Khrushchev's Criticism of Stalin | Generated by AI
Question: What did Khrushchev criticize Stalin for?
Answer:
Nikita Khrushchev criticized Joseph Stalin primarily in his famous “Secret Speech” delivered on February 25, 1956, at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The speech, officially titled “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences,” marked the beginning of de-Stalinization in the USSR.
The main criticisms included:
- Cult of personality — Khrushchev condemned the excessive glorification of Stalin as an infallible leader, which he said had been built to grotesque proportions and contradicted Marxist-Leninist principles of collective leadership.
- Mass repressions and terror — He accused Stalin of widespread arbitrary arrests, executions, and deportations of innocent people, including many loyal Communists, military officers, and ordinary citizens during the Great Purge (1936–1938).
- Violation of socialist legality — Stalin and his inner circle (especially the NKVD under Yezhov and Beria) fabricated charges, used torture to extract confessions, and ignored basic legal procedures.
- Elimination of old Bolsheviks and party cadres — Khrushchev highlighted how Stalin destroyed much of the revolutionary generation that had made the October Revolution, replacing them with fearful and subservient officials.
- Weakening of the party and collective leadership — Stalin concentrated unlimited power in his own hands, sidelining the Politburo and Central Committee.
- Military blunders before and during World War II — Khrushchev blamed Stalin for:
- Ignoring intelligence warnings about the German invasion in 1941
- Purging most of the top Red Army commanders in 1937–1938, leaving the military leaderless at a critical time
- Panicking and withdrawing from leadership in the first months after the Nazi attack
- Deportation of entire peoples — Forced resettlement of Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks, Volga Germans, and others, which Khrushchev called unjust and criminal.
- Mistreatment of Lenin’s legacy — Khrushchev claimed Stalin had behaved rudely toward Lenin’s wife Nadezhda Krupskaya and had ignored Lenin’s “Testament” that warned against Stalin’s rudeness and recommended his removal as General Secretary.
While Khrushchev condemned many of Stalin’s crimes, he did not criticize:
- The forced collectivization of agriculture
- The industrialization drive
- The existence of the Gulag system itself (only its abuse under Stalin)
- The overall socialist system or one-party rule
The speech was a selective critique aimed at removing Stalin’s supporters from power, legitimizing Khrushchev’s own leadership, and shifting blame for past excesses onto Stalin and a few associates (especially Beria) while preserving the Communist Party’s authority.
References:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Cult_of_Personality_and_Its_Consequences
- https://www.marxists.org/archive/khrushchev/1956/02/25.htm (full text of the Secret Speech)