WI: Khrushchev makes the Secret Speech Public

[LHB]

One of the big blows dealt to the USSR under Gorbachev's glasnost policy was to their legitimacy when Stalin's abuses came to light. Part of the issue was how horrific his acts were but the other part was how long it had stayed buried. These two issues, along with other factors, fatally undermined the legitimacy of the USSR. It is possible, however, this could have been avoided if the Secret Speech given by Khrushchev wasn't secret.

What if, instead of keeping the Secret Speech denouncing Stalin under wraps, Nikita Khrushchev pushed for a broader programme of destalinization that included releasing the speech's contents and supporting evidence to the broader public of the USSR? Could that have helped shore up the Soviet system in the long run?

 

[David T]

One of the big blows dealt to the USSR under Gorbachev's glasnost policy was to their legitimacy when Stalin's abuses came to light. Part of the issue was how horrific his acts were but the other part was how long it had stayed buried. These two issues, along with other factors, fatally undermined the legitimacy of the USSR. It is possible, however, this could have been avoided if the Secret Speech given by Khrushchev wasn't secret.

What if, instead of keeping the Secret Speech denouncing Stalin under wraps, Nikita Khrushchev pushed for a broader programme of destalinization that included releasing the speech's contents and supporting evidence to the broader public of the USSR? Could that have helped shore up the Soviet system in the long run?

(1) You're acting as though Khrushchev could decide this on his own in 1956. He could not. There would not be a Presidium majority for making it public--indeed Mikoyan may have been the only enthusiastic anti-Stalin man in the Presidium. Many members had grave reservations about the speech even as a "secret" speech (which of course it didn't remain very long, especially in Poland). This may help to explain some of the ambiguities in the speech, which included praise as well as denunciation of Stalin. And certainly the events in Poland and Hungary seemed to vindicate the skeptics, and were responsible in part for Khrushchev's near-ouster in 1957.

(2) Khrushchev did take public anti-Stalinism much further in 1961-62 with the 22nd party Congress, the removal of Stalin's body from Lenin's mausoleum, the renaming of Stalingrad and other cities, the authorization of the *One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich* etc. It didn't help him much, made the split with China deeper than ever, and eventually Khrushchev himself reacted against "excessive" anti-Stalinism.

 

[Simon]

What if, instead of keeping the Secret Speech denouncing Stalin under wraps...

He didn't though - once he'd made the speech he allowed the delegates from the foreign communist parties to read it, passed copies to senior Central Committee members and had it read out at local Communist Party and Komsomol meetings. The general gist of the speech was also passed to a western journalist, supposedly by Khruschev by an intermediary, and reported on by mid-March, between all the meetings and it being reported back in from the west it was hardly a tightly held secret. Once the full text had leaked to the west and reported in June with it being actively broadcast back into Eastern Europe and Russia it was game over for even the pretence of the speech being secret.