Earlier last month, at its 19th Reporting and Election Congress, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) invalidated Nikita Khrushchev’s bombshell 1956 address to the highest-ranking Soviet communists — known as his “secret speech” — in which he denounced Josef Stalin’s cult of personality.
At a time when “NATO militarism is increasing its aggression against Russia,” according to the KPRF narrative, Stalin — who had nearly a million of his own citizens executed and sent countless more to the Gulag labor camps — should be admired, even emulated, not decried.
By contrast, the KPRF resolution accuses Khrushchev of subjecting the “results of 30 years Stalin’s leadership” to “wholesale denigration” for the sake of “cheap popularity.” In fact, the KPRF claims, Khrushchev faced an “objective shortage of materials discrediting the name and work of Stalin,” and a “targeted effort” to replace original documents with “fakes” in state archives has been “reliably established.”
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