Khrushchev's secret speech denounces Stalin

February 25, 1956

In a closed session of the Soviet Communist Party Congress, Nikita Khrushchev spent four hours listing Stalin's crimes: the purges, the torture, the cult of personality, the wartime blunders. The text leaked and electrified the world. Communists in Warsaw and Budapest began to imagine reform. Mao, hearing, was disturbed; de-Stalinization would complicate his own cult of personality.