The Real Stalin

On the third day of 20^th party congress, Anastas Mikoyan denounced Stalin on several counts. A week later, in a closed door session, Nikita Khrushchev shocked the Soviet Union (and the world) by denouncing Stalin in a special address to Communist party comrades. The speech shook the Soviet Union to the core, but even more so its communist allies, notably in central Europe.

While Stalin’s crimes against his communist associates were deplored, his greater crimes against Russian people were applauded in the name of “Socialist construction”, although it was reaffirmed in Lelin’s name for a change.

Highlights of that speech-

-It condemned cult of individual and its consequences as it is foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism

-About abuse of power- “The negative characteristics of Stalin, which, in Lelin’s time, were only incipient, transformed themselves during the last years into a grave abuse of power by Stalin, which caused untold harm to our party”

…practiced brutal violence not only towards everything which opposed him, but also towards that which seemed, to his capricious and despotic character, contrary to his concepts…..

.....He (Stalin) abandoned the method of ideological struggle for that of administrative violence, mass repression and terror….. mass arrests and deportations of many  thousands of people, executions without trial and without normal investigation created conditions of insecurity, fear and even desperation...........