ABSTRACT
The Twentieth Congress itself was marked by Nikita Khrushchev’s endeavor to overcome the internal stagnation of the Soviet Union with dramatic theoretical innovations, and in international affairs to move from Stalin’s defensive positions to the offensive. Thus Khrushchev despite his dramatic innovations may be regarded as a transitional figure in the development of the Communist party system, rather than as the author of projects and structures pointing to the future. In the last analysis, the Twentieth Party Congress only accelerated a process of inner differentiation in world Communism which had set in long before and had merely been concealed by the ritual of the Stalin cult. By damning Stalin Khrushchev had in fact jeopardized his own plan to resolve the contradictions in world Communism. In retrospect, one sees that Khrushchev’s idea of placing the Communist movement on a new basis by flexibly combining domestic autonomy with a common international strategy was doomed to rapid failure.
