ABSTRACT
While Stalin’s death on 5 March 1953 in some ways marked the end of a dramatic and often painful phase of Central European history, in others it represented the start of a transition from a founding period whose consequences and typical processes still had several decades in which to elaborate their characteristic nature. Some changes did flow directly from the death of the Soviet dictator and the subsequent modifications in the nature and composition of the Kremlin elite and its modus operandi. The inclination to stage showtrials and conduct full-blooded hunts for conspiracies and well-placed traitors passed as it became clear that all members of a collective leadership were equally at risk, although little immediate change was apparent in Czechoslovakia where Husak and fellow ‘bourgeois nationalists’ (as well as others) were put on trial in 1954. In general, however, the role of the security organs and the secret police was reduced and political processes increasingly flowed in and around the formal institutions of rule - the government, ministries, state administration and, in pride of place, the communist party and its organization. The cult of personality and the intensity of individualized arbitrary dictatorship thus declined. The rigorous economic discipline imposed on the populace was also relaxed. This was reflected in the reduced pace of economic change, an easing off of the collectivization drive and less emphasis on heavy industrial development, all of which helped to provide a greater opportunity to develop consum er industries and increase supplies of agricultural produce.
