EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES

Vol. 58, No. 8, December 2006, 1329 1345

Re-emergence of Public Opinion in the Soviet

Union: Khrushchev and Responses
to the Secret Speech
KARL E. LOEWENSTEIN

This contribution examines the way that the surprise of Khrushchevs secret speech
forced the Soviet party leadership to acknowledge public opinion. Before 1956, the
Soviet state paid lip service to the idea of public opinion, but paid no attention to it.
The outpouring of emotion and argument after the twentieth party congress made
policy makers take notice. In meetings throughout the country, Soviet citizens asked
hard questions and raised criticisms of the regime. By the end of 1956 however, the
party authorities reasserted themselves and denied the legitimacy of outside input in
public debates. Khrushchev and the others realised that the emerging public opinion
was incompatible with their belief in the leading role of the Communist party.
PUBLIC OPINION IS GENERALLY UNDERSTOOD AS AN IMPORTANT FACTOR in political
decision-making. It is also clear that such a thing does not really exist, in that there is
no real aggregate opinion. When people, however, treat it as if it is an actual phenomenon, it takes on real signicance. The aftermath of Khrushchevs secret speech of
1956 created conditions where both the party and many members of the public began
to feel as though Soviet public opinion was developing. Many imagined a public opinion that would help correct the mistakes of the regime and hoped that Khrushchev
would accept their input. The party leadership saw the emerging public opinion, which
often oered critical assessments of government policies, as a threat which needed to
be analysed and controlled. Thus, after 1956, the leadership became much more
interested in the phenomenon. This terminology entered Soviet vocabulary again and
the party became deeply concerned about what the average citizen thought. As part of
Khrushchevs attempts to reshape the Soviet Union, the party was forced to deal with
public opinion in ways that it had not since the 1920s.
Public opinion surveying, ubiquitous in modern Western democracies, often plays
an important role in shaping political decisions. This was not part of the process for
The author would like to acknowledge generous nancial support from the University of Wisconsin
Oshkosh Faculty Development Program, ACTR/ACCELS, and Duke University that made this
research possible.
ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/06/081329-17 2006 University of Glasgow
DOI: 10.1080/09668130600996572

1330

KARL E. LOEWENSTEIN

the Soviet leadership. Although the state carried out extensive surveillance of its own
population, it was carried out by security organs. By Stalins time, such observation
had become part of a repressive apparatus, not a tool for analysing popular responses
to government policy. In the aftermath of the secret speech, Khrushchev and the
leadership of the Communist party were shocked to see the outpouring of opinion that
was generated by those words.
The twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), held
in February 1956, traditionally was the beginning of a new period of openness in
Soviet history. Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, First Secretary of the CPSU, gave what
has become known as the secret speech late in the evening on 25 26 February,
denouncing the excesses of Joseph Stalins reign. It struck both Soviet society and the
world as a bombshell and has been generally considered to have changed the way that
people in the Soviet Union understood their own system.1 All of this is true, but the
point of this contribution is to think about the problems it generated. As well as being
important as the rst opening of Soviet society, the speech unleashed the forces of
public opinion beyond Khrushchevs wildest expectations.2 Khrushchev and the party
leadership did not want to open debate about Stalin, but wanted to set a new,
unquestioned course. Instead, the speech caused a great deal of confusion.
This contribution will examine three moments from the 10 months following the
secret speech that demonstrate the re-emergence of public opinion. First, party
meetings that were held throughout the country became forums for discussion. The
meetings were closed and summaries were not published in the press. They provided
an opportunity to ask questions, although discussion was not generally encouraged.
Very quickly, and encouraged by Khrushchevs vagueness, the participants began to
ask dicult questions of party leaders in ways that they had not done before. These
meetings demonstrate both the outpouring of individuals ideas about the secret
speech, and the depth of the party leaderships misunderstanding of public opinion.
Second, meetings of writers as well as readers occurred throughout 1956,
culminating in an open meeting of the prose section of the Writers Union in Moscow
in October. This meeting was part of a trend where ocial meetings became forums
for people to express their dismay at the current situation. The meeting in October
1956, like many others, was attended by thousands of people and a great number of
writers. Because of the large number of attendees and the way the discussion was held,
it became a signicant moment in dening the power of public opinion.
Finally, the Central Committee rejected the inuence of public opinion, issuing a
letter in December, entitled On strengthening the party organisation, political work
among the masses and cutting o the attacks of hostile, anti-Soviet elements. This
letter denounced most of what had been said in public since the twentieth Party
Congress. It was a document that stopped the transformation that seemed to be
underway. The letter itself was closed, and to be read only by party members. It was
1
Sergei Khrushchev makes this argument in his book Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a
Superpower (2000). For a summary of Russian appraisals of Khrushchev, see Nordlander (1993,
pp. 248 266). For an excellent political biography see Taubman (2003).
2
Most of the older work published about this period stresses the protest, but only in terms of
published works and their challenge to Socialist Realist conventions; see, for example, Gibian (1960)
and McLean and Vickery (1961).

RE-EMERGENCE OF PUBLIC OPINION IN THE SOVIET UNION 1331

never mentioned in the newspapers or other non-party forums. In this letter, the party
authorities reasserted themselves and denied the legitimacy of outside input.
Khrushchev and the others realised that public opinion was re-emerging, but was
incompatible with their belief in the leading role of the Communist party.
Each of these moments reveals a new awareness of Soviet public opinion. The
confusion and discontent generated by Khrushchevs speech grew into demands that
the Soviet leadership should respect public opinion. People insisted on discussion,
which had only been given lip service under Stalin. Khrushchevs response in
December demonstrated that he rejected the idea of having to listen to the
contradictory voices of public opinion and reinforce the traditional authoritarian
power of the Communist party.
Public opinion in the Soviet Union
Public opinion is a dicult concept to precisely dene. Pierre Bourdieu argues that it
does not exist at all, though it has real eects (Bourdieu 1979, pp. 124 130). In the
1920s, the Soviet government tried to gather and analyse it through the press (Brooks
2001, p. 16). Peter Holquist argues that in the beginning this was part of a
transformative project of modernity (Holquist 1997, pp. 415 450). Other work shows
that the structures associated with public opinion and the public sphere began even
earlier, in nineteenth-century Tsarist Russia, and they were strengthened after the
revolution of 1905 (Clowes 1991). Vibrant institutions continued throughout the 1920s
(Ilina 2000), and by 1927, the Soviet Union was lled with literary salons, public
associations, and newspapers that openly disagreed and were an important part of
public life (MacGuire 1987).
It was only with Stalins revolution from above that such institutions lost their
ability to provide space for discussion. Instead, they were transformed into
transmission belts for party orders. After Stalins rise to power, public opinion was
generally conceived to be a real part of Soviet society that was to be moulded and
controlled by the Communist party. In addition, there was no attempt, outside of the
security organs, to systematically capture what the Soviet public thought. Nevertheless, the Soviet leaders themselves talked often about public opinion, even having
an institute for its study. The Central Committees Academy of Social Sciences
prepared students to become the instructors and agitators of the Communist party.
The party understood that part of its job was to create socialist public opinion that
would support its decisions. Stalin, discussing the completion of socialism with Roy
Howard in 1936 said, these public (obshchestvennykh) organisations which we have
created may be called Soviet, socialist organisations, even though they are not yet
completed, but they are the root of the socialist organisation of the public.3 Even
Stalin called for public spaces to be transformed, not destroyed.
The press often mentioned public opinion in the context of other countries but the
term public opinion (obshchestvennost) only began to appear regularly in Pravda after
Stalins death. In many cases it was used very specically in reports about how the
3
Beseda s predsedatelem amerikanskogo gazetnogo obedineniya SkrippsGovard nyuspeipers
g-nom Roi Govardom, Pravda, 5 March 1936.

1332

KARL E. LOEWENSTEIN

news media in other countries were reporting events important to the Soviet Union.
Usually, the story was about how public opinion in a country has rejected some action
or idea of the United States. For example, in 1957, the newspaper reported that public
opinion in West Germany had deep divisions across the political spectrum in reacting
to a letter sent by Bulganin. The article ended with this comment: we can already say
that there will be a discussion, which will be useful for strengthening our position.4
Thus, public opinion reappeared in Soviet life, though as a part of non-Soviet
societies.
When the threat of Stalinist arrest was lifted, meeting spaces inside the country
again became locations for heated discussions. In particular, literary arenas became
nexuses for public opinion. The great change after Stalins death was repeatedly
expressed in terms similar to those of Vladimir Dudintsev, author of Not by Bread
Alone. He pointed out how much things had changed at a meeting held in 1954:
earlier, when we discussed S. P. Babaevskii,5 ve years ago, every speech sounded like
the next and no one wanted to speak, everyone repeated themselves. Look now at their
dierent character.6 Old meeting spaces were transformed, losing their ocial aura
and becoming public ones.
Not surprisingly, writers began to emphasise the need for discussion within their
own society. As secretary of the prose section of the Moscow section of the Writers
Union, Evgeny Dolmatovskii expressed in August 1956:
In all aspects of our lives, we are now reconstructing our understanding of public opinion
(obshchestvennoe mnenie) as real public opinion, growing out of the gatherings of specialists
and masters and lovers of literature . . . The Writers Union and public organisations must
create public opinion through the means of discussion, etc.7

This statement represented a growing sentiment among the intellectuals in

Moscow and St Petersburg. They did not want to destroy the Soviet state, but
instead, wanted to create a new kind of understanding based on public opinion. As
Oleg Kharkhodin points out, the post-Stalin era marked the beginning of a new
framework for participation:
With the fear of denunciation to the secret police substantially reduced, people gathered just
to chew the fat (trepatsya): parties of 30 40 people would get together for no other reason
than the pleasure of unrestrained communication. Their communication often took the form
of a loyal critique of the regimes dysfunctions. And from these gatherings, in full accord with
Habermass schema, a public sphere of belles lettres emerged from interfamily communication and in its turn later became politicised (Kharkhordin 1999, p. 313).

Susan Reid adds that the Soviet public was ready to be entrusted with the
responsibility that it felt it had been promised (Reid 2005, p. 716).
4

Obshchestvennost zapadnoi Germanii obsuzhdaet poslanie N.A. Bulgachina, Pravda, 13

February 1957, p. 4.
5
S. P. Babaevskii was the winner of three Stalin prizes in the late 1940s and 1950s, and later became
an incarnation of optimism, of concealment or minimisation of the true problems in agriculture after
the war.
6
Rossiisti Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Literatury i Iskusstva (RGALI), f. 1702, op. 6, d. 77, p. 52.
7
RGALI, f. 2464, op. 1, d. 78, p. 42.

RE-EMERGENCE OF PUBLIC OPINION IN THE SOVIET UNION 1333

The twentieth Party Congress began a process that would lead to a much broader
appreciation of public opinion in Soviet society. Discussions after the secret speech
were not dissent in any real sensethe participants and critics wanted to change
emphases, and thought that what they were doing was completely legitimate.8 Writers
in 1956, although not creating oppositional groups, attempted to deploy Soviet ideas
and vocabulary in both new and old ways. Specically, the concept of public opinion
was reclaimed by Moscow intellectuals and they used it to propose a new way to
discuss the problems of a mature socialist state. Public opinion emerged as a category
of analysis in the aftermath of the twentieth Party Congress, when political leaders and
intellectuals were forced to confront the fact that the Soviet public was not simply
accepting commands that came down from above. Small forums were turned into
spaces where public opinion might be formulated and expressed. After the secret
speech, many Soviet citizens hoped that Khrushchevs policies would address the
issues raised by public opinion. They did not want to blandly accept the infallibility of
party decisions. They argued that the party should lead and inspire, but not rule over
the maturing Soviet, socialist society.
Sociology and the study of public opinion also re-emerged, and the response to the
secret speech had much to do with its return. Stalin had suppressed sociological
research in the 1930s, but this left a void of information for Soviet policy-makers. The
trauma of watching so many criticise the party led to an eort to understand where the
anger came from. The rst attempt to study public opinion began with the Institute of
Public Opinion formed under the auspices of Komsomolskaya pravda in 1960.
Background
Between 1953 and 1957, Nikita Khrushchev battled with Georgii Malenkov, Lavrenty
Beria, and Vyacheslav Molotov for control of the party and state apparatus. Joseph
Stalins death in March 1953 led to a long struggle between those who would take his
place as unquestioned leader of the Soviet Union. There was no clear successor to
Stalin. Instead, there was a deep divide within the Presidium (the name of the
Politburo from 1952 to 1966). There were many who wanted power, but if we simplify,
we might say there were two extremes. First, the conservatives, often long-time
members of the Politburo such as the foreign minister Molotov, wanted to continue
the policies of political repression and military build up. Second, those who pushed for
a more liberal approach to economics and culture, such as Malenkov, head of the
government, who wanted to emphasise consumer goods and administrative reform. In
the middle was the eventual victor of the power struggle, Nikita Khrushchev, who
refused to champion any one policy. He successfully used his position as First
Secretary of the CPSU to negotiate the conicts by choosing his allies and issues
wisely. By 1956, Khrushchev was clearly rst among equals, but his rivals had not yet
been completely vanquished.

One interesting recent dialogue about this rethinking comes from Julianne Furst and Hiroaki
Kuromiya. They argue that dissent can only be understood within the discursive foundations of
Stalinism (see Furst 2002, pp. 353 375; 2003, pp. 789 802; Kuromiya 2003, pp. 631 638).

1334

KARL E. LOEWENSTEIN
The emergence of public opinion

Khrushchevs secret speech, given on the evening of 25 26 February 1956,

changed the course of Soviet history. For four hours, Khrushchev held his audience in rapt attention as they listened to the denigration of Stalin and many of his
policies.
After careful preparation, Khrushchev denounced Stalin in a closed session of the
twentieth Party Congress. He walked a treacherous path. Carefully detailing parts of
Stalins misrule, he took a bold step toward acknowledging the great problems of the
Soviet Union. He detailed Stalinist repressions, arrests, terror and murders. He also
attacked Stalin for bungling foreign aairs and mishandling the war. He labelled
Stalins desire for acclaim and power as the cult of personality. All in all, it was a
radical denunciation of the Stalinist era, but it was careful in its limitations. In
particular, Khrushchev stressed that Stalin was personally responsible, and the party
was a hapless victim. The hall was lled with hundreds of stunned members of the
partys elite. Although the speech was ocially to remain secret in the Soviet Union
until 1989, within a few days of its delivery, it became the main topic of discussion
throughout Moscow and the world.9
Khrushchev emphasised that the attacks against the anti-Soviet activities of Trotsky
and Bukharin were correct. He did not implicate any of the current leadership in the
Stalinist crimes and did not explain how the system could have allowed Stalin to get
away with such abuses. Khrushchev walked a ne line and set out the dimensions of
criticism that was to be allowed. Individual activities were worthy of being criticised,
but the system had been correct and successful.
Near the end of the speech, Khrushchev made another key point. He did not
want to begin this discussion with the full glare of publicity. Thus, there was no
clear, public presentation of the party line for many months, leaving others to
guess at what was desired. In the nal moments of his speech, Khrushchev put it this
way:
We can not allow this question to leave party circles, especially to the press. That is why we
discuss it here, at a closed meeting of the congress. We should know the limits, we should not
give weapons to our enemies; we should not air our dirty laundry in front of their eyes. I think
that the delegates to the congress understand and properly value all of these suggestions
(Serebrennikov 1988, p. 69).

This comment was greeted with thunderous applause. This quotation reveals clearly
that Khrushchev wanted the secret speech to be contained within the party. He knew
that public discussion might follow and raise questions to which there was no clear
answer.
Following Khrushchevs order, there were no direct references to the secret speech
in the national press, although Mikoyans public speech at the Congress had hints of
anti-Stalin sentiment. In any case, many people heard about it quite quickly after it
9

It was published in the New York Times in March, apparently passing from a Polish party member,
to Mossad then to the CIA. It was also reproduced inside the Soviet Union in limited numbers to be
distributed to party members throughout the country.

RE-EMERGENCE OF PUBLIC OPINION IN THE SOVIET UNION 1335

was given.10 The Central Committee quickly issued a directive that the speech was to
be read at every primary party organisation. Party members throughout the country
heard the speech, but Khrushchevs words were not specic enough to answer all the
questions it raised.
Stormy discussions were held at closed party meetings throughout the country and
show that the public was alive with concern about what Khrushchev meant. In a
report sent to the Presidium from Leningrad, historian and Central Committee
member Anna Pankratova noted that the great number of questions were witness to
the great agitation and confusion among the intelligentsia.11 Approximately 6,000
party members heard the secret speech and 800 questions were sent forward on cards.
Reading this document, one gains a strong sense of the confusion that engulfed Soviet
society after Khrushchevs speech. The questions can be divided up in to several
dierent categories, ranging from practical issues to those that question the entire
legitimacy of the regime.
Some members asked what should be done about the dominance of Stalins image in
public. They asked if Stalin was to be removed from the mausoleum, whether his
picture should be removed, whether he should still be remembered as comrade Stalin
and whether towns and streets should be renamed. A few questions in a similar vein
were asked about art and literature. What were they to do about all of the works that
extolled Stalin? Were they simply to discard them, even if they had some artistic merit?
On a practical level, questioners asked about how history was to be taught. For
example, one professor asked,
one comrade is defending his dissertation, in which there are references to Stalin. There are
Stalins works in the bibliography. One of his opponents demanded that all references to
Stalin in the text and the bibliography be removed. Is he right and should we agree?

In addition, teachers asked, how should we carry out examinations in the tenth class if
there are many mistakes and imprecision in the textbooks? Pankratova recommended
suspending examinations until new textbooks could be printed, as examinations would
not be useful, perhaps even harmful under the current situation.
The questioning extended to the problem of party control over ideological questions
and the study of the past. As one questioner wrote, careerism is the disease of
repression. He was greatly troubled by the ease with which writers followed the party
line, adding, dont you think that the biggest danger is not the idealisation of Ivan the
Terrible, but the complete readiness of our historians to submit to any ideological
coercion and that that readiness remains? Hope existed that the secret speech and the
new directions in ideology might bring great freedom in historical pursuits, as one
asked, will it be possible for historians to make their own independent decisions about
debatable questions? Should they accept the propositions of the party press as
directives, marking the end of discussion? Other questions criticised the broad layers
10
There have been several interesting articles on the way that intellectuals from the Eastern Bloc
received the secret speech; see, in particular, Connelly (1997, pp. 329 360) and Tighe (1996, pp. 71
102).
11
Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Noveishii Istorii (RGANI), f. 5, op. 16, d. 747, p. 95. The
citations in the next two pages are drawn from this document (pp. 95 126). This and other documents
have been published in the collection Doklad . . . (2002).

1336

KARL E. LOEWENSTEIN

of bureaucracy that existed in the Soviet Union, even casting doubt on the socialist
basis of society and government. If we are speaking about a principled overturn of
Stalinist policies, what real measures are being taken against the bureaucracy that
Stalin represented? As another wrote,
at the twentieth Party Congress, many words were spoken about the rebuilding of society, but
nothing has happened in Leningradcan we speak about it if the substantial part of the
leading workers, who for many years worked only for themselves, not the people, remain in
their posts?

Finally, some questioners viewed Khrushchevs claims that the other members of
the Presidium were powerless with great scepticism. They also suggested that it was
dicult for anyone in Soviet society to accept this explanation.
Where were the members of the Presidium? It is very dicult for us propagandists to explain
this question to the Soviet people. Did the members of the Presidium know about it? And
how will we better answer this question? Will party organs clarify it?

Others suggested that Khrushchevs speech was mistaken, suggesting a cult of

personality in reversecreated by the current members of the Presidium to blame
others for problems in the Soviet Union.
In the report that accompanied the questions, Pankratova acknowledged the issue
of public opinion. Her conclusions demonstrated the problems that the party
leadership faced when they simply read Khrushchevs speech without explanation.
First, she argued that the major problem was that the party leadership had not made a
strong enough statement in public to explain the correct meaning of Khrushchevs
words and the surrounding silence: it seems to me that the campaign to discuss
questions about the cult of personality can not be limited to one article in Pravda,
although that article has had a positive repercussion among the wide Soviet society.
She categorised the criticism and confusion that appeared at party meetings as antiSoviet, hidden in Soviet society:
It is necessary to clarify more deeply and concretely the questions about the cult of
personality at meetings of activists circles in the cities of the USSR and at special meetings of
propagandists, lecturers, scientic workers, and wide circles of the intelligentsia, among who
exist isolated unhealthy feelings and clearly recidivist Trotskyist Bukharinist views.

At all the meetings, there was a desire to hear directly from members of the Presidium
and requests for another letter that would give necessary clarication in relation to
questions about the cult of personality. For Pankratova, the solution to the problem
was to have the party leadership issue decisive answers, so that there would be no more
need for discussion or debate. Even party ocials realised that a conict was growing
between those who wanted to discuss the secret speech and the party ocials who
desired a controlled understanding of it. These ocial spaces became forums for the
formation of public opinion because of Khrushchevs incomplete comments about the
history of the Soviet Union.
Throughout the spring and summer, public discussions became more frequent and
more openly critical of Khrushchevs limited approach. In a growing number of
places, people gathered to discuss the future of the Soviet Union. There are many

RE-EMERGENCE OF PUBLIC OPINION IN THE SOVIET UNION 1337

reports of increasing debate in any forum where people gathered to discuss life and
politics. On 4 May, writers in Leningrad were envisioning a bright, free future. In an
open party meeting of the Leningrad section of the Writers Union, the speakers
almost unanimously talked of the great change that was on the horizon. They told
stories that they thought illustrated the worst of the era of the cult of personality and
proclaimed that it would not happen again. Why did life not always appear in our
books? asked E. I. Katerli, a successful novelist in her 50s, not because we did not
know that life, but because we closed our eyes at much, because sometime, we were
afraid to write the truth [italics in transcript].12 Another writer by the name of
Liufanov said that times had truly changed and writers must rise to the occasion, put
the most dramatic images together:
Spring has come. It is a stormy, demanding spring of a great life with great labour. From
Soviet writersthe ospring and receivers of the great Russian literature, born and
developed in our beautiful city, the people wait for honest work of the highest artistic nature.
The twentieth Party congress opened a new, enlightened era for the people of our country, for
our literary success in the great struggle to create a communist society.13

Creating a communist future was to be done in a new era where honest work was
nally possible, fullling the true demands of the readers. The meeting was also
overwhelmed with comments about the beginning of a time without reviews, without
editors, even without forced rewriting.
Ocials at the Cultural Section of the Central Committee complained continuously
that meetings held throughout the country refused to follow party instructions.14
These ocials were aware that there was a growing assertion of independent opinion,
against which the party needed to take more decisive action. The Central Committee
on 21 August issued a decree entitled, On the results of the school year in the system
of party enlightenment and goals for the party organisation in the next school year
which criticised the press. According to the Moscow party report on the decree:
The Central Committee considers it incorrect that in the last year the central, republican and
regional newspapers, theoretical and political journals of the Central Committee of the
parties of the Soviet Republics almost stopped publishing articles and consultations to help
political self-education and answers to the questions of readers on theoretical questions and
problems.15

Party leaders looked at public opinion and saw enemies who were using the criticism
of the cult of personality of Stalin in order to attack Marxism Leninism and to turn
the workers against communism. Bazovskii, the secretary of the Frunze region of
Moscow, attacked the intelligentsia for the attempt to discredit party and state
organs. However, his solution was to work harder at enlightening them with more

12
Tsentralnyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhi Izucheniia Politicheskikh Dvizhenii (TsGAIPD), f. 2960,
op. 6, d. 13, l. 128.
13
TsGAIPD, f. 2960, op. 6, d. 13, ll. 84 85.
14
RGANI, f. 5, op. 36, delo 3, l. 11.
15
Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsialnoi i Politicheskoi Istorii (RGASPI), f. 556, op. 1, d. 598,
p. 181.

1338

KARL E. LOEWENSTEIN

propaganda.16 This line of reasoning by party ocials helps us see the transition that was
occurring during 1956. The party felt as though public opinion needed to be shaped as it
had been in the Stalin era, but was not sure how it would be able to accomplish it. These
ocials fell back on a belief that proper articles in the press would change the public
perception of the secret speech. However, articles in the papers were still few and often
indistinct. This allowed the discussions to continue and build, climaxing in October.
An October meeting of the prose section of the Moscow section of the Writers
Union became the focal point for the party leaderships anger at the challenging
attitudes that were now emerging in public discussion. The gathering was held to
discuss V. Dudintsevs novel Ne khlebom edinym (Not By Bread Alone). The novel,
published in several issues of Novyi mir in the early autumn, is the story of an inventor
of a pipe-casting machine who had to struggle against all types of bureaucrats to get
his invention put into use. His main nemesis is a self-interested, petty bureaucrat
named Drozdov. The inventor, named Martian Lopatkin, works for many years and is
wrongly imprisoned, but ghts on until his machine is produced. His victory is
incomplete, however, as he is denied control over the production of the machine for
which he fought for so long.17 The novel is clearly a struggle of an individual against
the corrupt, arrogant world of Soviet bureaucracy. Strangely the novel was not
reviewed in the Soviet press for many months after its publication.
At the Central House of Art in Moscow, an overow crowd, including over 350
writers, gathered to hear expressions of satisfaction with Dudintsevs novel and use it
as a way to call for a new direction for the Soviet future. The speakers were almost
unanimous in their praise for the new novel. Konstanin Simonov, editor-in-chief of the
journal that had printed it, introduced the discussion by emphasising that the work
was helping to build a communist future:
. . . we printed the novel with great sympathy for it, with great interest, with feeling for this
book, the rst novel by a comparatively young author, written by a good person, who loves
the Soviet order, strongly loves Soviet power and is prepared to ght with people who get in
the way of our movement forward.18

He continued, saying that he knew that the work had both positive and negative sides
and hoped that even the large crowd will not stop them from having a serious,
professional discussion about the work.
The meeting, however, was far from the balanced discussion for which Simonov
called. Feeding o the enthusiasm of the crowd, speakers became increasingly strident
in their praise for Dudintsev and his description of Soviet society. Lev Slavin explained
the popularity in a way that did not address any of Simonovs criteria.19 Instead, he
16

RGASPI, f. 556, op. 1, d. 603, p. 131.

Originally published in Novyi mir (1956, issues 8 10). It was published in book-form in the Soviet
Union in 1957 and translated in 1957 by Edith Bone and published by Dutton in the United States.
18
Central Archive of Societal Movements for Moscow (TsAODg.M), f. 8132, op. 1, d. 9, pp. 110
175. All of the quotations from this meeting over the next few pages are drawn from this transcript.
19
Lev Slavin (1896 1984) was a well respected writer who had, however, been a fellow-traveller in
the 1920s and was amongst those who had called for the separation of literature from politics before
the imposition of Stalinist cultural orthodoxy in the 1930s. He also supported the dissidents Sinyavsky
and Daniel when they were arrested and put on trial in 1965.
17

RE-EMERGENCE OF PUBLIC OPINION IN THE SOVIET UNION 1339

emphasised the importance of the work in raising the questions everyone was thinking
about: Vladimir Dmitrevich Dudintsevs novel has greatly interested readers,
obviously because it is not only a literary work, but also a kind of societal event.
From this point forward, the meeting took the path of denouncing the bureaucracy
and bureaucrats for leading the Soviet Union in the wrong direction.
For example, Nikolai Atarov continued this attack on bureaucrats, called
Drozdovites, by arguing that the people sided with Dudintsev.20 He called upon
public opinion to organise and defeat the bureaucrats that were hampering
technological progress:
I am reminded of a letter of Dinisyuk from Orsk. This Dinisyuk wrote, It seems to me that
for blocking the progress of technology, it is necessary to institute criminal proceedings. This
is clear water of societal temperament, of public opinion. Technical progress in our country
became a very political activity and can be corrected by the political activity of the people.

Public opinion was demanding technical progress while the bureaucracy was standing
in the way. Atarov and Slavin both asserted that the party leadership had been too
badly distorted by its bureaucratisation. Only by letting the public become involved
could the Soviet Union move again in the correct direction.
The meetings most dramatic moment came with Konstantin Paustovskiis
denunciation.21 His inammatory words were met with continual outbursts of
applause and shouts of agreement. He began by calling the bureaucracy a new,
counter-revolutionary group within Soviet society:
It seems that in our country without impunity there exists and even, in some ways, ourishes
a completely new stratum, a new caste of philistinism. There is a new tribe of plunderers and
owners, not having anything in common with the revolution, with our society, nor with
Socialism.22

This was greeted by voices from the audience yelling correct! Dudintsev was to be
praised most of all for revealing the perdy of the bureaucrats and for turning this
phenomenon into a public discussion:
And the highest service of Dudintsev is that he struck to the very core of the matter. He writes
about the most terrible occurrences in our society and under no circumstances should we
close our eyes, if we do not want the Drozdovites to control the country.

Bureaucrats were the true obstacle to progress toward communism and had to be
challenged through openness and discussion. The struggle for communism was not
against capitalists or the imperialists, but against their own Soviet bureaucracy, But I

20
Nikolai Atarov (1907 1978) would be removed from the editorship of the journal Moskva in 1957
for deviating too far from the party line.
21
Konstantin Paustovskii (1892 1968) started writing in the 1920s, and became an outspoken
proponent of sincerity and the independence of writers. In 1957, he was attacked by the party
leadership for this speech and for his editing a liberal collection of works entitled Literaturnaya Moskva
(Literary Moscow).
22
Excerpts of this speech appeared in Samizdat almost immediately afterwards. An abridged version
was translated and published in English in McLean and Vickery (1961).

1340

KARL E. LOEWENSTEIN

think that the people, who created all the worth in our lives, in the end will sweep away
the Drozdovites very quickly.
Paustovskiis speech demonstrates the way that Khrushchevs speech opened the
oodgates of public opinion. He and many other speakers suggested that the Soviet
Union was no longer building communism. Worse than that, party bureaucracy was
the reason for that stagnation. Remaining within seemingly acceptable bounds by
calling for a communist future, he wanted to let public opinion have more power over
the party and its decisions. Although bureaucracy was often criticised, even under
Stalin, Paustovskii made a broader attack. Just as Dudintsev had described, the
bureaucracy had developed into its own class that destroyed anyone who might
disagree with it. For Paustovskii, it was composed of simple-minded, careerists who
were perfectly willing to kill to have their vision of the future approved. Paustovskii
was criticised for exaggeration by one of the other speakers, prominent novelist
Valentin Ovechkin, and quickly responded,
I, as all of us, know that only the twentieth Party Congress gave us the possibility to destroy
the Drozdovites. It is very strange that comrade Ovechkin should take my words about
Drozdov for words about the leadership . . . They had no relationship to the leadership.

This meeting represented the deep problems of the secret speech. Khrushchev had
tried to limit such outpourings by keeping the speech private. However, speakers here
challenged the partys claim to be correctly moving the Soviet Union towards
communism. They openly questioned the ability of the party to make decisions that
beneted the state and the people. At a large public gathering, writers spoke openly
about the need to replace bureaucratic decision making with public opinion. At the
same time as this meeting was taking place, the Hungarians were in a moment of acute
crisis.23 Within two weeks, the new Hungarian government would declare its desire to
abandon Soviet socialism and leave the Warsaw pact, causing violent Soviet military
intervention. The reports sent from Hungary clearly blamed writers and other
intellectuals for planting the seeds that led to the need for such brutality.24 The quick
change from discussions about reform to outright counter-revolution, suggested to
the party leaders that any relaxation of control might lead to the collapse of the
regime.
Placed in the context of the troubles in Eastern Europe, the October meeting became
an incredibly threatening moment. This was surely an unscripted, unexpected response
to both the twentieth Party Congress and Dudintsevs novel. It displayed all
the characteristics of dynamic, independent public opinion. Those who spoke did not
see themselves as challenging the regime in the way that they would be accused of. As
Lev Kopelev, later a famous dissident and exile, commented:
They [the Stalinists] frightened Khrushchev and the Politburo, calling the Moscow writers a
Pet}
o circle [a group of writers blamed for inspiring the uprising in Hungary]; as a witness
to this they used the discussion of Dudintsevs novel and Paustovskiis speech, the notes

23

There is much current work that discusses these events in the lights of the archives; see for example,
Kramer (1998, pp. 163 214) and Granville (2001, pp. 1051 1076).
24
See, for example, Literaturnaya gazeta on 22 November and 1 December 1956.

RE-EMERGENCE OF PUBLIC OPINION IN THE SOVIET UNION 1341

of which had many times been recopied and passed around to the rst samizdat groups
(Orlova & Kopelev 1988, p. 47).

Kopelevs statement suggests that public opinion was beginning to develop,

distributing ideas that party and state did not want others to have access to.
Participants understood that discussion itself was beginning to be a challenge to party
authority.
In the aftermath, many found this meeting to be a very positive occurrence. At a
meeting of the prose section of the Writers Union a few days later, minutes recorded
that the participants felt that the discussion had been successful and carried out on a
professional level, although it was a bit too one-sided. They suggested that the only
problems had been organisational ones. There should have been a better system of
admitting people to alleviate the overcrowding and that the crowds of students should
have been handled better. In conclusion, they wrote, the abundance of those who
wished to come to the discussion was caused by reader interest and the absence of
reviews of the novel in print.25 For these people, discussion was itself justication for
large-scale meetings. If the party did not want to discuss a work in the public sphere,
the readers should be allowed to. The right of discussion was accepted by these writers,
who were interested in how to make meetings more useful and interesting.
This meeting was at the crest of the wave of discussion after the secret speech. From
confusion among party members and the public at large in the spring, the literary
intelligentsia had begun to question the bases of the Soviet system. However, the
uproar both at home and abroad led the party leadership to end all of the senseless
dreams (to borrow a phrase from Nicholas II) of letting the public have input in the
decision-making processes. The Presidium and Khrushchev decided to nish it without
making an open attack. They responded, not through the newspapers, but through a
closed letter, sent only to the party sections. It was issued on 19 December 1956,
entitled Strengthening work of party organisation in cutting o the attacks of antiSoviet, enemy elements. Public opinion seemed to be emerging as a potentially potent
force that could challenge party authority. This challenge could not be met publicly,
because the idea that independent opinion was possible challenged the Soviet regime.
In other words, if the leadership were to hold a public debate about the need to
suppress public debate, they would automatically lose.
The committee in charge of writing this letter was led by Leonid Brezhnev and
Georgii Malenkov. The bulk of the letter summarised the troubling events of the last
several years in art and literature. In particular, the letter singled out the meeting in
October and Paustovskii for criticism. The committee made clear that the major
problem was the failure to respond correctly to the rising discussion in society. The
authors attacked party members who misunderstood the message of the secret speech
and had refused to accept the limits that Khrushchev had insisted upon:
More than that, there are certain communists who hide behind party-mindedness
(partiinost), ying the ag of the ght against the consequences of the cult of personality, and
then moving to an anti-party position, allowing demagogic attacks against the party, calling
25
Tsentralnyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkiv
(TsGAODg.M), f. 2464, op. 1, d. 325, p. 46.

Obshchestvennykh

Dvizhenii

Gorod.

Moskvy

1342

KARL E. LOEWENSTEIN

into question the correctness of its line . . . it must be stated directly that party organisations in
such situations must not forget that against anti-Soviet, hostile elements, the party must
always strongly and directly lead an irreconcilable and most decisive struggle.26

The authors asserted that criticism beyond what was allowed by the party was not
acceptable and was anti-Soviet. They clearly explained that only the party leadership
could decide what the party position on any issue was going to be. Questioning party
decisions became tantamount to counter-revolutionary activity. The committee went
so far as to group all the critics together as prisoners and Trotskiites, recalling the
worst of the Stalinist charges that would have led to execution in the 1930s:
At the same time, there are such people among those released, who maliciously create feelings
against Soviet power, especially from a number of former Trotskiites, pure opportunists and
bourgeois nationalists. They gather together anti-Soviet elements and politically unstable
people; they try to renew their hostile, anti-Soviet activity.27

Next, they found that writers were the major cause of the challenge to party
leadership. Their calls for change and freedom were widely acclaimed by readers.
The open challenges to Khrushchev in public were spilling over into too many
organisations:
Turn your attention to the facts of the unhealthy mood of many parts of . . . our
organisations, technical schools and scientic institutions as well as among literary and
artistic workers. Attempts have been made to create doubt in the government line on the
development of Soviet literature. They have been trying to replace the principle of Socialist
Realism with the position of non-ideological art, and have begun to promote freeing
literature and art from party leadership, to defend freedom of art, as understood in a
bourgeois-anarchistic, individualistic spirit.28

Discussion was dened as non-socialist, and was seen as representing the inuence of
hostile, bourgeois ideology. Critical debate was not to challenge party leadership.
Questioning the leadership in any forum was categorised as illegitimate.
The letter of 19 December 1956 ended hope that ocial spaces might be
transformed, and public opinion respected. There was to be no more chance for
discussion among party members once this letter was distributed. It is key to our
understanding, however, that this letter was not meant to be published, and was an
attempt to control Soviet society without making a broad public pronouncement. The
members of the Central Committee demanded that party members change what they
wrote and said, without revealing it to the broader public in the Soviet Union. The
party leadership began to increase the use of the coercive powers of the state to enforce
this decision. The number of arrests for anti-Soviet behaviour skyrocketed and writers
who had spoken out in favour of discussion no longer appeared in newspapers and
journals. It took several months for this repression to silence public opinion,
demonstrating that the hope and excitement that had been generated was not easily

26

RGANI, f. 89, perechen 6, doc. 2, p. 6.

RGANI, f. 89, perechen 6, doc. 1, p. 10.
28
RGANI, f. 89, perechen. 6, doc. 1, p. 7.
27

RE-EMERGENCE OF PUBLIC OPINION IN THE SOVIET UNION 1343

forced back into silence.29 Public debate could only serve to undermine the one-party
state. Even a discussion about the worth of public debate raised questions that the
leadership did not want to answer.
Conclusions
Khrushchevs secret speech elicited great amounts of uncertainty and excitement that
the leadership did not expect. The discussions surrounding the speech quickly
spiralled out of control. This fact tells us much about the Soviet Union and the
control that the party had over society. The ferment caused by the secret speech
marked the re-emergence of public opinion, even in an authoritarian society like the
USSR. The three sets of events described here demonstrate the ways that these ideas
began to challenge the authority of the Communist party. At the rst of these, the
party meetings in Leningrad, tentative questioning and the desire to open up the
problem of Stalinism began to transform even party meetings into forums for
discussion. Next, the meeting of Moscow writers in October was a bold challenge to
the regime, where individuals demanded that public opinion be respected. Finally, the
party used channels of authority, outside of the public sphere, to order an end to the
discussions.
The events of 1956 led an increasing number of people to believe that there was a
Soviet public opinion that could be discerned. It also led them to hope that the party
leadership would respect the conclusions that might be reached by it. Both
Khrushchev and his questioners became aware of how central the ideals of public
opinion were to understanding the secret speech. However, the party would not allow
public discussion, but also, it would not admit that it would not allow it, for fear of
negative reactions both at home and abroad. Instead, this was a battle fought between
the secret party mandates and people trying to continue a discussion that began at the
twentieth Party Congress. They wanted to bring the party to the conclusion that public
opinion in itself was a legitimate force. In 1956, the party leadership refused to agree.
Their refusal created a new generation of intellectuals who would work outside the
ocial arenas of power.
The events of 1956 show the growing awareness of public opinion. The year began
with Khrushchev attempting to redene the boundaries of the Soviet discourse. The
cult of personality of Stalin was to be strongly criticised and not allowed to recur.
However, the party was to remain above criticism and was to be acknowledged as the
nal arbiter of all questions. Khrushchev could not accept conclusions suggested by
his own speech: that the party was fallible and would benet by listening to outside
critiques. The people who came to meetings felt that the speech meant that more
discussion would be allowed. These expanding arenas for public expression
demonstrated the weakness of Khrushchevs leadership and created a potentially
challenging moment for the Communist party that it did not expect.
29
In 1957, 1,964 people were arrested for anti-Soviet activity, almost ve times more than in 1956.
For example several students at MGU were sentenced to prison for passing out leaets and trading
documents with Polish students (see RGANI, f. 89, perechen 6, doc. 8; also see Kozlov 2002, pp. 75
88).

1344

KARL E. LOEWENSTEIN

December 1956 marked a change in the nature of public opinion. The 10 months
after the secret speech were a unique time in the history of the Soviet Union, when
intellectuals and their readers thought they could help dene the path of the Soviet
Union through open discussion of the options available. The letter in December
destroyed those hopes and forced those who wanted a dierent Soviet Union to fall
silent or take a much more radical path. The party members who heard the December
letter realised that there had been a severe change in attitude in the Presidium about
the course of Soviet ideology. As H. G. Obushenkov later noted:
For us it was obvious that December 19, 1956 was the end of the Thaw. It meant that all
hopes for renewal from above henceforth and for a long time were groundless, that the only
possibility in the battle for renewal was illegal activity. Others have attempted to spread the
understanding that the Thaw was the whole period until the change of leadership in 1964, but
the new epoch had already ended in 1956.30

Hope for a larger role for public opinion was dashed by the strong words of
the Central Committee. Nevertheless, although it would not be given real power,
authorities began to pay attention to the concept, and gave it weight in their political
decision-making. Trying to assess it and sway it became an important project for
the leadership. The ferment generated by the secret speech that appeared outside of
the Soviet press goes far towards illustrating why Mikhail Gorbachevs proposals
generated the explosion that they did. After surviving in an incredibly repressive
Stalinist state, the idea of public opinion re-emerged. When a small window of
opportunity appeared, intellectuals spoke of the need for more reliance on the
discussion, not coercion. Khrushchev could never acquiesce to the idea of sharing
power outside of the Presidium. Gorbachevs far-reaching reforms seem to echo these
earlier voices in their call for perestroika and glasnost and true participation.
University of WisconsinOshkosh
References
Bourdieu, P. (1979) Public Opinion Does Not Exist, in Mattelart, A. & Siegelaub, S. (eds) (1979)
Communication and Class Struggle. Vol. 1, Capitalism and Imperialism (New York, International
General).
Brooks, J. (2001) Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War
(Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press).
Clowes, E. (ed.) (1991) Between Tsar and People (Princeton, Princeton University Press).
Connelly, J. (1997) Ulbricht and the Intellectuals, Contemporary European History, 6, 3, pp. 329 360.
Doklad . . . (2002) Doklad N.S. Khrushcheva o kulte lichnosti stalina na xx sezde KPSS: Dokumenty
(Moscow, ROSSPEN).
Furst, J. (2002) Prisoners of the Soviet Self?Political Youth Opposition in Late Stalinism, EuropeAsia Studies, 54, 3, pp. 353 375.
Furst, J. (2003) Re-Examining Opposition under Stalin: Evidence and Contexta Reply to
Kuromiya, Europe-Asia Studies, 55, 5, pp. 789 802.
Gibian, G. (1960) Interval of Freedom: Soviet Literature during the Thaw (Minneapolis, University of
Minnesota Press).
Granville, J. (2001) Hungarian and Polish Reactions to the Events of 1956: New Archival Evidence,
Europe-Asia Studies, 53, 7, pp. 1051 1076.
30

Voprosy istorii, 4, 1994, p. 77.

RE-EMERGENCE OF PUBLIC OPINION IN THE SOVIET UNION 1345

Holquist, P. (1997) Information Is the Alpha and Omega of Our Work: Bolshevik Surveillance in
Its Pan-European Context, Journal of Modern History, 69, 3, September, pp. 415 450.
Ilina, I.N. (2000) Obshchestvennye Organizatsii Rossii V 1920-E Gody (Moscow, RAN).
Kharkhordin, O. (1999) The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices (Berkeley, CA,
University of California Press).
Khrushchev, S. (2000) Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower (University Park, PA, Penn
State University Press).
Kozlov, V.A. (2002) Kramola: inakomyslie v SSSR vo vremena Khrushcheva i L. Brezhneva (Po
materialam Verkhovnogo suda i prokuratury SSSR), Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost,
May.
Kramer, M. (1998) The Soviet Union and the 1956 Crises in Hungary and Poland: Reassessments and
New Findings, Journal of Contemporary History, 3, 2, pp. 163 214.
Kuromiya, H. (2003) Political Youth Opposition in Late Stalinism: Evidence and Conjecture,
Europe-Asia Studies, 55, 4, pp. 631 638.
MacGuire, R. (1987) Red Virgin Soil (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press).
McLean, H. & Vickery, W.N. (eds) (1961) The Year of Protest 1956: An Anthology of Soviet Literary
Materials (New York, Vintage Books).
Nordlander, D. (1993) Khrushchevs Image in the Light of Glasnost and Perestroika, Russian Review,
52, 2, pp. 248 266.
Orlova, R. & Kopelev, L. (1988) My zhili v Moskve (Ann Arbor, Ardis).
Reid, S. (2005) In the Name of the People: The Manege Aair Revisited, Kritika, 6, 4.
Serebrennikov, A. (1988) Khrushchev o staline (New York, Teleks).
Taubman, W. (2003) Khrushchev: His Life and Times (New York, Norton).
Tighe, C. (1996) The Polish Writing Profession: 1944 56, Contemporary European History, 5, 1,
pp. 71 102.