De-Stalinization was also fraught with foreign repercussions. Khrushchev’s secret speech, leaked by a Polish communist, quickly found its way into print (with the assistance of the American CIA). It had an extraordinary impact on foreign communists—many of whose comrades-in-arms had perished in the Stalinist repressions. In April 1956 the
The main explosion came in Hungary: in late April 1956 the Soviet ambassador, Iurii Andropov, warned Moscow that de-Stalinization had exacerbated internal tensions and provoked criticism from Stalinists in the Hungarian Politburo. By September Andropov’s dispatches became increasingly alarmist, with warnings about an anti-communist movement and disintegration of the Hungarian Communist Party. The popular movement culminated in street demonstrations on 23 October, when angry crowds smashed Stalinist statues and shouted demands for democratization and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The next day the Hungarian party elected Imre Nagy as its chief, and he promptly summoned Andropov to ask about Soviet troop movements in eastern Hungary. The denouement came soon: after Hungary declared itself a neutral state, on 4 November the Russian army invaded and suppressed the popular insurrection with raw force. A week later the KGB chief reported that Soviet forces had arrested 3,773 ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and seized 90,000 firearms.
The attack on Stalin also had reverberations inside the USSR. Rehabilitation involved such vast numbers that even Khrushchev became anxious. Thus, to protect ‘state interests’ and understate the scale of repression, the KGB falsely informed relatives that many of the executed had received sentences of hard labour and died of natural causes. More problematic was the fate of entire peoples deported to Siberia and Central Asia for alleged collaboration—such as the Karachai, Chechens, Ingushi, Kabardinians, and Balkars. Although the government began in April 1956 to allow certain groups (the main exceptions being the Volga Germans and Crimean Tatars) to return home, repatriation created new problems of its own when returnees demanded restitution of property. The result was fierce ethnic conflict, such as the four-day riot in August 1958 that involved Russians, Chechens, and Ingushi.
But the political resonance from de-Stalinization was muted in Russia. A KGB report on ‘anti-Soviet’ activities during celebrations for the October Revolution in 1956 cited only minor incidents—for example, ‘hooligans’ demolished two sculptures of Stalin in Kherson, shredded photographs of party leaders in Sevastopol, defaced a portrait of Khrushchev in Serpukhov, and disseminated anti-Soviet leaflets in Batumi. The action of a tenth-grade student in Iaroslavl (who marched past the tribune with a banner that read: ‘We demand the removal of Soviet troops from Hungary’) was as unique as it was courageous. Nevertheless, the ‘vigilant’ leaders became anxious and on 14 December 1956 approved the proposals of a special commission (chaired by L. I. Brezhnev) to combat the growth of anti-Soviet sentiments and activities. The next year the KGB crushed a student democratic movement at Moscow State University that, under the leadership of L. Krasnopevtsev, had distributed leaflets and agitated in favour of full-scale democratization. In Archangel the police uncovered a tiny group that categorically repudiated the Stalinist legacy: ‘Stalin, having destroyed his personal adversaries, established a fascist autocratic regime in the USSR, the brutality of which has no equals in history’.
All this galvanized Stalinists to oppose Khrushchev and his policies. Although Khrushchev later claimed to have broad support in the party, many party members—including several members of the Politburo—opposed de-Stalinization. Stalwarts like A. M. Peterson of Riga openly challenged the new policy: ‘Comrades in the Central Committee, do you really not feel that the party expects from you a rehabilitation of Stalin?’ Pro-Stalinist sentiments were particularly strong in Stalin’s home republic of Georgia; news of Khrushchev’s secret speech had even ignited street demonstrations in Tbilisi.
