The Thaw
Khrushchev made his famous “secret speech” in 1956 to a closed session of the Communist Party, in which he shredded Stalin’s personality cult. He argued that Stalin had been too full of ego to rule effectively, since nobody dared to contradict him.
It was too easy to simply get shot. Khrushchev only addressed specifically Russian concerns in his speech, ignoring the possibility that Ukraine might have its own unique grievances against Stalin. He criticized Stalin’s excesses, as they had proved disastrous for Russia at different points of WWII, and subsequently. He denounced the use of torture to gain “confessions.” Everybody in the party seemed keen to move on. Khrushchev, however, did not draw attention to the savagery of the Stalinist years in Ukraine or elsewhere in the Sputnik (satellite) states.Khrushchev released most of the Ukrainians imprisoned in northern gulags under a 1956 amnesty. Hundreds of thousands returned home—some enforced slave laborers, who had first been in Nazi Germany and then immediately in the Russian gulags, had lost more than a decade of their lives. Many more had left and died. Nothing could atone for such monstrosity, so Khrushchev tried to put some time and a lot of media control between them and the Stalin era, hoping for people to forget. The problem was that Ukrainians had centuries of practice in remembering injuries.
Ukranians sprang into action immediately, once the pressure was lifted. Writers began to write all the poems, plays, novels, and histories that would have had them sent to Stalin’s labor camps a handful of years previously. Heroes who had published under Stalin’s reign were awarded medals and honors (sometimes posthumously). Ukrainian leaders who had been exiled and imprisoned by Stalin were freed and repatriated. An academic journal devoted to Ukrainian history was published—and not immediately banned!