Khrushchev, Nikita

[False Imprint Edition, with NTS Leaflet] Doklad na zakrytom zasedanii XX s”ezda KPSS: “O kul’te lichnosti i ego posledstviiakh” [Report at the Closed Session of the 20th Congress of the CPSU: “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences”]

1959. Item #1410

[Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1959; in fact West Germany: Narodno-Trudovoi Soiuz (NTS), 1959]. 80 pp., with 4 pp. printed leaflet inserted. 21 cm. Publisher’s printed wrappers. A very good copy with very light foxing on the wrappers and chipping along the spine. The separately issued leaflet is present, though edge-chipped and lacking the upper right corner throughout.

A false imprint edition of Khrushchev’s infamous “Secret Speech,” surreptitiously published in West Germany by the NTS and falsely attributed to Gospolitizdat. Issued in the guise of an official Soviet publication, this edition was among the first printed appearances of Khrushchev’s explosive denunciation of Stalin, delivered on February 25, 1956, before a stunned audience at a closed session of the 20th Party Congress. Though absent from official Soviet print until 1989, the text was disseminated widely in émigré and underground circles, and was famously leaked to the West via Mossad, sending shockwaves through the international communist movement. The Communist Party USA alone saw a mass exodus of over 30,000 members in the aftermath.

Included with this copy is the scarce four-page leaflet issued by the NTS to frame the speech’s significance for émigré readers. These contextual supplements were distributed with only a small portion of the clandestine print run and are rarely preserved. The leaflet expands on the ideological stakes of Khrushchev’s maneuver, warning of continued dictatorial ambitions even under the guise of reform. The speech itself ushered in the Khrushchev Thaw, launching a period of relative liberalization and the beginning of de-Stalinization. Despite its initially limited release, the speech remains a watershed in Soviet political history.

Price: $450.00