparently, those researchers are right who believe that Khrushchev’s report could not help but expose the entire system as a whole, even if the process of its collapse still took time and had to go through many stages.

“They are undermining the system!” - this is exactly how one old Bolshevik described his impressions of the “secret” report. The very first reaction of the Soviet population to this speech by Khrushchev at the 20th Congress showed that many people viewed Stalin’s crimes as crimes of the entire Soviet system, not reducible to the will of one person or group of individuals who used the regime in their own interests.

As modern historians note, perhaps for the first time since the Civil War, people thought about the cost of building a “bright future.” The confusion in assessments of our past, present and future affected not only the party environment, but also all layers of Soviet society. “We all began to think critically,” one of the participants in the discussion of Khrushchev’s report noted in this regard. But many people still considered Stalin “the great successor of Lenin’s work”; they said that under Stalin’s leadership socialism was built and fascism was defeated. There was a split in society, and this critical wave threatened to overwhelm the country and nullify the ideological work of the party.

Psychologically, mentally, what was the beginning of criticism for the entire people was its completion for the party. The resolution defined the scope of this criticism and its limits. In this document, the Stalinist cult was declared to be a consequence of the struggle of “obsolete classes” with the policies of the Soviet regime. It was explained by the internal party struggle against the “enemies of Leninism” who sought the “restoration of capitalism in the USSR”, the complexity of the international situation and the expectation of a “constant threat of attack from the outside”, as well as the gradual replacement of party control over state security bodies with “personal control of Stalin”, in which the norms of justice were replaced by “his individual decisions.”

Along with these provisions, the resolution emphasized that Stalin’s atrocities were committed “in the interests of ensuring the victory of communism,” which constituted Stalin’s “tragedy.” The resolution defined it as a gross mistake “to draw conclusions from the fact of the presence of a personality cult in the past about some changes in the social system or to look for the source of this cult in the nature of the Soviet social system.” This was the official version of events given by the Soviet leadership in response to the intensifying process of democratization of the country.

- How was Khrushchev’s report received abroad?

According to many historians, the contents of Khrushchev's report and the effect it produced contributed to a significant deterioration in the reputation of communist parties around the world. The leaders of 29 foreign communist parties who attended the congress were familiarized with the “closed report.” However, there were many who learned about the main news from foreign press reports. Thus, the Swedish Communist Party accused the USSR of hiding information from foreign communists, the CPSU Central Committee “generously shares it with bourgeois journalists.”

Various groups have formed in many communist parties, depending on their attitude to Khrushchev’s report. Some argued that the speaker “distorted the historical truth” and even if some of what was said was true, then “they should have remained silent about it”; others considered the report “premature”, and some were completely disillusioned with communist ideas and left the Communist Party.

Already on June 5, 1956, the American The New York Times published the full text of Khrushchev’s report, which, in essence, did not differ from what was heard at the congress. A number of historians, not without reason, believe that the text of the report came to the West with the help of Polish communists. This began a new stage of anti-communist and anti-Soviet hysteria.

It is very significant that in 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev, answering questions from a French newspaper L'Humanite, stated that "Stalinism is a concept invented by opponents of communism and is widely used to denigrate the Soviet Union and socialism in general." True, then, as we know, he changed his position, and as a result, sharp criticism of the Stalinist period unfolded in the USSR...

"RUN AHEAD OF THE STEAM LOGO"

What is the role of Nikita Khrushchev himself in the mass repressions: was he their initiator or just an obedient executor of Stalin’s instructions?

I think it's fair to say both. Khrushchev’s personal guilt was fundamentally no different from the “contribution” to the mass repressions of other members of Stalin’s inner circle: Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Zhdanov, Malenkov, Beria and others.

In order to make a career at that time, especially if it was a party or state career, it was not enough to “recognize the program and charter of the party.” It was necessary to constantly show initiative in the matter of “steadily implementing the party’s decisions.” And to do this, in Stalin’s words, not in the manner of “general chatter, but in a strictly businesslike manner.”

It can be said that any Stalinist nominee had to “run ahead of the locomotive,” ahead of competitors in the struggle for a place in the sun, and by personal example show examples of business activity and dog-like devotion to the leader. In addition, one should take into account Khrushchev’s character - lively, impulsive, proactive.

I will give just one example of my own research in this direction. When he was the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine, Nikita Sergeevich in February 1948 sent Lavrentiy Beria a package of documents. They contained a proposal to adopt a law in the republic tightening labor discipline on collective farms. One of the measures provided for the deportation of “truant workers” to remote areas of the country for a special settlement. This was a cruel anti-peasant measure that Stalin approved. In the summer of the same year it was extended throughout the country.

- To what extent do the documents stored in the archives allow us to reveal Khrushchev’s role in the repressions of the 1930-1950s?

So much so that one can rightfully say: Khrushchev is guilty. The peak of repression, as is known, occurred in 1937-1938. Since 1938, Nikita Sergeevich was not only the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, but also a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In this capacity, he put his visa on many execution lists...

There is an opinion that during the years of Khrushchev’s reign, a thorough purge of information discrediting him was carried out in the archives. Is this true?

Cleaning archives was commonplace in Soviet times, increasing the chances of contenders in the struggle for supreme power in the country. Archival secrets have terrible destructive power, they help control the past and allow you to shape the future. The publication or, on the contrary, concealment of compromising information about the top officials of the state (and, in the most extreme case, the destruction of secret documents) was an important means in the struggle for leadership.

Let me remind you that on March 5, 1953, when Stalin was living out his last hours, at a joint meeting of the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, a statement was made that “the Bureau of the Presidium of the Central Committee instructed comrades Malenkov, Beria and Khrushchev to take measures to ensure that so that Comrade Stalin’s documents and papers, both current and archival, are put in proper order.”

According to the general opinion of historians, at that time these three listed in the statement were the most active figures among possible Stalinist successors. They depended on each other, but did not trust anyone. Therefore, along with the first and main task - the distribution of the most important posts in the state (which was successfully completed for them at the mentioned meeting) - they immediately solved another problem, no less important for them: they took control of the Stalin archive.

This joint control, from their point of view, made it possible to avoid possible “surprises” associated with the presence of compromising information among secret documents, and to a certain extent should have guaranteed their political future.

Each of this trio was primarily concerned with their own safety, but in the literature there is no mention of which of their trusted persons they entrusted with the work of dismantling the Stalin archive. Most likely, each of the trio limited himself to a quick glance and took from Stalin’s papers, including the archive, those documents that could compromise him personally. They clearly did not have enough time to identify all possible documents containing incriminating evidence. And it is unlikely that in such a short period of time (the struggle for power in 1953 among Stalin’s epigones developed rapidly) it would have been possible to competently disassemble the Stalinist archive and find the necessary papers without the involvement of archival specialists.