[Mb-civic] Happy Anniversary, Nikita Khrushchev - Anne Applebaum - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Happy Anniversary, Nikita Khrushchev

By Anne Applebaum
Wednesday, February 22, 2006; A15

It is, I admit, an odd thing to celebrate: A long-winded and not 
entirely honest speech, made behind closed doors, addressed to the 
stony-faced leaders of a country that no longer exists. Nevertheless, 
I'm reluctant to let the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev's famous 
"secret speech" -- his denunciation of Stalin and Stalinism, delivered 
to the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party on Feb. 25, 1956 -- 
pass without notice. We are, after all, at another important historical 
moment. Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. secretary of state, has just 
announced that we will spend $75 million promoting democracy and 
fighting a totalitarian regime in Iran. We have thousands of soldiers in 
Iraq, trying to pick up the pieces after the collapse of another 
totalitarian regime there. Since Khrushchev's secret speech was the 
first step in what turned out to be a very long struggle to end 
totalitarianism in the Soviet Union, it's worth remembering now what the 
circumstances that surrounded it actually were.

In essence, Khrushchev's speech (which didn't remain secret very long; 
Polish communists leaked it to the Israelis, who leaked it to the West) 
was a piece of theater, a four-hour harangue during which the new Soviet 
leader denounced the "cult of personality" that had surrounded Stalin, 
condemned torture and acknowledged that "mass arrests and deportation of 
thousands and thousands of people" had "created insecurity, fear and 
even desperation" in his country. But although it was an international 
sensation -- no Soviet leader had spoken so frankly before -- the speech 
didn't exactly tell the whole truth. Khrushchev accused Stalin of many 
crimes, but deftly left out the ones in which he himself had been 
implicated. As William Taubman, author of "Khrushchev: The Man and His 
Era," has documented, the Soviet leader had in fact collaborated 
enthusiastically with Stalinist terror, participating in the very mass 
arrests he condemned. Khrushchev's speech was intended as much to 
consolidate his own power and intimidate his party opponents -- all of 
whom had also collaborated enthusiastically -- as it was to liberate his 
countrymen.

Still, there were high hopes for change after the speech, both within 
and outside the Soviet Union. But the cultural and political thaw that 
followed turned out to be as ambivalent as the speech itself. Some 
prisoners were released; some were not. Some daring works of literature 
were published; some were not. Khrushchev himself seemed unable to make 
up his mind about how much should really change, but it didn't matter: 
Within a decade he was ousted from power by resentful neo-Stalinists. 
Two more decades were to pass before Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the young 
communists who had been electrified by Khrushchev's secret speech, 
restarted the discussion of Stalin's crimes, and launched, finally, the 
reforms that brought the system down.

Clearly there is a lesson here for those who would bring down 
totalitarian regimes, and it concerns timing: The death of a dictator or 
the toppling of his statues does not necessarily mean that a complete 
political transformation has occurred, or even that one will occur soon. 
On the contrary, it takes a very, very long time -- more than a 
generation -- for a political class to free itself of the authoritarian 
impulse. People do not easily give up the ideology that has brought them 
wealth and power. People do not quickly change the habits that they've 
incurred over a lifetime. Even people who want to reform their countries 
-- and at some level Khrushchev did want to reform his country -- can't 
necessarily bring themselves to say or to do what is necessary. 
Certainly they find it difficult to carry out political reforms that 
might hasten their own retirement.

This isn't to say dictatorships must last forever: Despite some of its 
current leadership's repressive instincts, Russia itself has changed in 
fifty years, beyond recognition. But the transformation was often 
incremental, always uneven, and difficult for impatient Americans to 
understand or support. But then, all such transformations are difficult 
for impatient Americans to understand or support, and probably always 
will be. If history is anything to go by, we'll have no choice but to 
try and do so anyway.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/21/AR2006022101140.html?nav=hcmodule
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