Unmasking Stalin: A Speech that Changed the World

Unmasking Stalin
Fifty years ago, Nikita Khrushchev made a speech that changed the world.
Photos courtesy of the National Archives and AFP/Getty Images

Fifty years ago Friday former Kremlin leader Nikita Khrushchev dropped a rhetorical bombshell at the the feet of his fellow Communist Party members.

For the first time in the history of the Soviet Union, Keshchev revealed and denounced the crimes of his predecessor, Joseph Stalin.

The speech stunned the nation and opened the door to the birth of a human rights movement in Russia, and ultimately to the collapse of the USSR.

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