A.J.
26th January 2007, 14:48
Russia turns its back on the man who denounced Stalin
BBC
From Jeremy Page in Moscow
WHEN Nikita Khrushchev took the podium on the last day of the Communist
Party congress 50 years ago today, his words were so shocking that some
fainted.
The Soviet leader had done the unthinkable, denouncing his predecessor
Joseph Stalin, who had died three years earlier.
So sensitive was Khrushchev's "secret speech" that his daughter, Rada
Adzhubei, did not learn of it for two weeks, when excerpts were read
out at party meetings. "I was shocked, like everyone else," Mrs Adzhubei, now
76, told The Times in her apartment a few hundred yards from the Kremlin.
"Millions knew about these things, but millions did not know. And we
were all brought up in an atmosphere where Stalin was the great leader — it
was in the air we breathed."
Few people would disagree in the West, where the speech caused a
sensation when it was leaked to the foreign press months later. Poland's leader,
Boleslaw Bierut, died of a heart attack after reading it a month
afterwards. But in Russia, the anniversary is being marked by a reassessment of
Khrushchev's role in history that, analysts say, reflects the
increasingly repressive climate under the Kremlin of Vladimir Putin.
The only official commemoration is a tiny exhibition in the Historical
Museum, featuring a few documents and memorabilia including
Khrushchev's embroidered Ukrainian shirt. Russian state television has cancelled a
planned documentary on the subject, and a growing number of academics
and journalists are portraying the "secret speech" as an act of revenge.
"Since then we have lived increasingly useless and dirty lives," wrote
Yelena Prudnikova, a St Petersburg-based journalist, in her recent book
Stalin: The Second Murder. "The country, deprived of high ideals in
just a few decades, has rotted to the ground."
Stalin, meanwhile, is enjoying a revival; several statues are planned
in his honour and a museum is being opened next month in the city of
Volgograd, previously named Stalingrad.
A recent poll by the AllRussian Public Opinion Research Centre found
that 50 per cent of respondents thought Stalin's role in history was positive.
Today's Kremlin neither promotes Stalin nor denigrates Khrushchev, but
President Putin has lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union as the
"greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century.
The "secret speech", which led directly to the Hungarian Uprising later
in 1956 and the Sino-Soviet split in 1960, opened the cracks in the system
that eventually destroyed the Soviet Union.
Mikhail Gorbachev, who was a young Party activist in 1956, told a
conference this month that the "secret speech" had inspired him to launch the
liberal reforms of the 1980s.
"I do not think that a concept like perestroika could have appeared
without it," he said.
Russia, he said, was now going through a political backlash similar to
the one under Khrushchev's successor, Leonid Brezhnev.
Stalin's rehabilitation began in 1965, when Brezhnev mentioned him
positively in an address, while the "secret speech" was not published
in the Soviet Union until 1988.
Thus, many Russians still see Stalin not as a brutal tyrant, but as the
man who oversaw the victory against Nazi Germany, and turned the Soviet
Union into a superpower.
Khrushchev's reputation, on the other hand, remains tarnished. In the
past five years, several Russian academics have produced evidence showing
that Khrushchev personally signed orders for thousands of people to be
executed or sent to labour camps.
Mrs Adzhubei, a retired biologist, says she has no illusions about her
father's past. "You had to sign the orders, because if you didn't your
name would be on the next list," she said. "They were all guilty, but some
were more guilty than others for the destruction of the glorious USSR."
:) :hammer:
BBC
From Jeremy Page in Moscow
WHEN Nikita Khrushchev took the podium on the last day of the Communist
Party congress 50 years ago today, his words were so shocking that some
fainted.
The Soviet leader had done the unthinkable, denouncing his predecessor
Joseph Stalin, who had died three years earlier.
So sensitive was Khrushchev's "secret speech" that his daughter, Rada
Adzhubei, did not learn of it for two weeks, when excerpts were read
out at party meetings. "I was shocked, like everyone else," Mrs Adzhubei, now
76, told The Times in her apartment a few hundred yards from the Kremlin.
"Millions knew about these things, but millions did not know. And we
were all brought up in an atmosphere where Stalin was the great leader — it
was in the air we breathed."
Few people would disagree in the West, where the speech caused a
sensation when it was leaked to the foreign press months later. Poland's leader,
Boleslaw Bierut, died of a heart attack after reading it a month
afterwards. But in Russia, the anniversary is being marked by a reassessment of
Khrushchev's role in history that, analysts say, reflects the
increasingly repressive climate under the Kremlin of Vladimir Putin.
The only official commemoration is a tiny exhibition in the Historical
Museum, featuring a few documents and memorabilia including
Khrushchev's embroidered Ukrainian shirt. Russian state television has cancelled a
planned documentary on the subject, and a growing number of academics
and journalists are portraying the "secret speech" as an act of revenge.
"Since then we have lived increasingly useless and dirty lives," wrote
Yelena Prudnikova, a St Petersburg-based journalist, in her recent book
Stalin: The Second Murder. "The country, deprived of high ideals in
just a few decades, has rotted to the ground."
Stalin, meanwhile, is enjoying a revival; several statues are planned
in his honour and a museum is being opened next month in the city of
Volgograd, previously named Stalingrad.
A recent poll by the AllRussian Public Opinion Research Centre found
that 50 per cent of respondents thought Stalin's role in history was positive.
Today's Kremlin neither promotes Stalin nor denigrates Khrushchev, but
President Putin has lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union as the
"greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century.
The "secret speech", which led directly to the Hungarian Uprising later
in 1956 and the Sino-Soviet split in 1960, opened the cracks in the system
that eventually destroyed the Soviet Union.
Mikhail Gorbachev, who was a young Party activist in 1956, told a
conference this month that the "secret speech" had inspired him to launch the
liberal reforms of the 1980s.
"I do not think that a concept like perestroika could have appeared
without it," he said.
Russia, he said, was now going through a political backlash similar to
the one under Khrushchev's successor, Leonid Brezhnev.
Stalin's rehabilitation began in 1965, when Brezhnev mentioned him
positively in an address, while the "secret speech" was not published
in the Soviet Union until 1988.
Thus, many Russians still see Stalin not as a brutal tyrant, but as the
man who oversaw the victory against Nazi Germany, and turned the Soviet
Union into a superpower.
Khrushchev's reputation, on the other hand, remains tarnished. In the
past five years, several Russian academics have produced evidence showing
that Khrushchev personally signed orders for thousands of people to be
executed or sent to labour camps.
Mrs Adzhubei, a retired biologist, says she has no illusions about her
father's past. "You had to sign the orders, because if you didn't your
name would be on the next list," she said. "They were all guilty, but some
were more guilty than others for the destruction of the glorious USSR."
:) :hammer: