1 Research Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’. How have historians explained the apparent contradiction between his denunciation of Stalin and his brutal repression of uprisings in the aftermath of this speech?
Throughout the Cold War, the ability of both sides to provide improving living standards for their citizens was a key indicator as to the ‘success’ of the economic and political systems they employed. In the USA and Western Europe, liberal democracy and varying degrees of free market capitalism produced unprecedented levels of prosperity and stability in the 1950s and 1960s. Even during the more troubled 1970s, living standards overall continued to grow. However, in the Soviet-occupied states of Eastern Europe providing materially for the aspirations of East Germans, Czechs, Poles, Romanians and others was far more difficult, as the region struggled to deal with the economic legacy of its creator, Joseph Stalin.
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