On 25 February, the last day of the Congress, it was announced that an unscheduled session had been called for the Soviet delegates. First Secretary Khrushchev's morning speech began with vague references to the harmful consequences of elevating a single individual so high that he took on the "
supernatural characteristics akin to those of a god". Khrushchev went on to say that such a mistake had been made about Stalin. He himself had been guilty of what was, in essence, a distortion of the basic principles of
Marxism-Leninism. The attention of the audience was then drawn to
Lenin's Testament, copies of which had been distributed, criticising Stalin's "rudeness". Further accusations, and hints of accusations, followed, including the suggestion that the murder of
Sergei Kirov in 1934, the event that sparked the
Great Terror, could be included in the list of Stalin's crimes. While denouncing Stalin, Khrushchev carefully praised the Communist Party, which had the strength to withstand all the negative effects of imaginary crimes and false accusations. The Party, in other words, had been a victim of Stalin, not an accessory to his crimes. He finished by calling on the Party to eradicate the
cult of personality and return to "the revolutionary fight for the transformation of society". The speech shocked delegates to the Congress, as it flew in the face of years of
Soviet propaganda, which had claimed that Stalin was a wise, peaceful, and fair leader. After long deliberations, in a month the speech was reported to the general public, but the full text was published only in 1989. Not everyone was ready to accept Khrushchev's new line.
Communist Albanian leader
Enver Hoxha, for instance, strongly condemned Khrushchev as "
revisionist" and
severed diplomatic relations. The speech was also seen as a catalyst for the anti-Soviet uprisings in
Poland and
Hungary of 1956, and was seen as a "major stimulus" to the
Sino-Soviet split. A "softened" version of the report was published as a resolution of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee on June 30, 1956, entitled "On overcoming the cult of personality and its consequences", which set the framework for acceptable criticism of Stalinism. According to one journalist of the American newspaper
The Washington Post,
Anne Applebaum: == See also ==