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Stalin, the leader of the Soviet peoples, died on March 3, 1953. Three years later, in 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, delivered his “Secret Speech” at the 20th Party Congress and talked about the ‘cult of personality’, linking all the shortcomings of the country to Stalin. Attributing the long list of human rights violations that had taken place in the Soviet Union over thirty years to the ‘cult of personality’, the Soviet leadership sought to show the world that democratic processes had started in the country and that Soviet/communist ideology was based on humane principles.
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