A re-examination of Khrushchev’s secret speech booklet allegedly published in Moscow in 1959: A comparative textual analysis with the official 1989 text and the US Department of State’s 1956 edition

This paper compares three versions of Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech: a Russian booklet that was allegedly published in 1959; the official Russian edition, published in Moscow in 1989; and the US Department of State’s version, published in English in 1956. This paper argues that although the booklet of 1959 was a forged imprint, its text cannot be summarily dismissed as false. The official text of Khrushchev’s speech, delivered to the closed session of the 20 th congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956, was published by the party in 1989. A note at the end of the text mentions that it is identical to the original text from March 1, 1956 (not to the text of February 25, 1956). The US Department of State’s version of the speech was printed in the New York Times on June 5, 1956. The text is identified as being a direct or secondary translation of the official text from March 1. Subsequent newspapers reports and research findings from the mid-1990s reveal that the original text had first passed through the hands of the Polish United Workers’ Party before reaching the Israel Security Agency, and finally the United States. By comparing the text of the 1959 booklet, the official 1989 edition, and the US Department of State’s version concurrently, we observe the following: in the Japanese translation.