Could Stalins Cult of Personality be dealt with in a different manner by Khrushchev?

I've been browsing through a number of articles related to the various Congress of the CPSU and I've reached the 20th, where Khrushchev delivered his denunciation of Stalin's cult of personality.

To say it caused a stir is an understatement and it has been credited with undermining Soviet influence in the West and causing tension with various Warsaw Pact members, it certainly came as a shock to members of the Congress, some of whom were reportedly taking ill during the speech.

I wonder if Khrushchev could have dealt with Stalin's legacy in a more subtle manner, could he have chipped away at it over the years? Or did Stalin's cult need to be tackled head-on and abruptly?

I'm not well versed enough in Soviet history of this era to give a full opinion. One guess I have is that Khrushchev would maybe not face the anti-party group coup the next year, though he would have faced some sort of showdown with headliners eventually.
 
After thinking about this I don't think Khrushchev has the temperament nor the ability to be subtle about this, certainly not without alerting people like Molotov and other Stalinists to what he was doing. We"d probably have a successful anti-Party group forcing him out by 1960.
 
I'm no Soviet expert but I know a bit about Chinese history. Deng's approach to Mao was to dub him as "70% of his legacy is good, 30% of his legacy is bad". How subtle it is will be in the eye of the beholder but it gives Deng the flexibility to depart from Mao's policies under the guise of not repeating the "bad 30%".

Perhaps in Khrushchev's case, he could depart from Stalin's policies while saying "Long Live Stalin"?
 
I'm no Soviet expert but I know a bit about Chinese history. Deng's approach to Mao was to dub him as "70% of his legacy is good, 30% of his legacy is bad". How subtle it is will be in the eye of the beholder but it gives Deng the flexibility to depart from Mao's policies under the guise of not repeating the "bad 30%".

Perhaps in Khrushchev's case, he could depart from Stalin's policies while saying "Long Live Stalin"?
I really don't understand the fixation with Stalin. really I don't.. it wasn't like he defeated the germans.. that was the red army and the peoples of eastern Europe, stalin climbed into bed with the enemy, then did everything in his power it seems to discredit his own military as to seriously hamper their own effort.
 
I really don't understand the fixation with Stalin. really I don't.. it wasn't like he defeated the germans.. that was the red army and the peoples of eastern Europe, stalin climbed into bed with the enemy, then did everything in his power it seems to discredit his own military as to seriously hamper their own effort.

Was there at the time a leader as able to lead the country without starting a series of coups or even a civil war?

Off the top of my head, they had smart people (e.g. Molotov, Tukhachevsky) and ruthless people (Yezhov, Beria), but was there anyone who was both smart and ruthless?

If I understand you correctly, you mention the Red Army purges, but to his merit he still managed to survive politically and be considered a hero by his own people after the war. Who else could have done that? Would, I wonder, the USSR have crumbled after Barbarossa if someone else had been at the helm?
 
How to downgrade Stalin without explicitly denouncing him was illustrated in 1953. Starting with the repudiation of the Doctors' Plot in April, there was a greater abstention from excessive praise of Stalin during 1953 than there would be until 1956. (This was especially true of the months before Beria's fall, but even after it, there was not much of a revival of Stalin-praise until 1954-5--when it may be related to Khrushchev's wanting to get Molotov and Kaganovich behind him to oust Malenkov.) As Robert Conquest summarizes it in *Power and Policy in the USSR* (p. 275-6):

"Bulganin's speech of May 1, 1953, made no mention of Stalin. Nor did his order for V.E. Day anniversary on May 9. *Pravda* of June 28 — that is, immediately after the fall of Beria — carried an article 'The People — Creator of History', by F. Konstantinov, which was an attack on the idea of the role of 'eminent personalities' in social history. The Communist Party was referred to as 'the leader'. An editorial in Pravda of July 13, 1953, strongly in favour of collective leadership, said : 'Decisions taken by individuals are always or almost always one-sided.' [Incidentally, Stalin himself had said that, [1] so this is an example of using something Stalin said to implicitly criticize Stalin--DT]

"The cult of personality and collective leadership issues were raised at the July 1953 plenum, as we know from Aristov's report to the XXth Congress : 'As is known, the July 1953 plenary session of the Central Committee revealed very blatant violations of this most important principle of Party leadership engendered by the cult of the individual, and demanded the constant implementation of Lenin's instructions regarding collectivity in Party leadership...'

"At a joint session of certain sections of the Academy of Sciences on October 19, 1953, several speakers, including Pospelov and F. Konstantinov, attacked the cult of personality. (Pospelov advanced the argument that Stalin himself was opposed to such a thing.) *Voprosy Filosofii* (No. 4 of 1953, which went to press in August) had an article on the fiftieth anniversary of the Party, in which Stalin is downgraded not to the 1956 level, but to very much the position he was to occupy in 1957-59. Lenin is frequently referred to, the Party and the Central Committee are given boundless praise, but Stalin appears only twice — once in a quotation from Malenkov's XIXth Congress Speech, and once as leader of the Central Committee in the struggle with the Trotskyites and other deviationists. The 1936 Constitution, hitherto almost always called the Stalin Constitution, is now referred to simply as the New Constitution. Victory in World War II is attributed no longer to Stalin, but to the Party. The edition of the *Philosophical Dictionary* published in November 1953 had a number of changes, entirely omissions, from that published in 1952, on the role of Stalin. Although it was a longer edition, its biography of Stalin was considerably shorter and it omitted a number of the strongest adulations and the most absurd of the falsifications — e.g. the claim made in the earlier edition that Stalin created the Constitution and wrote the *Short Course History of the Communist Party*.

"Stalin's birthday on December 21, 1953, was passed over in silence. But in December 1954 *Pravda* published a long article with a photograph of Stalin, writing, among other things, 'It was he who mercilessly exposed the enemies of the people. Under the leadership of its Central Committee and of Stalin the Communist Party destroyed the traitors and defeatists.' *Izvestia*, still under Malenkov's influence, devoted no more than a short note to the birthday...."

What made it difficult in 1956 to avoid direct mention of Stalin were the "rehabilitations" (posthumous and otherwise) that had been going on. Yet even that could theoretically be accomplished by blaming all unjust condemnations on Yagoda, Yezhov, and Beria. But there was an obvious problem in doing this, as Khrushchev noted in the Secret Speech: "Could Yezhov have arrested Kosior, for instance, without Stalin’s knowledge?...Could Yezhov have decided such important matters as the fate of such eminent Party figures? No, it would be a display of naiveté to consider this the work of Yezhov alone. It is clear that these matters were decided by Stalin, and that without his orders and his sanction Yezhov could not have done this." https://www.marxists.org/archive/khrushchev/1956/02/24.htm

[1] "No, single persons cannot decide. The decisions of single persons are always, or nearly always, one-sided decisions." https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1931/dec/13a.htm
 
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Was there at the time a leader as able to lead the country without starting a series of coups or even a civil war?

Off the top of my head, they had smart people (e.g. Molotov, Tukhachevsky) and ruthless people (Yezhov, Beria), but was there anyone who was both smart and ruthless?

If I understand you correctly, you mention the Red Army purges, but to his merit he still managed to survive politically and be considered a hero by his own people after the war. Who else could have done that? Would, I wonder, the USSR have crumbled after Barbarossa if someone else had been at the helm?

to the last part, maybe.. maybe not. It was a war of ETHNIC survival. would a better more competent USSR done better? possibly, that we will never know.

Molotov, Beria Tukhachevsk, Kamenev, Bukharin are all not bad choices.

There was no need for a civil war at that point. whoever the leader, they will have certain hard issues to face.. final ending of the last resistance in the civil war, possible polish war and other potential conflicts. rebuilding a a new nation from the old devastated by war/ civil war for a decade, food shortages and of course the holy crap reaction from the west on communism.

not saying it will or would be easy, but one does not need an ego maniac to run things. one simply needs someone who can make the deals and be a national project manager.
 
. . . Would, I wonder, the USSR have crumbled after Barbarossa if someone else had been at the helm?
You are aware that Stalin had some kind of mental/emotional breakdown for at least some hours after the Nazis first invaded, right?

And 'strongman' Stalin at first ordered Russian military units not to fight back, hoping upon hope that it was all a mistake.
 
would a better more competent USSR done better? possibly, that we will never know.

Or could it have done worse without a firm leadership? And to the last point, speculation is the very raison d'être of this forum;)

There was no need for a civil war at that point. whoever the leader, they will have certain hard issues to face.. final ending of the last resistance in the civil war, possible polish war and other potential conflicts. rebuilding a a new nation from the old devastated by war/ civil war for a decade, food shortages and of course the holy crap reaction from the west on communism.

not saying it will or would be easy, but one does not need an ego maniac to run things. one simply needs someone who can make the deals and be a national project manager.

Let's say he's competent. What's the chance that someone would try and topple him?
That's why I said he had to be ruthless in eliminating the competition.

You are aware that Stalin had some kind of mental/emotional breakdown for at least some hours after the Nazis first invaded, right?

And 'strongman' Stalin at first ordered Russian military units not to fight back, hoping upon hope that it was all a mistake.

I suspect you'll find the same pattern in all countries facing an invasion by the Wehrmacht.
The difference being that he didn't succumb to defeatism and got back on his feet
 
Or could it have done worse without a firm leadership? And to the last point, speculation is the very raison d'être of this forum;)



Let's say he's competent. What's the chance that someone would try and topple him?
That's why I said he had to be ruthless in eliminating the competition.



I suspect you'll find the same pattern in all countries facing an invasion by the Wehrmacht.
The difference being that he didn't succumb to defeatism and got back on his feet

on the last part first.. The soviets had land to spare to trade, is the normal tactic. Stalin did not defeat Hitler. The red army and the peoples of the USSR did.

as to the other parts, that depends on the stability of the system. when a system is created that emphasizes crap behavior, political and military infighting .. then well. sure you need a pompus ass hat at the top. Stalin was nothing more than a pompus ass hat. Lenin while not the nicest guy, I can at least relate and understand. Stalin was not better than Hitler. He climbed into bed with him after all to dismember Poland. Stalin had millions killed with his policies.

could the soviet union have done better. that depends on how the 20 and 30's's pan out. if it is a nation built on fear and infighting.. well maybe it fairs worse. jesus the germans were about to topple the whole thing sitting and sieging Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad, if it got any worse its game over.

maybe someone more competent decides not to throw Poland under the tank tracks
Maybe someone more competent doesn't starve his own people in the 30's

I don't know.. call me simple
 
on the last part first.. The soviets had land to spare to trade, is the normal tactic. Stalin did not defeat Hitler. The red army and the peoples of the USSR did.

No doubt, but would the red army and the people of the USSR have been able to defeat Hitler if there was chaos in the rear?

as to the other parts, that depends on the stability of the system. when a system is created that emphasizes crap behavior, political and military infighting .. then well. sure you need a pompus ass hat at the top. Stalin was nothing more than a pompus ass hat. Lenin while not the nicest guy, I can at least relate and understand. Stalin was not better than Hitler. He climbed into bed with him after all to dismember Poland. Stalin had millions killed with his policies.

How many variables are we considering here? Even with another party head the system won't change overnight.
 
There were still a lot of Stalin's boys running around,he needed to discredit them fast before they could even think a return to power. If that happened it would have been"Great Purge 2.0" the Soviet Union wouldn't have survived that.
 
. . . I suspect you'll find the same pattern in all countries facing an invasion by the Wehrmacht.
The difference being that he didn't succumb to defeatism and got back on his feet
Not willing to give Stalin that much credit! :p

He really did have a mental breakdown for at least some hours after the Nazi invasion of Barbarossa. He initially ordered Russian units not to fight back, desperately hoping it was the rogue action of an individual Nazi commander.

Stalin himself withdrew from Moscow to a smaller city, and when fellow party leaders approached the house he was staying at, he at first thought they were there to arrest him. And Stalin stayed out of public view I think for several weeks.

will look for a couple of references.
 

RousseauX

Donor
I've been browsing through a number of articles related to the various Congress of the CPSU and I've reached the 20th, where Khrushchev delivered his denunciation of Stalin's cult of personality.

To say it caused a stir is an understatement and it has been credited with undermining Soviet influence in the West and causing tension with various Warsaw Pact members, it certainly came as a shock to members of the Congress, some of whom were reportedly taking ill during the speech.

I wonder if Khrushchev could have dealt with Stalin's legacy in a more subtle manner, could he have chipped away at it over the years? Or did Stalin's cult need to be tackled head-on and abruptly?

I'm not well versed enough in Soviet history of this era to give a full opinion. One guess I have is that Khrushchev would maybe not face the anti-party group coup the next year, though he would have faced some sort of showdown with headliners eventually.
Sure

You can do the Deng-Mao thing where you declare him 70% good and 30% bad or some % good some % bad
 
A couple of years after Stalin's death, Khrushchev could compliment him on heroically recovering from his breakdown, when he's really criticizing him on having it in the first place.

The challenge of course would be to keep this subtle. ;)
 
A couple of years after Stalin's death, Khrushchev could compliment him on heroically recovering from his breakdown, when he's really criticizing him on having it in the first place.

The challenge of course would be to keep this subtle. ;)

That can be achieved by effusively praising Stalin for leading the USSR to victory, but criticizing vehemently the consequences of his breakdown post-Barbarossa without mentioning Stalin by name.

I wonder if Khrushchev could have dealt with Stalin's legacy in a more subtle manner, could he have chipped away at it over the years? Or did Stalin's cult need to be tackled head-on and abruptly?

Just going back to the original question. I think the answer will depend on whether Khrushchev wants a clean break (meaning it makes sense to denounce Stalin) or he wants legitimacy
(praising Stalin even as he is departing from his legacy) or both.
 
I wonder if a more subtle course may actually work out worse for him in the long run if people like Molotov and the other Stalinists work out what he is trying to do and have more time to plot against him rather than the fait accompli at the Congress?

How would the 60's look with the Stalinists back in power and a purged liberal/reformist wing? God forbid a coup happens around the Cuban Missile Crisis or similar.
 
I'm no Soviet expert but I know a bit about Chinese history. Deng's approach to Mao was to dub him as "70% of his legacy is good, 30% of his legacy is bad". How subtle it is will be in the eye of the beholder but it gives Deng the flexibility to depart from Mao's policies under the guise of not repeating the "bad 30%".

In a way, without giving "percentages" on Stalin's good and bad aspects, this was done in the USSR as well. In the late 1950's, Stalin was treated in a more "balanced" way than he had been in the 1956 Secret Speech. Robert Conquest in *Power and Policy in the USSR* (pp. 354-255) sums up the evaluation of Stalin in the 1958 *Great Soviet Encyclopedia* :

***

Another ideological event of key interest was the appearance of the Sta volume of the Large Soviet Encyclopaedia (Vol. 40) in 1958. There had been a delay of over eighteen months, during which all the subsequent alphabetical volumes had appeared. The trouble was plainly the Stalin biography. Its final form may be taken as representing the considered position bf the Khrushchev regime on the subject.

The article is one of only six pages, as against forty-four in the previous edition. Stalin's role in the revolution is toned down, though not to the extent of giving credit to the 'oppositionists'. He is praisrd for exposing Trotskyite and Rightist deviations and carrying out collectivisation and industralisation. The biography, unlike Khrushchev's Secret Speech, has little to say on the purges in the 'thirties, and what it says is far more moderate in tone. Stalin is said to have applied unnecessary mass repression against ideological opponents. This he did, it is stated, on the basis of the mistaken thesis he advanced in 1937 that the class struggle would become increasingly intense during the construction of Socialism. Besides neglecting the pre-1937 purges, the Encyclopaedia places most of the responsibility for the liquidation of the innocent on other shoulders:

'In this situation the accursed enemies of the people, Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria, who had wormed their way into J. V. Stalin's confidence, slandered and destroyed many honourable and devoted Party people.'

As far as his war policies are concerned, Stalin is credited with making 'a serious contribution to the defence of the country and the struggle against Fascism' and with taking all possible measures for strengthening the anti-fascist coalition. On the other hand, he is said to have attached excessive significance to the Nazi-Soviet Pact and, as a result, to have disbelieved reports of German military preparations and rejected proposals for strengthening Soviet forces on the frontier. This was partly responsible for the early defeat of the Soviet Army. Further, in his conduct of certain important military operations he disregarded the opinions of members of the Central Committee engaged on military duties on the spot, with disastrous consequences. This recalls the passage in Khrushchev's Secret Speech, where he attacked Stalin for refusing his advice on the Kharkhov operation. There is no mention in the biography of Stalin's part in the wartime mass deportations of several Caucasian nationalities.

Very little is said of Stalin's post-war activities. The publication of his works, *Marxism and Questions of Linguistics* and *Economic Problems of Socialism* is noted, the latter with the warning that certain of its propositions, including that on the inevitability of a decrease in capitalist production after the war, were fallacious. It is also stated that Stalin often made mistaken decisions on economic questions; rejected measures proposed by members of the Central Committee; and made serious mistakes in foreign policy — e.g. the break with Yugoslavia.

Considerable space is given to the personality cult theme. Seeking to prove that the personality cult is not endemic in the Soviet system, the biography attributes its emergence both to negative features in Stalin's character and to specific conditions which prevailed during the period of the construction of Socialism. As a result, although the lower Party organisations continued to function normally, Central Committee plenums and Party Congresses were not held for a number of years, and Stalin became impervious to all criticism.

In conclusion it is emphasised that while the personality cult inflicted considerable damage on Soviet life, it had no great influence on the development of the Soviet State. This provides the key to the whole biography. The final passages include,

'His name is inseparable from Marxism-Leninism and it would be a most flagrant distortion of historical truth to spread the mistakes made by Stalin in the last years of his life to all his Party and State activity extending over many years. The campaign undertaken by reactionary imperialist circles against the 'Stalinism' they themselves have contrived in fact constitutes a campaign against the revolutionary workers' movement. The attacks by revisionists against so-called 'Stalinism' are also essentially a form of struggle against the fundamental positions of Marxism-Leninism.'

***

BTW, the article on Stalin in the 1976 (Brezhnev-era) edition of the *Great Soviet Encyclopedia* is even shorter than the 1958 edition (now Stalin is down to two pages...), and seems to me to be on the whole less negative, though not without criticisms (including a citation of Lenin's famous "Stalin is too rude") https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Stalin,+Josef+Vissarionovich As Anne C. Vinograde noted in 1985 (in an article entitled "Will Stalin become a non‐person?') https://books.google.com/books?id=C_7Xh2euykoC&pg=PA42 it is as though Stalin was simply becoming less and less important.
 
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World War II: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection [5 volumes] , edited by Spencer C. Tucker, 2016.

https://books.google.com/books?id=w...ngs in the winter and spring of 1941"&f=false

' . . . Stalin rejected numerous Western warnings in the winter and spring of 1941 that Germany was preparing to attack . . . '
Yeah, 'great leader' Stalin seemed to fumble the ball pretty badly.

EDIT: And I'm not saying any of us here view Stalin as a 'great leader.' I'm saying that for very understandable and human reasons, many Russian citizens do romanticize their leadership during the Great Patriotic War which threatened their country's very existence. And if this is a somewhat difficult issue 70 years later, imagine how much more difficult it was for Khrushchev a scant ten years later in the mid 1950s!
 
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