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Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev
1894-1971
Nikita
Khrushchev was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1958 to 1964.
Khrushchev and
Stalin
On February 25, 1956, a closed session
of the 20th Congress of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet
Union) was in for a treat.
The assembled comrades were about to listen to
Khrushchev's Secret Speech,
also called The Cult of the Individual Speech.
Without announcing any agenda for the
session, Khrushchev dove right into the subject and didn't take a
breath for the next four hours. With eyes and mouths wide open, the
delegates witnessed how their First Party Secretary systematically dismantled the
iconic image of the late dictator
Josef Stalin.
The CIA had a transcript of this speech on their desk
by June 4, 1956, and gave out party hats and streamers.
In the Soviet Union, Khrushchev's speech
became very quickly widely known. However, officially it remained
classified until 1989.
Khrushchev and
JFK
In his
speech on the Cuban
Missile Crisis, delivered on October 22, 1962,
U.S. President John F. Kennedy
called
"upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this
clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace and to
stable relations between our two nations."
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