When, after the death of Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev relaxed the censorship laws, and opened the doors of the “Iron Curtain” the implications for recent Mennonite refugee immigrants were enormous.  Immediately, periodicals such as Der Bote and Die Rundschau were flooded with letters as Canadian Mennonites began searching for missing family members and relatives.  To the great joy and astonishment, they found that many of those repatriated to Siberia had survived.  After twelve long years of silence, letters began to flow, and with the letters, hopes that the USSR’s borders would soon open.  “I could describe so much,” Elizabeth Bergen writes to her son Hein in Canada, “but let’s hope that we can soon  talk face to face.”  The following year she is still hopeful:  “I am like a bird; travel where I please.  I think you’d take me into your home for a few months, wouldn’t you?  And how dearly I’d love to see all your children.”

 In spite of high expectations, by 1962 only 39 Russian Mennonite families had been  reunited  (Epp.  Mennonite Exodus, p. 471).  Large scale reunification would not take place until the mid 1980s.  For many, it would be too late.

We have to consider seriously and analyze correctly [the crimes of the Stalin era] in order that we may preclude any possibility of a repetition in any form whatever of what took place during the life of Stalin, who absolutely did not tolerate collegiality in leadership and in work, and who practiced brutal violence, not only toward everything which opposed him, but also toward that which seemed to his capricious and despotic character, contrary to his concepts.

Stalin acted not through persuasion, explanation, and patient cooperation with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed this concept or tried to prove his viewpoint, and the correctness of his position, was doomed to removal from the leading collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation. This was especially true during the period following the XVIIth Party Congress (1934)....

Stalin originated the concept enemy of the people. This term automatically rendered it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven; this term made possible the usage of the most cruel 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. This concept, enemy of the people, actually eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight or the making of one's views known on this or that issue, even those of a practical character.... The only proof of guilt used, against all norms of current legal science, was the confession of the accused himself; and, as subsequent probing proved, confessions were acquired through physical pressures against the accused...

It is clear that here Stalin showed in a whole series of cases his intolerance, his brutality and his abuse of power. Instead of proving his political correctness and mobilizing the masses, he often chose the path of repression and physical annihilation, not only against actual enemies, but also against individuals who had not committed any crimes against the Party and the Soviet government....

This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts.    This entry: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/krushchev-secret.html.    Photo from http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Nikita_Khrushchev