Fifty years ago - The end of the Stalin cult
Fifty years ago, in 1956, the cult of Josef Stalin — the man who had imposed terror on the workers of the USSR while simultaneously being revered by millions of workers as the “genius” leader of world communism — was abruptly shattered. USSR leader Nikita Khruschev, denounced him. Khrushchev’s speech caused huge crises in Communist Parties across the world. The American Marxist James P Cannon (above) had been a close comrade of Leon Trotsky, who led the battle of the loyal Bolshevik revolutionaries in the USSR against Stalin’s counter-revolution. By 1956 Cannon was the foremost surviving...