Nikita Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” of 25 February 1956 marked the full commencement of “de-Stalinization” in which Josef Stalin’s “Cult of the Individual” would be denounced and dismantled. But it did more than that rule of law was reinstated; subjective history corrected; paranoia and purges condemned; gulags emptied, and innocent party members rehabilitated.

The Cold War ended 25 years ago with the fall of the Berlin Wall. But another cult of personality has been established in Moscow surrounding Vladimir Putin. Delivered to the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Khrushchevs speech  warned of the dangers to the Soviet state of the cult of personality and laid out a program to eradicate it, which makes it all the more ironic how applicable his words are when one looks at the state Putin has built around himself in Russia today.

The Secret Speech
Khrushchev went on to describe in detail Stalin’s transgressions as a “grave abuse of power” and that “many prominent party leaders and rank-and-file party workers…fell victim to Stalins despotism” in a system that “rendered it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven” which “actually eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight or the making of ones views known on this or that issue” and where “confessions were acquired through physical pressures against the accused.” He announced: “Comrades, we must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all.”Before a hall packed with party delegates from across the Soviet Union, Khrushchev made clear from the speechs outset that the “founders” – Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin were firmly against the cult of personality Stalin had developed; were believers in collective leadership of the party and state; discussed views rather than imposing them, and allowed the party apparatus to function as it was organised to. Stalin had not been for any of these things. His rivals on the Central Committee of Communist Party of the Soviet Union knew this better than anyone.

As Nikita Khrushchev warned in his secret speech: Beware of a cult of personality. Almost sixty years later, we should heed his words.

He then laid out what de-Stalinization would entail:

First…to condemn and to eradicate the cult of the individual as alien…and not consonant with the principles of party leadership and the norms of party life, and to fight inexorably all attempts at bringing back this practice in one form or another.

Secondly, to continue systematically and consistently…the main principle of collective leadership, characterized by the observation of the norms of party life described in the statutes of our party, and, finally, characterized by the wide practice of criticism and self-criticism.

Thirdly…to fight willfulness of individuals abusing their power. The evil caused by acts violating revolutionary Socialist legality which have accumulated during a long time as a result of the negative influence of the cult of the individual has to be completely corrected.

The Secret Speech made clear the Soviet leadership’s view that the Cult of Personality was inimical and was to be eradicated; that rule of law was to be restored; that collective leadership of the state by a functioning party apparatus was to be restored, and; that abuse of power was to end. Soviet communist leaders recognized then the dangers to the functioning of a state – even in a non-democratic, non-capitalist system – of the building of an ego maniacal dictatorship surrounding one man.

Khrushchev’s Warning for Russia

For many in Russia today, Vladimir Putin is Russia. He holds the reins of presidential power tightly, passing them off to his pliant former-deputy Dmitry Medvedev for a few years to become Prime Minister, only to receive them back a trick they can play for the rest of Putin’s natural life. He has systematically oppressed individual political opponents to his rule, such as