The day Khrushchev denounced Stalin with the “secret” speech.
This happen during the 20th Party Congress on February 25 1956 on closed Congress session.
Shortly after the speech was made, reports of it were conveyed to the West by Reuters journalist John Rettie, who had been told about the speech by Kostya Orlova a few hours before Rettie was due to leave for Stockholm; it was therefore reported in the Western media in early March. Rettie believes the information came from Khruschev himself via an intermediary.
The basic structure of the speech was as follow
Repudiation of Stalin’s personality cult
Quotations from the classics of Marxism-Leninism , which denounced the “cult of an individual” (i.e. the cult of personality, see above)
Lenin ‘s Testament and remarks by Nadezhda Krupskaya about Stalin’s character
Before Stalin, the fight with the Troskyists was purely ideological; Stalin introduced the notion of the “ enemy of the people “ to be used as “heavy artillery”
Stalin violated Party norms of collective leadership
Repression of the majority of Old bolsheviks and delegates of the XVII Party Congress, most of which were workers and had joined the Communist Party before 1920. Of the 1,966 delegates, 1,108 were declared “counter-revolutionaries”, 848 were executed, and 98 of 139 members and candidates to the Central Committee were declared “enemies of the people “.
After this repression, Stalin ceased to even consider the opinion of the collective.
Examples of repressions of some notable Bolsheviks are presented in detail
Stalin ordered that the persecution be enhanced: “ NKVD is four years behind the schedule”
Practice of falsifications followed, to cope with “plans” for numbers of enemies to be uncovered.
Exaggerations of the role of Stalin in the Great Patriotic War (World War II)
Deportatiotions of whole nationalities
Manifestations of personality cult: songs, city names, etc.
Useful sites
http://www.mltranslations.org/US/TP/tp2.htm - http://www.mltranslations.org/US/TP/tp2.htm