Putin Allies’ Attacks on Khrushchev’s Secret Speech Open the Way to Criminalization of Those who Backed End of USSR, Tsipko Warns

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 15 – It is no surprise and really of little interest that the KPRF has denounced criticism of Khrushchev for his 1956 secret speech attacking Stalin, Aleksandr Tsipko says. Communists have done that before. But it should be a matter of near universal concern that Putin’s close allies are following the KPRF course.

            In the latest exacerbation of Putin’s own re-Stalinization efforts, the senior Russian commentator says, the attacks by those close to Putin on Khrushchev’s secret speech open the way to the criminalization of the actions of those who supported the end of communist rule in the USSR and that country’s disintegration (ng.ru/ideas/2025-09-15/7_9338_ideals.html).

            What the KPRF and now the Putin regime have done, he says, is to suggest that any attack on Stalin is an attack on the Soviet state, something that the Kremlin’s own single flow of Russian history conception means that it is anti-Soviet and Russophobic and thus should be treated as a crime.

            Suggesting as the KPRF and the Putin regime have done that Khrushchev’s criticism represented not only an attack on the state but also opened the way for its demise is not only a complete distortion of the historical record but opens the way to the kind of crimes against the people that Stalin himself has been justifiably condemned for.