On The Cult Of Personality And Its Consequences
"On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" (Russian: «О культе личности и его последствиях») was a report by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev made to the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956. Khrushchev's speech was sharply critical of the reign of General Secretary and Premier Joseph Stalin, particularly with respect to the brutal purges of the Soviet military and Communist Party cadres which had particularly marked the last years of the 1930s. Khrushchev charged Stalin with having fostered a leadership personality cult despite ostensibly maintaining support for the ideals of communism.
The speech was a milestone in the Khrushchev Thaw. Superficially, the speech was an attempt to draw the Soviet Communist Party closer to Leninism. Khrushchev's ulterior motivation, however, was to legitimize and help consolidate his control of the Communist party and government, power obtained in a political struggle with Stalin loyalists Vyacheslav Molotov and Georgy Malenkov.
The Khrushchev report was known as the "Secret Speech" because it was delivered at an unpublicized closed session of Communist Party delegates, with guests and members of the press excluded. Although the text of the Khrushchev report leaked almost immediately, the official Russian text was published only in 1989 during the glasnost campaign of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
In April 2007, the British newspaper The Guardian included the speech in their series on "Great Speeches of the 20th Century".
Read more about On The Cult Of Personality And Its Consequences: Background, Reports of The Speech, Summary, Aftermath
Famous quotes containing the words cult, personality and/or consequences:
“Look at this poet William Carlos Williams: he is primitive and native, and his roots are in raw forest and violent places; he is word-sick and place-crazy. He admires strength, but for what? Violence! This is the cult of the frontier mind.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)
“I am what is mine. Personality is the original personal property.”
—Norman O. Brown (b. 1913)
“War is thus divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular.... War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it.... War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)