Russian Life & People Digest
Question by Tim: Why did Khrushchev denounce Stalin after his death?
Was it merely for political edge? Was he very much of a despot himself?
Answers and Views:
Answer by nobudE
it wasn’t healthy to denounce Stalin while he was alive.
Read all the answers in the comments.
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Gromm says
There were two main reasons why Khrushchev denounced Stalin: –
a)Khrushchev wanted to lead the USSR onto a new course. But he could not justify that to the Party, without first revealing why and how Stalin’s regime had been so bad.
b)Khrushchev felt that the truth about Stalin’s regime could not remain hidden for much longer. He did not want to take the blame for it.
Although, compared to Stalin, Khrushchev dealt gently with most of his enemies in the Party, he was indeed a despot by the standards of western democracy. He forced through his policies by bullying. His reaction to the 1956 Hungarian uprising was to crush it, and then insist on iron-fist rule in the satellite nations. Having condemned Stalin’s abuses of power, Khrushchev did little to reduce the secret police apparatus within Russia; or to deal with corruption and favoritism in the Communist party; or to alleviate the sufferings of political prisoners in the Gulag.
Source: “Comrades: a history of world communism.” book by Robert Service.
EDIT: This is a much abbreviated answer compared with the one I tried to submit (8 times). It appears that a glitch in Y/A is limiting the length of answers. It needs to be fixed, because this is NOT an adequate answer to this question.
larry_the_orc says
Khrushchev needed to put "spin" on his presidency because of Stalins excessive use of force and executions.
Khrushchev as not so much of a despot himself per se (Unless you look at Hungarys revolution and the construction of the Iron Curtain)
Stalin had killed in excess of 30 million people, Khrushchev probably didn't kill more than 2 or 3 million.