No, it's not my wedding anniversary, I am not that old. But, it is the 50th anniversary of Khrushchev's "secret speech" and the IHT has an excellent article just for the occasion. It's well worth the read.
You know, it's taken fifty years for the world to be able to see what the true extent of this event's impact. This was one of the riskiest things that a Soviet politician could have ever done, so soon after Stalin's death. Because the effects of a brutal empirical dictatorship last a long time, the influences were everywhere, both in sight and in mind. You never knew who was with you and who was against you. So, after being well schooled in the art of oppression and having witnessed some of the most ruthless purges of all time, you had to know that if it had backfired, it would have been death for Nikita.
(We see it today, with Iraq. De-Saddamization will take years.)
Maybe as time goes on, Mr. Khrushchev will come to be remembered for more than just the man who pounded his shoe on the table in the UN., the man behind the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the infamous phrase, "We will bury you!". Maybe he will be remembered as the man that started chipping away at the wall, albeit not intentionally. What he started was finally culminated with Gorbachev and had to go through a long hard process to get to that point. But he started that process, which was something that very few people had the guts to do at that precise moment in time.
He was forced out eventually. But had he failed at that moment in time, 50 years ago today, his demise would have been "death by gulag" at best, a firing squad at worst. Instead, he was exiled to live the life of a retired peasant, completely stripped of his power and authority. And for the Soviet Union of that day, that was some progress.
3 comments:
I am not sure what the equivalent of the "state Secret Act" the US have, but here in the UK the Government can suppress documents
and information in general for up to 50 years.
This means that the reality of a situation is effectively buried and the population at large may never know the truth.
Yes we do have a freedom of Information Act but it is quite restricted.
As More inf comes into the public domain history will have to be re written
Maybe as time goes on, Mr. Khrushchev will come to be remembered for more than just the man who pounded his shoe on the table in the UN., the man behind the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the infamous phrase, "We will bury you!"
Maybe.
I was very young at the time, but that TV image of the shouting shoe-pounder is one of my earliest recollections of news coverage. I guess that it's right up there with the JFK assassination-coverage--at least in my memory.
I wonder what today's young children will recall about TV images down the line?
LA,
A different kind of anniversary post here, about the 1993 bombing of the WTC on February 26. It's worth a read, IMO.
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