LESSONS OF THE 20TH CONGRESS OF THE CPSU: TOTALITARIANISM CANNOT BE ABOLISHED, ONLY OUTGROWN (ON THE HISTORY OF THE PARTY EDUCATION SYSTEM IN THE USSR)

Abstract

The article focuses on the 70th anniversary of the presentation of First Secretary of the Central Committee N. S. Khrushchev's report “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences” at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Using the example of the transformations of the party education system ‒ the Academy of Social Sciences (AOS) under the CPSU Central Committee and the Higher Party School (VPSh) under the CPSU Central Committee ‒ the author demonstrates the fundamental changes in the lives of individuals, small but significant groups, and, finally, the USSR as a whole that followed the condemnation of the Stalinist repressions and the personality cult of Stalin himself. These changes also affected the educational process, which was now aimed not at training personally devoted communists ready to carry out any order from above, but at graduating specialists capable of pursuing a balanced domestic and foreign policy. Another visible change was the inclusion of the Academy of Social Sciences and the Higher Party School in international contacts, primarily with related organizations in socialist countries. Year after year, this cooperation expanded, even extending to capitalist countries: faculty and graduate students from the party education system began to travel for internships and research trips, which undoubtedly began to change their worldview. However, overall, the country was unable to achieve a break from Stalin's rules of life and his methods of policymaking for a long time. Only with the collapse of the regime itself could the process initiated by N.S. Khrushchev's report to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU be completed