On 25 February 1956, in a closed session on the final day of the 20th congress of the Soviet Communist Party held in the Great Kremlin Palace, general secretary Nikita Khrushchev delivered a scathing condemnation of Joseph Stalin’s “abuse of power” and his brutality and incompetence in a speech: ‘On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences.’
It came as a bolt from the blue for the 1,400 or so stony faced delegates who had been indoctrinated with the idea that Stalin had been a genius, “a superman possessing supernatural characteristics, akin to those of a god” and a man who “supposedly knows everything, sees everything, thinks for everyone, can do anything” and is “infallible in his behaviour”.
Over four hours, Krushchev systematically dismantled the myths. It was an attempt to distance the party from Stalinism, free it from any guilt for his crimes and present it as a victim of Stalin.
At some point, the Republican party will need to repudiate Trumpism in the same way and for the same reasons, otherwise it’s on a one-way track to oblivion.
The Soviet climate of fear
Such was the climate of fear created by Stalin’s apparatus of state repression, it took three years from his death in 1953 for the party to admit its failure to effectively control the monster whose iron fists had led Russia since 1922. Western analysts knew about the speech the following day, but it was another 36 years before it was published officially in the Soviet Union, a one-party state that had total control of the media.
Krushchev accused Stalin of completely losing the “consciousness of reality” and of originating the concept of an “enemy of the people” a term that allowed the “cruellest repression, violating all norms of revolutionary legality, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those who had bad reputations”.
Will Trump need a police state?
It is little surprise that Donald Trump’s polling numbers continue to slide. He campaigned in anger and is governing in hate. While there are 42–43% who still approve of what he’s doing, the number is falling as more and more voters begin to understand Project 2025 and are personally affected by his executive orders.
The US economy is slowing down, hit by all the uncertainty being generated and his erratic on-off-on-again tariffs. One big donor to Trump’s election campaign has suggested the US “has become 20% poorer in 4 weeks” due to a fall in the dollar and chaos in the financial markets. Judges are being arrested and Supreme Court orders ignored.
His administration is unlawfully deporting undocumented immigrants without due process – even US-born children, including some with cancer. Border officials are detaining tourists, and some American citizens, returning from overseas trips.
Congressionally approved government agencies are being shut down and federal employees fired for no reason, with some then being reinstated by the courts or rehired because they were found to be essential workers. He is seeking vengeance on legal firms, the news media, universities, his political opponents, and even his own central bank chairman. Some 210 legal cases are ongoing against the administration.
Trump’s corruption
Trump is engaging in open corruption on a scale that would embarrass Vladimir Putin and his oligarchs, even halting the prosecution of US firms accused of bribery abroad.
Agriculture is slowly being destroyed by tariffs imposed by China in response to Trump’s tariffs on them. Tourism is being choked off as potential visitors note the very real risk of being held for days over a minor infringements or in some cases, no reason at all.
Next for the chop are Medicare and Medicaid, multi-billion-dollar government-funded programmes that provide low-cost healthcare for millions of poor and elderly Americans. None of this can possibly begin to reverse the fall in popular support for Trump. Only a small number of billionaires are likely to be beneficiaries of the massive tax cuts coming down the line.
Such a damaging political agenda cannot survive without the help of a police state, as the Mother Jones website rightly suggested last December. A few days ago, the Financial Times claimed Trump was already halfway there.
The cult of personality
A televised cabinet meeting on 10 April was an opportunity for his appointees around the table to take turns in lavishing fulsome praise on the ‘supreme leader’ while trashing Joe Biden’s administration. Trump looked on with a self-satisfied smirk, presumably at the way he has strongarmed former opponents like Marco Rubio into kissing the ring.
Like Trump, Stalin frequently created his own ‘facts’. He once claimed collective farms were well off and could afford to pay more taxes, suggesting an amount 50% more than the workers’ annual income from selling their produce to the state!
Krushchev said: “Did Stalin’s position, then, rest on data of any sort whatever? Of course not. In such cases facts and figures did not interest him. If Stalin said anything, it meant it was so – after all, he was a ‘genius,’ and a genius does not need to count, he only needs to look and can immediately tell how it should be. When he expresses his opinion, everyone has to repeat it and to admire his wisdom.”
Trump has made an art-form out of conjuring numbers from thin air to bolster his arguments, as this surreal Time Magazine interview to mark 100 days of his second term shows.
The narcissism of Trump and Stalin
Again, like Trump, Stalin wasn’t averse to self-praise either. He edited a short biography of his life published in 1948 in which the draft offered, “the most dissolute flattery, an example of making a man into a godhead” but clearly didn’t glorify him sufficiently. He personally added more praise of himself where he thought the authors had failed him. This was one example:
“Although he performed his tasks as leader of the Party and the people with consummate skill, and enjoyed the unreserved support of the entire Soviet people, Stalin never allowed his work to be marred by the slightest hint of vanity, conceit or self-adulation.”
These words were annotated in Stalin’s own handwriting.
In the early days, Trump used his alter egos John Barron and John Miller to praise himself, now he does it openly on the campaign trail and in interviews (“I run the country and the world”).
And, as Stalin became paranoid about plotters subverting him, he started a wave of arrests, not just against political opponents of which there were few left, but his own party apparatchiks:
“What is the reason that mass repressions against activists increased more and more after the 17th Party Congress? It was because at that time Stalin had so elevated himself above the Party and above the nation that he ceased to consider either the Central Committee or the Party.”
Trump has sidelined the Republican party for a decade and he is now doing the same to Congress. Senators are said to be “terrified” of the president amid threat that Elon Musk would fund more compliant challengers to their seats.
Democracy in America has become a plaything for the very wealthy.
Lessons for the Republican Party
There is a story I recall reading (probably apocryphal but one that appeals to me). It was that Krushchev took questions from the floor after his speech. These were written down and passed up to the leaders on stage. One unsigned question was: “If all you say about Stalin is true, you were a close colleague, what were you doing at the time?”
It was a good question. Khrushchev read it out to the assembled delegates. He then looked up and scanned the audience: “Who asked this?” Silence. No one responded. No one stood up.
“That’s what I was doing,” Khrushchev said.
It’s also what far too many in the Republican party are doing now.
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