From the Daily Worker 1957: ‘Five Vital Points’ about the USSR

I spent some time last week at the National Library of Australia in Canberra looking at the publications of the Communist Parties of Great Britain and Australia. I was looking at the Daily Worker from 1957, investigating the 25th Special Congress’ resolution on colonial independence, and found this excerpt in a summary of the Congress. As I have written here, the 25th Congress was called in response to the upheaval experienced by the CPGB after Khrushchev’s Secret Speech in February 1956. Many in the Party leadership maintained the position that even though crimes may have occurred under the Stalin regime, the contributions to the struggle for socialism by Stalin and the USSR were overwhelmingly positive. This led to an exodus of Party members. By the time of the Congress, around 8,000 people had left the Party. But it seemed that the Party leadership were still clinging to their old position:

I may post some other tidbits I found in the Daily Worker over the next week, so stay tuned.