1955-1956

1955 12 August
The Presidium of the CC CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR pass a resolution “On Reducing the Strength of the Soviet Army and the Armies of the People's Democracies.” By 15 December 1955, 340,000 troops are cut from the regular Soviet army (4.8 million soldiers), and enlisted reservists (4.6 million). Secret instructions are also sent to the leaders of the “people's democracies” to reduce the strength of their armies.
4 November
The CC CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR pass a resolution on the liquidation of excesses in planning and construction. “Stalinist architecture” becomes a thing of the past. 1956 25 February
At a closed meeting Khrushchev makes his famous “Secret Speech” entitled “On the Personality Cult and Its Consequences.” The text of his speech is not for publication, but shortly afterwards the speech is summarized in the New York Times. In the USSR Khrushchev's speech is first published in 1989 in the Central Committee journal "Izvestiia TsK KPSS".
7 March
Three-day commemorations of the third anniversary of Stalin's death and his cult of personality, which was exposed at the XX Party Congress, begin in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. The flower-laying ceremony turns into a powerful demonstration. Proclamations calling for the separation of Georgia from the USSR are circulated. The protests are crushed with the help of tanks and weapons.
8 March
The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issues a decree on shortening the workday for workers and officials on the eve of state and personal holidays.
17 March
The Presidium of the CC CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR approve a decision “On Reducing the Strength of the Armed Forces,” which forecasts a reduction of 420,000 troops.
27 March
The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issues a decree “On the Cancellation of Restrictions in the Legal Status of Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians and Their Families, Who Live in Special Settlements.”
13 May
The writer Aleksandr Fadeev, the author of the novel Moloda gvardiia and the secretary of the Directorate of the Union of Soviet Writers, shoots himself at his summer villa in Peredelkino. His suicide letter addressed to the CC CPSU is published only in 1990. His letter begins: “I see no possibility of continuing to live, since art, to which I devoted my life, has been ruined by the self-assured and ignorant party leadership, and now it cannot be fixed.”
25 May
A decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR restores the six-hour workday for workers and officials aged 16 to 18.
Ç0 June
The CC CPSU passes a resolution “On Overcoming the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences.” This was one of several documents that the ruling party leadership issued in order to neutralize the destructive effect of Khrushchev's “Secret Speech.” The document stresses that the system remains unchanged, and that no one is planning to betray socialist ideals.
14 July
The first law on state pensions is passed in the USSR as a result of numerous resolutions on pension guarantees for various social categories, except collective farmers, who will not be eligible for state pensions until 1964.
15 September
The first anthology of poems Den poezii containing previously banned poets, like Pavel Vasiliev, Lev Kvitko, Nikolai Zabolotsky and others, is prepared for publication. The collection also includes poets whose works have long been unavailable, e.g., Sergei Yesenin, Marina Tsvetaieva, and Anna Akhmatova.
20 October
The medal “For Opening up Virgin Lands” is introduced. Within a short time the policy of developing “virgin and idle lands” in Kazakhstan, Siberia, the Ural and Transvolga region, and the Northern Caucasus fails. The Soviet regime will ultimately be unable to guarantee its own supply of quality grain for the USSR. Plowing up the virgin and idle lands leads to ecological problems.

Khrushchev was the first Communist Party chief to begin breaking down the stereotype of the glum, secretive Soviet leader. Taking advantage of the permissible dose of criticism of the Soviet past in his struggle for power, Khrushchev eventually understood that he would have to go further. The first wave of the 1953 amnesty affected mainly the criminal element. The brutally crushed camp uprisings of 1953-1954, involving political prisoners and former military men, showed that de-Stalinization could not be implemented by means of Stalinist methods. From 1954 special commissions began visiting the camps. Comprised of jurists and party workers who examined the most odious, individual cases, these commissions had the right to recommend release or even make decisions on a prisoner's release. Yet they constantly upheld the principle of differentiating between a sentence reduction, amnesty, and rehabilitation (both legal and political). Only rehabilitation allowed former “zeks” [prisoners] to become full-fledged citizens, i.e., they could return home, lay claim to living quarters and their old jobs, and, as a rule, reinstatement in the party. Once people began returning from their places of imprisonment, more and more problems began to crop up, leading to the question “Who is to blame?”

“Good” Lenin and “bad” Stalin: a beautiful Communist idea and its “criminal distortions.” This scheme forms the basis of Khrushchev's “Secret Speech” at the XX Party Congress. Khrushchev thoroughly prepared for this congress by “correcting” his own past: for example, he ordered all the documents showing his involvement in the repressions to be transferred from Ukraine to Moscow. The list of forwarded documents alone runs to sixty-one pages.

Not all the members of the Presidium of the CC CPSU welcomed Khrushchev's “Secret Speech.” The paradox was obvious: yesterday's Stalinist was proposing to undermine Stalinism and, by the same token, Communism. But Khrushchev, in contrast to the other “Stalinist falcons,” ris-ked this step in order to undermine Stalinism, not Leninism, socialism, or Communism. In any case, he reckoned that he would succeed. Therefore, he smashed the “anti-Party group” of Molotov, Kaganovich, and Malenkov, who believed that he should not be taking these steps. Anti-Stalinist activity was aimed at the “dialectical separation of the “thief” from the doctrine and the strengthening of the Communist regime and the chimera of its capacity for reform.