He opened the coffin lid, and became the first leader to die in bed
18 November 1956, at the Polish embassy in Moscow, he told Western ambassadors: "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!" Twelve NATO envoys and the Israeli ambassador walked out.
He survived Stalin’s court, playing the fool when required, and in 1956 opened the coffin lid with the Secret Speech. He crushed Hungary, backed down over Cuba and saved the world, and paid for the retreat in 1964, when his colleagues voted him out. In retirement he is said to have remarked: that they could remove me by a vote and not a bullet: that is my achievement.
Career Timeline
- 1935–38Moscow First Secretary; the Metro
- 1938–49First Secretary of Ukraine
- 1942–43Military council member at Stalingrad
- 1953–64First Secretary of the party
- 1954–56The Virgin Lands; the Secret Speech
- 1957Defeats the Anti-Party Group
- 1961The 22nd Congress; Stalin’s body moved out of the mausoleum
- 1964Voted out; retirement on a pension
Related historical events
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationFirst Secretary of Moscow Party Committee · Metro construction
- 1939.11–1940.03The Winter WarThe Soviet leader who in his memoirs called the Winter War a 'moral defeat'In his memoirs he wrote that 'a victory at such a cost was actually a moral defeat. Our people never knew the truth.' His account confirms that even within the Soviet leadership the Winter War was understood as a catastrophe.
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarFront military council memberAs a member of the Stalingrad Front military council he took part in the defense and the counteroffensive.
- 1948–1955The Tito-Stalin SplitArchitect of the 1955 reconciliationCame to Belgrade and normalised relations
- 1953The Fall of BeriaOrganizer of the takedownThe key figure who organized Beria’s removal within the Presidium.
- 1955The Founding of the Warsaw PactFirst Secretary of the CPSU, 1953–1964After ousting Malenkov, Khrushchev pressed the hard line of standing on the German status quo, drafted the alliance treaty that became the Pact, and conceived it as a lever for collective-security bargaining.
- 1956.02The Twentieth Party Congress and the Secret SpeechThe first secretary who read the speechHe read "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" to the closed session on the final day.
- 1956The Hungarian RevolutionOrdered the interventionSeeing the uprising as the collapse of the bloc, he made the final decision to intervene militarily.
- 1957The Anti-Party GroupThe victorious First SecretaryHe turned the tables on the majority by taking the question to the Central Committee.
- 1957–1965The Soviet Space ProgramPolitical patronAs First Secretary he gave the space program top-priority resources and political backing, presenting its achievements to the world as achievements of socialism.
- 1956–1969The Sino-Soviet SplitThe Soviet principalHis demotion of Stalin and line of peaceful coexistence opened the quarrel; in 1960 he withdrew the advisers.
- 1961The Building of the Berlin WallSoviet First Secretary and Premier, who issued the 1958 and 1961 Berlin ultimatumsKhrushchev issued the six-month Berlin ultimatum to the three Western powers in November 1958 and renewed it at the 1961 Vienna summit.
- 1962The Cuban Missile CrisisSoviet leader in the standoffHe made the decision to place missiles in Cuba, then chose withdrawal at the edge of nuclear war.
25 February 1956 — the secret speech that opened Stalin's coffin
Around midnight on 25 February 1956, at a closed session of the 20th Party Congress, Nikita Khrushchev spoke for four hours. 1,436 delegates listened in shock and silence. Titled 'On the Cult of Personality and its Consequences,' the speech officially quoted Lenin's Testament for the first time, exposed the illegality of the Great Purges, and indicted Stalin's incompetence on the eve of war.
Khrushchev revealed that Stalin had carried out 'mass annihilation of Leninists' and 'ignored intelligence on the eve of the Nazi invasion.' 'Loyal communists were tortured, forced to confess... Stalin said he directed the war on a globe.'
The speech was 'secret'. But Mossad obtained it by June, and the CIA released it worldwide. Shockwaves rippled: millions left communist parties. The 1956 Hungarian Revolution was an indirect consequence. Khrushchev had opened Stalin's coffin, but the forces he unleashed were beyond his control.