As the former Soviet leader was responsible for tens of millions of deaths it would have been hard to defend him so the First Secretary of the Communist Party not only bad mouthed his predecessor for the way he had run the country, but also essentially dethroned Stalin for fostering a leadership cult around himself and knocked him from the hero's pedestal on which he had been placed by Soviet propaganda for nearly three decades.
The speech painted a grim picture of Stalin as a ruthless dictator who ruled by fear, drove countless loyal communists to their deaths and condemned his abuse of power and systemic violence under his regime policies which had deviated from the traditional socialist ideals of the Lenin era and as a result monuments to Stalin were removed, his name was removed from places, buildings and the state anthem, and his body was removed from the Lenin Mausoleum.
Initially the internal repercussions of this denunciation led to resentment from many party members who held Stalin in high regard but globally, the West welcomed the disavowal of Stalin and Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation resulted in some thawing in Cold War relations and a move towards peaceful coexistence with the West, a shift from Stalin’s aggressive foreign policies and many of the satellite countries of Eastern Europe started pushing for more autonomy and there were several uprisings in direct response to the lessening of Soviet control.
While this was swiftly crushed by Soviet troops, it set a precedent for future resistance against Soviet control and although Khrushchev enjoyed strong support during the 1950s, by the early 1960s however, his popularity was eroded and the poor handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis saw him lose power and was pensioned off with an apartment in Moscow and a dacha in the countryside.
No comments:
Post a Comment