ABSTRACT
Changes in the rules of political struggle at the top were matched by a general reduction in the use of coercion following Stalin's death. There was an immediate, if limited, amnesty, a public call for a return to 'socialist legality', and in private the new leadership began to articulate criticism of the way Stalin had exploited his independent control of the KGB. The secret police were firmly subordinated to party control once more, while uprisings in several labour camps during 1953 and 1954 brought the future of the whole camp system into question. The most dramatic break from the past came at the famous closed session of the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956. Despite the forebodings of some of his colleagues, Khrushchev took it upon himself to spell out to stunned party delegates a selective catalogue of Stalin's crimes. He cast no doubt, of course, on the legitimacy of the Party's claim to rule. The emphasis was firmly on the mass terror launched against loyal members of the Party, many of whom Khrushchev mentioned by name, and upon Stalin's irresponsible and often disastrous interference in otherwise thoroughly sound economic and military planning. He was also at pains to distance Stalin's personality cult and all the crimes to which it gave rise from the achievements of the revolution, of collectivization, and the industrialization drive. He specifically stressed Lenin's distrust of Stalin. But the Terror, the mass arrests, the uprooting of whole nationalities - all were explicitly denounced. Although the speech was not published in Russia, edited versions were circulated at party meetings all over the country and before long its message was widely known.
