ne struggles such as Molotov, Malenkov and eventually the leading military figure Marshal Yuri Zhukov, to remain (in some cases only temporarily) in the Party and to be assigned relatively obscure, remote posts until they died from natural causes.
Stalin's successors faced a dilemma. As thousands of survivors returned home from the Gulag, it proved impossible to keep secret their arrests, torture, imprisonment and maltreatment. Moreover, progress toward a more humane society would be impeded by the myth of Stalin's infallibility, which had been promoted by the cult of his personality. Khrushchev as well as his colleagues had to one degree or another been complicit in Stalin's misdeeds and crimes. Khrushchev said later "we were scared --really scared. We were afraid the thaw might unleash a flood" (Taubman, p. 241). Nevertheless, Khrushchev took the bull by the horns by revealing those crimes and the liquidation or consignment to the Gulag in the 1930s of millions in his secret speech to the 20th Party Congress
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