Secret Speech and the Khrushchev thaw
Khrushchev denounces Stalin and Gulag prisoners are rehabilitated
On 25 February 1956, at the 20th Party Congress, Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin's personality cult in a closed session. Mass rehabilitation of Gulag prisoners and a relaxation of censorship followed, known as the Thaw.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 17 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 9 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 8 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 7 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 24 years later
Europe
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 23 years earlier
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 20 years earlier
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 15 years earlier
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 3 years earlier
- 1957 Treaty of Rome — 1 year later
Middle East
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 24 years earlier
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 8 years earlier
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 23 years later
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 24 years later
Africa
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — same year
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 2 years later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 4 years later
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 7 years later
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 11 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 11 years earlier
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 3 years earlier
- 1955–1975 Vietnam War — 1 year earlier
- 1955 Bandung Conference — 1 year earlier
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 19 years later
Americas
- 1955 Salk polio vaccine declared safe — 1 year earlier
- 1959 Cuban Revolution — 3 years later
- 1960 Great Chilean earthquake — 4 years later
- 1969 Moon landing — 13 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 14 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 20 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 15 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 14 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 2 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 3 years later
Alive at the time
- Winston Churchill (aged 82)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 75)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 67)
- Mao Zedong (aged 63)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 38)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 27)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 26)
- Yuri Gagarin (aged 22)
- Harry S. Truman (aged 72)
- Anna Akhmatova (aged 67)