Talk:On the Personality Cult and its Consequences

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 On the Personality Cult and its Consequences is part of WikiProject Soviet Union, an attempt to better organise information in articles related to the Soviet Union. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the class scale.
High This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale.
Russia Portal
On the Personality Cult and its Consequences is part of the WikiProject Russian history, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Russian history. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

removed "Eventually the speech weakened the Soviet Communist Party by liberating minds from fear and political control." as a blatently biased statement in a paragraph of factual statements. F4i 20:49, 5 Oct 2007

Please don't merge this. Mikkalai, thanks in advance for your effort to summarize it here! BACbKA 13:31, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)BACbKA 17:53, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Mihnea, please find and read the speech before editing. Kruschev 98% put the blame on Stalin in this speech. Mikkalai 16:19, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Izvestia

Having left Russia over 10 years ago, I seem to have forgotten some of the important details, however was it indeed "Izvestija TSeKa" and not "Izvestija sovetov narodnyx deputatov"?

Corresponding clarifications should maybe put not here, rather, the text here should be shortened in favour of adding explanations over at Izvestia, which presently seems to only reflect the current (post-Soviet) Izvestija. What do you folks think? BACbKA 14:27, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There were both. http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/1672771/ Remember: google your best friend. Mikkalai 16:49, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)


—==Poland?== I removed an anon addition as dubious:

In fact, a Polish version could be bought on the streets of Warsaw only a few days after the speech was given.

Who here is a leninist?


Any confirmations? Mikkalai 01:01, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reaction

I heard on BBC Radio 4 today that the speech was such a shock to those present that some had heart attacks (during the speech?) and others committed suicide afterwards. If someone has a direct source on this it might be good to add to the article. Also more about the general reaction to & consequences of the speech would be good. Ben Finn 14:06, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I read something similar on CBC:
The shock must have been almost beyond imagination. Dmitri Goriunov, the editor of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, gobbled five nitroglycerin pills to stave off a heart attack. The head of the Polish Communist party, Boleslaw Beirut, was being treated in Moscow for pneumonia; he read the speech, had a heart attack and died. [1]
No more authoritative than the BBC report, of course .. --142.242.2.248 15:39, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quotes

I added a bunch of quotes from the speech to the article. I hope everyone's okay with this. I did it because the full text of the speech -- which is linked to at the bottom of the page -- is really long; I felt like one needed some concrete quotes to get a real sense of just how shocking this speech must have been at the time, and what an attack on Stalinism it was. Monkey-Man 06:02, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Revelations

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz today revealed some of the background of how Israeli intelligence obtained the text of this speech and how it was handled in Israel. See [2]. I'll leave it for someone else to summarise as appropriate. Also note that links to articles in Haaretz go dead after a few weeks so it is not enough to just link to it. --Zero 03:16, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually this have been known for quite some time, but this is the first releable account published I know of. This certainly deserves summarizing. mikka (t) 03:31, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Move to Khruschev's Secret Speech?

If the page is going to open with "commonly known as the Secret Speech" shouldn't we just rename it like that? -- TheMightyQuill 09:53, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Or just "Secret Speech" please, as this is certainly the main speech associated with that phrase. I'm a little dubious about the current title: books are published under fairly clear titles, but speeches don't tend to have them explicitly. Maybe when this was printed later it was given "On the Personality Cult and its Consequences" as a heading, but I don't think that's the best title for the article. It's worth noting that this article appears to be titled "Secret Speech" in its versions in other languages. 129.234.4.1 16:26, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
This is its official title. It was not so "secret"; read the article, so this name is a misnomer. And we have redirects for those who are lazy to type or remember words with more than two syllables. `'mikka (t) 16:40, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Khruschev's motivation

Copied from WP:RD/H for further processing. --Ghirla-трёп- 20:03, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

So, what were his motives? Was it really a call for a return to Leninist 'collective leadership' destroyed by Stalin? Well, here we have to remember that Lenin himself had only called for collective leadership in his final days, in the belief that no single individual was fit to follow in his singular path. Khruschev himself, moreover, had, as I have said, effectively destroyed the new forms of collectivity that emerged after Stalin's death in 1953. In a sense, the Secret Speech was his own triumphal declaration, and he used it to undermine still further some senior Soviet politicians, including Georgy Malenkov and Kliment Voroshilov. The implication was clear enough: he was innocent and the rest were guilty, though the simple truth was that he was just as bloody as any of the others. He was simply shifting the burden of responsibility. Exempting himself and blaming others: the whole speech was not about principles and ideals-it was about politics, and it was about power. Khruschev had to demolish Stalin to establish his own imperium; Augustus had to give way to Tiberius. It may be of passing interest to make note of the fact that Stalin's portrait continued to hang in Khruschev's office long after 1956, as a kind of spiritual avatar. And those who took the speech at face value were soon to face the simple truth that the ideal was not reborn. Clio the Muse 01:35, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

To me, what you've said suggests that things didn't change after Stalin died, which I can't believe. If it was all show, wouldn't Khruschev have established the same personality cult that Stalin did? - TheMightyQuill 04:42, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Don't be blinded by buzzwords. A form of autocracy was in the SovU till the very end. And yes, among accusations of Khrushev when he was deposed was "voluntarism" (it was a Soviet political slur (I have to remind myself to write "voluntarism (Soviet slur)")) and attempt to build a cult. And Brezhnev had quite a cult. As it quite often happens everywhere, things had changed... and hadn't. `'Míkka 05:26, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm not naive enough to think that Khrushchev didn't make the speech without his own personal interest in his mind, or that he intended to give up power to the collective, but at the same time, his denunciation of stalin's personality cult must have seriously limited his ability to create a cult of his own, same with Brezhnev. Most dictators establish a personality cult, but Stalin's was something more extravagant, wasn't it? And personality cult aside, were the speech's denunciation of the great purges, the doctors plot, etc, all for Krushchev's personal gain? Is it impossible that he felt these things were, if not morally wrong in a "bourgeois" sense, than at least incompatible with the ideals of socialism? I did poorly on my thesis defense last year because I over-estimated actual change in foreign policy under Brezhnev, but there were some pretty significant domestic changes after the death of Stalin. I don't see how that can be denied. So what is the motivation for those changes? Purely self-interest from Krushchev? - TheMightyQuill 07:37, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recent Edit

Hi. I recently added material to the page regarding Anastas Mikoyan's role in formulating the ideas behind the Secret Speech, the balancing act Khrushchev performed between denouncing aspects of Stalinism and denouncing Stalin himself, and some other tidbits on Beria and the effects of the Red Army purges on the casualties of the Great Patriotic War. I've left footnoted sources for my assertions, as well as links to documents that can be found on databases like JSTOR or university archives. Let me know if anything I've added seems controversial, and we can discuss its accuracy and appropriateness. Thanks, Blackjeremiah 06:03, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Learn how to quote, children

Speaking to Mikoyan, one of the prisoners, Alexei Snegov, stated that “if you [Mikoyan and Khrushchev] do not disassociate yourself [sic] from Stalin at the first Congress after his death, and if you do not recount his crimes, then you will become willing accomplices in these crimes.”

Given that this utterance was probably in Russian, I fail to see the point of including an English grammatical error with a [sic] after it, as though it somehow represents with fidelity what was uttered. It doesn't. --75.49.222.55 05:40, 6 October 2007 (UTC)


This utterance was Sergo Mikoyan quoting Snegov in an interview with Tamara Eidelman. The interview may have taken place in English or Russian. The [sic] appears because I clarified that the subject of the sentence was not just Anastas Mikoyan, but through him, Khrushchev. There is no grammatical error without my clarification.

Of course, if you had followed the persistent link I provided to the source itself, you would have seen that for yourself. Try not to talk down to people when you're not willing or able to follow a footnote.68.100.73.123 12:32, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Great speech?

Is it notable enough to include in the article that the Guardian newspaper (UK) has rated this speech amongst their series of the 14 "Great speeches of the 20th century"? [3] (This is Wikipedia; I'll add it, feel free to revert if you don't agree it should be included.) -Kain 15:22, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I've redirected "On the Cult of Personality and its Consequences" to this page, as that is the title of the speech as published in the Guardian's booklet from that series of speeches. --Kain (talk) 22:50, 4 March 2008 (UTC)