De-stalinization
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Khrushchev believed that the only way that the Party would inspire loyalty among the people is removing stalinism. On October 1955, when was before the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev began to tell the delegates about Stalin's crimes.
The 20th Party Congress opened on February 14, 1956. In his opening words, Khrushchev denigrated Stalin by asking delegates to rise in honor of the communist leaders who had died since the last congress, and he equate Stalin with the drunken Klement Gottwald and the little-known Kyuichi Tokuda. In four hours, he demolished Stalin's reputation. It is known well as the "Secret Speech" to a closed session of the Congress limited to Soviet delegates. Khrushchev noted in his memoirs that the "congress listened to me in silence. As the saying goes, you could have heard a pin drop. It was all so sudden and unexpected." Khrushchev told the delegates, It is here that Stalin showed in a whole series of cases his intolerance, his brutality, and his abuse of power ... he often chose the path of repression and physical annihilation, not only against actual enemies, but also against individuals who had not committed any crimes and against the party or the Soviet Government.
The Secret Speech, though it did not fundamentally change Soviet society, had wide-ranging effects.
The term "Secret Speech" proved to be an utter misnomer. While the attendees at the Speech were all Soviet, Eastern European delegates only had chance to hear it. However by March 5, copies were being mailed throughout the Soviet Union, marked "not for the press" rather than "top secret". An official translation appeared within a month in Poland; the Poles printed 12,000 extra copies, one of which soon reached the West. Khrushchev's another son, Sergei, wrote, "clearly, Father tried to ensure it would reach as many ears as possible. It was soon read at Komsomol meetings; that meant another eighteen million listeners. If you include their relatives, friends, and acquaintances, you could say that the entire country became familiar with the speech ... Spring had barely begun when the speech began circulating around the world."