On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences

"On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" (Russian: «О культе личности и его последствиях», romanized: “O kul'te lichnosti i yego posledstviyakh”) was a report by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956.^[1] Though popularly known as the Secret Speech (Russian: секретный доклад Хрущёва, romanized: sekretnïy doklad Khrushcheva), "secret" is something of a misnomer, as copies of the speech were read out at thousands of meetings of Communist Party and Komsomol organisations across the USSR.^[2] Khrushchev's speech sharply criticised the rule of the former General Secretary and Premier Joseph Stalin (died March 1953), particularly with respect to the purges which had especially marked the later years of the 1930s. Khrushchev charged Stalin with having fostered a leadership cult of personality despite ostensibly maintaining support for the ideals of communism.

The speech produced shocking effects in its day.^[3] Reports state that some listeners suffered heart attacks and that the speech even inspired suicides, due to the shock of all of Khrushchev's criticisms and condemnations of the government and of the previously revered figure of Stalin.^[4] The ensuing confusion among many Soviet citizens, raised on panegyrics and permanent praise of the "genius" of Stalin, was especially apparent in Georgia, Stalin's homeland, where days of protests and rioting ended with a Soviet army crackdown on 9 March 1956.^[5] The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad received a copy of Khrushchev's speech from the Polish-Jewish journalist Wiktor Grajewski and leaked it to the West. It politically devastated organised communists in the West; the Communist Party USA alone lost more than 30,000 members within weeks of its publication.^[6]

The speech helped to give rise in the Soviet bloc to the period of liberalisation known as the "Khrushchev Thaw", and to the process of de-Stalinization.^[7] It was cited as a major cause of the Sino-Soviet split of 1961 to 1989 by China (under Chairman Mao Zedong) and by Albania (under First Secretary Enver Hoxha), who condemned Khrushchev as a revisionist. In response, they formed the anti-revisionist movement, criticizing the post-Stalin leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for allegedly deviating from the path of Lenin and Stalin.^[8] In North Korea, factions of the Workers' Party of Korea unsuccessfully attempted to remove Chairman Kim Il Sung in August 1956, criticizing him for not "correcting" his leadership methods, for developing a personality cult, for distorting the "Leninist principle of collective leadership" and for "distortions of socialist legality"^[9] (i.e. using arbitrary arrest and executions) and using other Khrushchev-era criticisms of Stalinism against Kim Il Sung's actions.

^ Translation. Khrushchev, Nikita. "February 25, 1956. Khrushchev's Secret Speech, 'On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences,' Delivered at the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union". digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org. The Wilson Center. Retrieved 15 December 2023.
^ Cite error: The named reference Meds104 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Clines, Francis X. (6 April 1989). "Soviets, After 33 Years, Publish Khrushchev's Anti-Stalin Speech". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 February 2016.
^ From Our Own Correspondent. BBC Radio 4. 22 January 2009.
^ Ronald Grigor Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994; pp. 303–305.
^ Vivian Gornick (29 April 2017). "When Communism Inspired Americans". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
^ "Khrushchev's secret speech". Encyclopædia Britannica. 18 February 2025. Retrieved 17 March 2025.
^ "1964: On Khrushchov's Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World". marxists.org.
^ Lankov, Andrei (2007). Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-3207-0.

[1] Translation. Khrushchev, Nikita. "February 25, 1956. Khrushchev's Secret Speech, 'On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences,' Delivered at the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union". digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org. The Wilson Center. Retrieved 15 December 2023.

[Meds104-2] Cite error: The named reference Meds104 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[3] Clines, Francis X. (6 April 1989). "Soviets, After 33 Years, Publish Khrushchev's Anti-Stalin Speech". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 February 2016.

[4] From Our Own Correspondent. BBC Radio 4. 22 January 2009.

[Suny-5] Ronald Grigor Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994; pp. 303–305.

[6] Vivian Gornick (29 April 2017). "When Communism Inspired Americans". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 May 2017.

[7] "Khrushchev's secret speech". Encyclopædia Britannica. 18 February 2025. Retrieved 17 March 2025.

[8] "1964: On Khrushchov's Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World". marxists.org.

[9] Lankov, Andrei (2007). Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-3207-0.

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