Text 3 Khrushchev’s Secret Speech and Its Repercussions

I. Scan the text. Fill in the gaps with the words given below:

Part I

Subject, mass murderer, eye-opener, launched, accept, “personality cult”, observers, rivals.

Khrushchev __________ de-Stalinization in 1956 at the Communist Party’s 20th Party Congress, its first since Stalin’s death. His vehicle was a dramatic four-and-one-half-hour speech, called the “secret speech” because it was given in a closed session from which outside __________ were barred. Of course, its contents soon became widely known, and they were shocking, at least to Khrushchev’s audience in Moscow, for whom Stalin had been infallible. Khrushchev accused Stalin of being a __________ who had persecuted thousands of loyal Communists. Included in Khrushchev’s long list of Stalin’s Communist victims were the grim statistics from the 17th Party Congress of 1934, the majority of whose delegates and Central Committee members Stalin eliminated during the great purge. Stalin’s blunders during World War II likewise had cost the Soviet Union huge numbers of lives, Khrushchev bitterly noted. Beyond that Stalin had violated party norms by promoting a __________ that glorified him beyond recognition.

The speech, to put it mildly, was an __________ for the stunned delegates, but Khrushchev left out as much as he put in. He said nothing about Stalin’s non-Communist victims, including the millions of peasants victimized by collectivization. In fact nothing Stalin did before 1934, all of which Khrushchev had supported as creating the basis for socialism in the Soviet Union, was __________ to criticism. Instead Khrushchev’s message was that the Soviet system, while in need of reform, was fundamentally sound, as was the Communist Party Stalin had led for a quarter of a century. Of course, leaders like Malenkov and Molotov, who stood closest to Stalin during the period of the late dictator’s most savage crimes and blunders – closer than had Khrushchev – were tarred by the speech, even if only indirectly. And that also served the politician who delivered it.

The problem, as Khrushchev’s __________ feared, was that the speech and de-Stalinization itself could lead to trouble when people sought more change than Khrushchev was willing to permit. The most serious difficulties occurred in Eastern Europe, first in Poland and then in Hungary, two countries that had little love for either communism or Russia. In Poland riots and demonstrations between June and October 1956 forced Khrushchev and his Kremlin colleagues to __________ a change in the Polish Communist leadership. That and subsequent reforms, including the dismantling of the hated collective farms, brought order to Poland.

Part II

Outlived, remove, expelled from, encouraged, refuge, biographer, dismissed, full-fledged, responsible, political oblivion, intervention, survived, direct responsibility.

In Hungary a new Communist leadership was not enough to pacify the population. As in Poland protests against poor conditions and the local Communist rulers brought a reformist party leadership to power, but that only __________ the Hungarians who wanted to see their country enjoy genuine freedom. Demands for reform turned into a __________ revolt against Communist rule and Soviet control. The fateful step was taken when Imre Nagy, a party official with a reputation as a reformer and the newly installed prime minister, announced that Hungary would no longer be a one-party dictatorship and was leaving the Communist bloc to become a neutral nation, like neighboring Austria. That precipitated massive Soviet military __________. Thousands of Hungarians were killed in the fighting that followed, while more than 200,000 fled to the West before the revolt was crushed. Nagy and several colleagues, tricked into leaving the Yugoslav embassy where they had taken __________, were brought to Moscow and eventually executed.

The backlash of the Hungarian revolution nearly toppled Khrushchev. In June 1957 Malenkov, Molotov, fellow Stalin loyalist Lazar Kaganovich, and several other party leaders joined together in a plot to __________ Khrushchev from office. The plotters actually had a majority on the Presidium, the party’s top decision-making body (the former Politburo). But Khrushchev, insisting on following party rules, brought the issue to the Central Committee, the body to which the Presidium was technically __________ and where his supporters held sway. A tumultuous eight-day meeting followed at which Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich were accused of __________ in the unjust arrests and murder of fellow Communists under Stalin.

As the most recent and comprehensive __________ of Khrushchev has noted, the June 1957 Central Committee meeting went much further than Khrushchev’s 1956 secret speech and was “the closest Stalin’s henchmen ever came to a day of reckoning”. The details were kept secret from the Soviet public, which was informed only that members of what was labeled the “anti-party” group had been __________ from their posts. That sounded a lot like Stalin’s old politics, but Khrushchev’s victory included a far more important political reform: This time all the losers in the power struggle __________. It was Stalin’s murderous politics that, finally, was dead. While consigned to __________, Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich – the latter tearfully phoned Khrushchev begging for his life – were given minor administrative positions and later allowed to retire on pensions.

In October 1961 public insult would be added to the injury of political defeat when Khrushchev denounced Stalin in open session at the Communist Party’s 22nd Congress. He and various other speakers linked Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich to Stalin’s crimes. After the congress all were __________ the Communist Party. Yet the three, who themselves had cut short so many lives, lived to ripe old ages and had the pleasure of seeing their nemesis Khrushchev removed from power seven years later. They all also __________ him, in relatively comfortable retirement, by many years.