De-Stalinization (
Russian: десталинизация,
Destalinizatsiya) refers to a process of political reform in the
Soviet Union that took place after the death of long-time leader
Joseph Stalin in 1953. The reforms consisted of changing or removing key institutions that helped Stalin hold power: the
cult of personality that surrounded him, the
Stalinist political system, and the
Gulag labour-camp system, all of which had been created and dominated by him as
General Secretary, among other titles, from 1922 to 1952. Stalin was succeeded by a
collective leadership after his death in March 1953, consisting of
Georgi Malenkov,
Premier of the Soviet Union;
Lavrentiy Beria, head of the
Ministry of the Interior; and
Nikita Khrushchev,
First Secretary of the
Central Committee of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). These men had all been loyal Stalinists, but they also knew that the excesses of Stalinism threatened everyone, even the very top loyalists, with arbitrary execution. They thus embarked on a process of disassembling one-man rule and
rehabilitating some of the persons who had met undeserved fates.