By itself the Secret Speech would not have hurt the Communist parties of the West that much, if there had been no violence in eastern Europe and if Hungary had followed a reformist path similar to Poland. Yes, the criticism of Stalin was embarrassing for those leaders who had previously lauded him, but remember that western communist leaders had successfully coped with reversal after reversal in the CPSU's line. (Social democrats could be a brother party one day and no better than fascists the next, etc. Indeed, the very *word* fascism could be almost entirely eliminated from the Communist vocabulary of abuse from late 1939 to June 22, 1941.) Moreover, Khrushchev still maintained that Stalin had been basically right about problems of socialist construction--there was no criticism of forced collectivization, for example (indeed, no admission that it *was* forced) , and no attempts as of 1956 to rehabilitate Bukharin (let alone Trotsky, Zinoviev, etc.) Stalin's faults were portrayed as *personal* ones--vanity, vengefulness, paranoia, etc., of which people like Beria had taken advantage. Thus, western communist leaders could still maintain that the Soviet *system* was basically sound (and had even shown a readiness to "renew" itself, to "admit past mistakes" etc.). All that was necessary was for the cult of the CPSU to fully supplant that of Stalin, and what made that easier is that already in 1953-5 the cult of Stalin had been toned down somewhat and there had been a greater emphasis on the collective wisdom of the CPSU and its leaders.