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‘Secret Speech’
— a postscript
I have a postscript to what I wrote in the last Newsletter (Autumn, 2000) regarding the leadership of the Danish Communist Party and Khrushchev's ‘Secret Speech’. A few details have been given in a recently published book, Bjørnen og Haren — Sovietunionen og Danmark 1945-1965 by Bent Jensen (The Bear and Hare — the Soviet Union and Denmark 1945-1965, Odense Universitetsforlag 1999), concerning the meetings between Aksel Larsen and the Russian ambassador in Copenhagen subsequent to the 20th Congress of the CPSU and in particular after the release of the Reuters' telegram of March 17th on a 'Secret Speech' that had been made on 'Stalin's mistakes'. Reports of these meetings and what Aksel Larsen said were made by the ambassador, Nikolai Slavin, and sent to Moscow, Bent Jensen has read this material in the Moscow archives and includes a few small quotes from them (Slavin`s conversations with Aksel Larsen which were reported back to Moscow are dated 23.3., 26.4., 5.6. and 18.6.1956). Larsen is reported as saying that the CPSU should have beforehand informed leaders of the communist parties in the capitalist countries of the 'criticism of Stalin', ie. that they should have known of the 'Secret Speech' prior to the 'leaks' and Reuters' telegram. Slavin gave an account of the DKP leader's heart-searching, but at the same time refusal to break with the old mind-set:
'Aksel Larsen said that many Party comrades were asking him why one had only begun to talk about Stalin`s mistakes now and why these mistakes had not been spoken about while Stalin was still alive. In the same breath Larsen remarked that to have made any kind of criticism of Stalin, while he was still alive, because of the logic of the revolutionary struggle, would inevitably have led one into the contra-revolutionary camp. He added that personally he had seen a series of incorrect aspects in Stalin`s actions but he had understood that to protect the unity of the Communist movement one shouldn`t say anything about these incorrect actions.'
He was now being asked why he had always without reservation supported all the decisions made by the Soviet leadership and the other communist parties in the People's Democracies. Larsen requested that he be allowed to come to Moscow to be fully informed, however, initially this was put off and instead he and Alfred Jensen were allowed to read the 'Speech' at the Soviet Embassy which, according to Slavin, made a deep impression on them both — Bent Jensen, writes that other members of the DKP leadership were not allowed to see the 'Speech'. Eventually, in June, Aksel Larsen secretly journeyed to Moscow via a circuitous route, however, the trip was uncovered because the Soviet authorities sent him back on a direct flight to Copenhagen. In contrast a visit by British party leaders, Pollitt, Gollan and Ramelson, to Moscow the following month to hold discussions with Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders was, from the first, openly held and reported, eg. Daily Worker 17 July 1956.
