Unmasking Stalin: A Speech That Changed the World [60min]

President Bush, during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last September, said, "Democracy just doesn't happen, it grows. It takes a while. That's the experience of our country. That's the experience of the Russian federation." Yet in Russia, more than 14 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is unclear whether the democratic promise of that country's post-Soviet revolution has fully grown. Putin's critics say he has accumulated too much power, that Russia's historical penchant for "rule by the iron fist" is creeping back into play. Hovering over these concerns are still fresh memories of Russia's past, where repression defined the Soviet way of life. Fifty years ago, on February 25, 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, the former Kremlin leader, revealed and denounced, for the first time in the history of the Soviet Union, the crimes of his predecessor, Joseph Stalin. Khrushchev condemned Stalin in a secret speech at the 20th congress of the Soviet Communist party.