The ‘Secret Speech’ and its Effect on the ‘Cult of Personality’ in Hungary

Abstract

The article focuses on the effect of Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin's sins, at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, on the cult of the Hungarian ‘mini-Stalin’, Mátyás Rákosi. It tries to assess how the leadership of the Hungarian Workers Party reacted to the ‘Secret Speech’, and what measures were taken to dismantle the ‘cult of personality’ in the country in 1956. The party leadership became confused and split after Khrushchev's revelations and, with unclear signs from Moscow thereafter, it remained hesitant about the elimination of the institutionalised veneration of the leader. Rákosi's reluctance to face the legacy of the cult, and his belief in his own infallibility, also contributed to the half-hearted measures to wipe out the Stalinist practice of leader-glorification in Hungary. The failure of the party leadership to handle the issue of the cult contributed significantly to the escalation of popular discontent culminating in the outbreak of the October revolution. Despite the unwillingness of the party leadership to eliminate the remnants of the cult, the ‘cult of personality’ was widely discussed and criticised among the population in 1956, and the concept came to form an essential part of the political vocabulary. The article argues that the confusion of Eastern European communist parties with regard to the dismantling of the cult in 1956 was rooted in the inadequate explanation of the concept of ‘cult of personality’ by Khrushchev and the Soviet leadership. Given the generality of the notion, it became an umbrella term to describe Stalinist terror in its totality. Such a general usage by contemporaries has influenced the present use of the term in both academic and everyday contexts.