![]() At the height of the terror Krushchev had signed off on tens of thousands of executions at a time had he refused, he might have been branded as an enemy of the people and thrown onto the pile. ![]() His predecessor, Khrushchev proclaimed, had constructed an almost invincible cult of personality which he used to destroy his rivals and send legions of innocent communists to their deaths. ![]() Why the world's most difficult novel is so rewarding The 'dangerous' books too powerful to read When Khrushchev returned to the stage shortly after midnight, he did something nobody in Russia could have imagined witnessing for the previous three decades. Nobody from the press or from outside the Soviet Union would be allowed to attend. ![]() There was going to be a "closed session" later that evening. As the conference drew to an end, a rumour began to circulate through the convention hall. One instance came in 1956 when Nikita Khrushchev was presiding over his first Party Congress as leader of the USSR. Liberties have come and gone while false dawns tease the horizon. Freedom of expression has had an elastic history in Russia. ![]() In recent months, protesters in Russia have been arrested for holding up blank signs, giving away copies of Nineteen Eighty Four and for describing a conflict that has already killed tens of thousands of Russian soldiers as "a war". ![]()
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