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What Was the Impact of Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech?
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Russia – Dissent and Protest, 1953-1991
In this course, Dr Philip Boobbyer (University of Kent) discusses dissent and protest in the Soviet Union from the death of Stalin in 1953 to the collapse of the USSR in 1991. In the first lecture we explore the impact of Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech on public opinion and dissent after the intense repression of the early Soviet years. In the second lecture we examine where dissident ideas came from and identify the class of intelligentsia that led state protest. In the third lecture we inquire into the impact of the Soviet human rights movement. Fourth, we highlight the relationship between dissent and culture, exploring the novels, music and films that countered the Communist Party line. Finally in the fifth lecture, we conclude with a discussion of the extent to which dissent and protest movements in the Soviet Union after 1953 were successful in reaching their goals.
What Was the Impact of Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech?
In this lecture we think about the impact of Khrushchev’s Secret Speech in 1956, focussing on: (i) how Khrushchev's 1956 Secret Speech condemned Stalin's abuses but still maintained the legitimacy of the Soviet system and his own authority; (ii) Khrushchev attempted to stabilise the Communist Party by blaming Stalin and rival Lavrentiy Beria for past terror, while promoting Lenin's ideals; (iii) although the speech raised hopes for a more humane socialism, it ultimately avoided deeper reforms and focussed on maintaining Soviet rule.
I am Philip Bubier.
00:00:05I'm an Emeritus Reader in History at the University of Kent,
00:00:07and I have taught Russian and Soviet history at Kent for the
00:00:11better part of three decades.
00:00:15In February nineteen fifty six at the twentieth party congress,
00:00:17the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev delivered his so
00:00:22called secret speech,
00:00:25arguably one of the most important speeches of the
00:00:27twentieth century.
00:00:30Now Khrushchev had come to power soon after Stalin's death
00:00:32in nineteen fifty three after a brief power struggle,
00:00:35and he remained at the helm until he was ousted in October
00:00:40nineteen sixty four.
00:00:43He was a contradictory figure facing a number of sometimes
00:00:46competing challenges.
00:00:50One of them was to give people a fresh vision for the country
00:00:52after the dark Stalin years.
00:00:55Another was the imperative to consolidate his power and keep
00:00:59rivals at bay.
00:01:02These elements were both present in the secret speech,
00:01:06a speech worth studying both what Khrushchev said and what
00:01:10he implied between the lines.
00:01:14He was walking a tightrope.
00:01:19He wanted to condemn Stalin without destroying people's
00:01:21belief in the revolution itself and undermining the system that
00:01:25had brought him to power.
00:01:29He also had to be careful not to implicate himself,
00:01:32for he had himself been a participant in some of Stalin's crimes.
00:01:36The tactic he adopted was to attack Stalin personally,
00:01:42to attack what he called Stalin's cult of personality,
00:01:46but not Stalin's policies of collectivization and
00:01:51industrialization.
00:01:54He also insisted that the Bolshevik revolution had been
00:01:57broadly right, and he was the man to fulfill its potential.
00:02:00It was Stalin then who had distorted the original vision
00:02:06and who was responsible for the terror that had engulfed the
00:02:10communist party in the nineteen thirties and resulted in many
00:02:14innocent victims being killed.
00:02:17Another person who Khrushchev blamed was Lavrenti Beria,
00:02:20a sinister character associated with the secret police and the labor camps.
00:02:25After Stalin died,
00:02:30Beria was effectively Khrushchev's main rival,
00:02:32and he clashed with Beria.
00:02:35And Beria was ousted and killed.
00:02:37Beria was also criticized in the speech.
00:02:41Now it is true that Stalin and Beria deserved condemnation,
00:02:45but here there was also a power building intent.
00:02:49For Khrushchev was trying to appeal here to a communist
00:02:53party audience longing for stability after the
00:02:57turbulent Stalin period.
00:03:00The speech was a way of saying to them that he would keep the
00:03:04show on the road while protecting them against
00:03:07arbitrary rule.
00:03:09At a time of crisis,
00:03:13when a leader is seeking to forge a new path,
00:03:15where does authority and legitimacy come from?
00:03:19This was a very real question for Khrushchev.
00:03:24He sought to ground his authority in Lenin,
00:03:28the man who had founded the USSR.
00:03:30And he presented himself as a champion of Lenin and Leninism.
00:03:33This was an awkward balancing act too because Lenin,
00:03:38like Stalin, was a ruthless leader.
00:03:41Khrushchev justified Lenin's methods by insisting that Lenin
00:03:45only sanctioned violence to defend the revolution.
00:03:48Although a reformer,
00:03:54we should not think of Khrushchev as a soft and cuddly character.
00:03:55He was wary of any threats to his own and Soviet rule.
00:03:59This was immediately,
00:04:04evident later in nineteen fifty six with the suppression of the
00:04:05Hungarian uprising.
00:04:09A lot of people were prosecuted for dissent under Khrushchev.
00:04:12Demonstrations in the city of Nowber Cherkask
00:04:17over working conditions were violently repressed in nineteen sixty two.
00:04:20The persecution of religion was also strong under Khrushchev.
00:04:26Another thing to note is that the USSR was faced with the
00:04:30growing power of China,
00:04:33which had a communist revolution in nineteen forty nine.
00:04:35And in this context,
00:04:39Khrushchev wanted to assert his own primacy in the communist world.
00:04:40This was an underlying motivation for Khrushchev in
00:04:45the Cuban Missile Crisis in nineteen sixty two when we see
00:04:48his tendency to brinkmanship in evidence.
00:04:52In a broad sense, we can see him as a person trying to make
00:04:56Soviet ideology attractive and fit for purpose.
00:05:00The Communist Party program of nineteen sixty two promised
00:05:04that communism would be built by nineteen eighty.
00:05:07That was a tall order.
00:05:11In other words, the communist project was on track.
00:05:13Although Stalin was heralded by some for his making the Soviet
00:05:17Union into a superpower,
00:05:20there were many who were uneasy about the terroristic methods he had used.
00:05:22Khrushchev's attack on the cult of personality was an
00:05:28acknowledgment of that.
00:05:31Others in the communist world were asking awkward questions too.
00:05:33A good example was a book of nineteen fifty seven by leading
00:05:38Yugoslav communist Milovan Jilas,
00:05:41The New Class.
00:05:44Jilas suggested that communism,
00:05:47far from freeing people from capitalist exploitation,
00:05:49had simply replaced one oppressive class with another.
00:05:53The search for new values in the communist world was also
00:05:56evident in nineteen sixty eight when the Czechoslovak communist
00:05:59party tried to introduce democratization
00:06:03and radical reform,
00:06:05what they called socialism with a human face.
00:06:08But this was crushed by Soviet tanks.
00:06:12In the late nineteen seventies,
00:06:17Khrushchev's successor Leonid Brezhnev sought to explain why
00:06:18communism was proving hard to implement by saying that the
00:06:22country was making significant progress
00:06:25and had reached the stage of what he called developed socialism,
00:06:28I e, it it it was not far off,
00:06:33and they they were getting near it.
00:06:36Gorbachev's reform process known as perestroika,
00:06:38launched in the late nineteen eighties,
00:06:42was another attempt to salvage the revolutionary project.
00:06:44This was more radical,
00:06:49but it also had hints of Khrushchev's approach in that
00:06:51Gorbachev sought to hold to Leninism as a guiding principle.
00:06:54But Gorbachev did not want to question the revolution either.
00:06:59And to begin with, at least,
00:07:03he did not want to abandon the idea of a one party communist state.
00:07:05This all began to unravel at the end of the nineteen eighties.
00:07:10Back on Khrushchev's secret speech,
00:07:15we should not think of Khrushchev's attack on Stalin
00:07:18as representing a kind of dissent.
00:07:20Some even suggested that it created a framework for
00:07:24avoiding radical reform.
00:07:27It was quite successful initially in encouraging to
00:07:30people to believe that a more humane version of socialism was
00:07:34possible, and it did have some appeal for
00:07:38Soviet intellectuals.
00:07:41But it was full of ambiguity.
00:07:44It was an attempt at truth telling at one level,
00:07:47but it also offered a way of avoiding the truth in the sense
00:07:51that it was evasive and had as a motive the desire
00:07:54to keep the show on the road without confronting more
00:07:58difficult questions.
00:08:02
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Boobbyer, P. (2024, October 22). Russia – Dissent and Protest, 1953-1991 - What Was the Impact of Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech? [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/russia-dissent-and-protest-1953-1991/what-was-the-impact-of-nikita-khrushchev-s-secret-speech
MLA style
Boobbyer, P. "Russia – Dissent and Protest, 1953-1991 – What Was the Impact of Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech?." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 22 Oct 2024, https://massolit.io/courses/russia-dissent-and-protest-1953-1991/what-was-the-impact-of-nikita-khrushchev-s-secret-speech