ABSTRACT
The campaign of de-Stalinization, or ‘overcoming the cult of personality’, was a unique episode in the history of Soviet public opinion. Never before had the party been, and rarely would it be again, so indecisive in its approach to the Soviet past, propagating contradictory views of Stalin(ism) in a series of advances and retreats unprecedented in the party’s history.1 And never again would the party unleash such a torrent of conflicting and controversial views from the Soviet public. Whilst the campaign intentionally set out to emancipate the popular consciousness from the Stalin cult, it also inadvertently risked the ‘de-Sovietization’ of public opinion, as swathes of the Soviet population reacted in violent, unpredictable and ‘anti-Soviet’ ways to de-Stalinization. Over the course of the ‘decade of de-Stalinization’ (1953-63/4), the party failed to delineate a strict party line, whether on de-Stalinization itself, or on the myriad problems of party and social discipline which were its unintended consequences.
