ABSTRACT
So Many spectacular developments have occurred in the Communist world since the Nineteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in October 1952 that this event has not received the attention and analysis it deserves. It is true that, compared to the dramatic tensions of the Twentieth and Twenty-Second Congresses, there is a stage-managed dullness about the Nineteenth; its proceedings regurgitate the same stale platitudes over and over again. Still, when the congress is re-examined with the benefit of our subsequent knowledge, and as a culmination of the experiences which have been analyzed in the preceding chapters, it becomes evident that behind its ponderous formulations the congress signaled some significant departures in Communist thought and practice.
