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Fisher Seymour
Le Secret
Reference : 0010105VPVC
ISBN : 9782246000433
B. Grasset Broch D'occasion tat correct 01/01/1974 150 pages
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Fenêtre sur l'Asie
M. Alexis Chevalier
49 rue Gay Lussac
75005 Paris
France
01 43 29 11 00
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Par correspondance ou en librairie (sur rendez-vous). Envoi possible par Mondial Relay pour limiter les frais de port (nous le signaler). Modes de règlement : - Paypal - Chèque (à l'ordre de "Fenêtre sur l'Asie" à expédier à Librairie Gay Lussac, 49 rue Gay Lussac, 75005 Paris - Virement (nous contacter pour obtenir notre RIB)
5 book(s) with the same title
Le secret des finances de France, descouvert, et départi en trois livres. & maintenant publié, pour ouvrir les moyens légitimes & nécessaires de payer les dettes du Roy, décharger ses sujets des subsides imposez depuis trente un ans, & recouvrer tous les deniers prins à sa Majesté.
S. L., 1581. 1581 1 vol in-8° (177 x 115 mm) en 3 parties de: Livre I. [28] ff, 152 pp.; Livre II. 472 pp. [erreur de pagination: pas de pp 17 à 32 mais texte bien complet]; Livre III. [4] ff, 439 pp [erreur de pagination: pas de pp 433 à 436 mais texte bien complet] (rousseurs uniformes). Plein vélin d'époque, tranchefils traversant les coiffes, traces de lacets, dos lisse ttré à l'encre brune et au crayon, étiquette de bibliothèque en queue.
Édition augmentée du secret des « thrésors de France », également publiée en 1581, ce qui en fait la meilleure édition de cette précieuse analyse statistique des finances publiques des années 1550-1580 et vive critique le « régime fiscal » de l'époque. Il est attribué par les bibliographes à Nicolas Barnaud du Crest, le nom de N. Froumenteau ne serait quun pseudonyme. Ce dernier est considéré comme un précurseur dauteurs tels que Boisguilbert, Vauban et Boulainvilliers, ainsi que des physiocrates du 18éme siècle. L'épître au Roi souligne la décadence de la France et l'enquête publiée, en en soulignant les maux, doit servir à son relèvement. L'auteur énumère minutieusement les deniers devant se trouver dans les finances royales de 1550 à 1580, depuis Henri II jusqu'à Henri III. Il donne une énumération détaillée par archevêché, diocèse, bailliage des dépenses et recettes pour chaque institution et tente un dénombrement de la population. " Il prétend évaluer, avec une singulière précision de statisticien, tous les dommages causés à la France par les guerres de religion, villes et villages détruits, soldats et habitants tués, jusqu'aux femmes et filles violées " (Hauser). C'est donc une des premières enquêtes statistiques publiée qu'il faut évidemment prendre avec les réserves inhérentes à une période de notre histoire particulièrement troublée. Louvrage paru la même année sous le titre « Le Secret des trésors de France » ne comporte pas le troisième livre. A noter quil existe plusieurs variantes de notre édition, dont notre exemplaire est la plus rare, avec le « Le » du titre imprimé en caractères romains et non en italique et avec l « Épitre au lecteur » du second livre imprimé sur 16 pages au lieu de 32, doù labsence de pages 17 à 32. Superbe exemplaire conservé dans son vélin dorigine. Einaudi, 5204. Kress, 146. Hauser, Sources, 2340, INED, 1932. 1 vol. in-8° (177 x 115 mm) in 3 parts from: Book I. [28] ff, 152 pp.; Book II. 472 pp. [pag. error: no pp 17 to 32 but complete text]; Book III. [4] ff, 439 pp [pag. error: no pp 433 to 436 but complete text] (uniform foxing). Full period vellum, edged threads crossing the caps, traces of laces, smooth spine with title in brown ink and pencil, library label. Expanded edition of the secret of the thrésors de France, also published in 1581, making it the best edition of this valuable statistical analysis of public finances from the years 1550-1580 and sharply criticizing the tax regime of the time. The work is attributed by bibliographers to Nicolas Barnaud du Crest, the name of N. Froumenteau would only be a pseudonym. The latter is considered a precursor of authors such as Boisguilbert, Vauban and Boulainvilliers, as well as the physiocrats of the 18th century. The epistle to the King underlines the decadence of France and the published investigation, by highlighting its evils, must serve to its recovery. The author carefully lists the funds to be found in the royal finances from 1550 to 1580, from Henry II to Henry III. It gives a detailed list by archbishopric, diocese, bailiwick of expenditure and revenue for each institution and attempts a population count. He claims to assess, with the singular precision of a statistician, all the damage caused to France by the wars of religion, towns and villages destroyed, soldiers and inhabitants killed, even women and girls raped (Hauser). It is therefore one of the first published statistical surveys which must obviously be taken with the reservations inherent in a particularly troubled period of our history. The work published the same year under the title The Secret of the Treasures of France does not include the third book. Note that there are several variants of our edition, of which our copy is the rarest, with the "The" of the title printed in Roman characters and not in italics and with the "Epistle to the reader" of the second book printed on 16 pages instead of 32, hence the absence of pages 17 to 32. A very desirable copy preserved in its original vellum. Einaudi, 5204. Kress, 146. Hauser, Sources, 2340, INED, 1932.
Phone number : 06 81 35 73 35
XXXIII sonnets composés au secret [envoi de Jean Piaubert]
1950 Couverture rigide Paris, La hune, Les Editions de Minuit, 1950. Un volume in-folio (49 x 33,5 cm), en feuilles, sous chemise cartonnée de l'éditeur et dans son emboîtage, quelques marques et accrocs à l'étui. 33 sonnets, illustrés de 33 lithographies en noir sous serpente. Tirage à 200 exemplaires sur vélin de Rives. Le nôtre un des exemplaires réservés aux collaborateurs, non numéroté. Envoi manuscrit de Jean Piaubert. Entré en résistance dès septembre 1940, Jean Cassou devient un agent du "réseau Bertaux" à partir d'août 1941. Il est arrêté en décembre de la même année pour ses activités passées au musée de l'Homme et emprisonné à la prison militaire de Furgole à Toulouse où il élabore de tête, sans la possibilité de les écrire, ses "Trente-trois sonnets composés au secret", publiés clandestinement au printemps 1944 sous le pseudonyme de Jean Noir. Grâce au Front national des musiciens, Henri Dutilleux en prend connaissance, et met l'un des poèmes, La Geôle, en musique. L'engagement politique de Jean Cassou et son rôle dans la résistance ont à l'évidence influencé son travail poétique, lui conférant une dimension supplémentaire de courage et de défi contre l'oppression. Bel état des planches et du texte, bon exemplaire.
Très bon
O kulcie jednostki i jego nastepstwach. Referat I Sekretarza KC KPZR tow. N. S. Chruszczowa na XX Zjezdzie Komunistycznej Partii Zwiazku Radzieckiego 25 lutego 1956 r. Nieopublikowane materialy doreczone delegatom na XX Zjazd KPZR. [i.e. On the Cult o... - [THE SECRET SPEECH THAT CHANGED WORLD HISTORY]
Warszawa, March (27th and 31st) 1956. 8vo. Original printed wrappers. With ""Wylacznie do uzytku organizacji partyjnych"" (""Exclusively for inner-party use"") printed to top of front wrapper. Stamped serial number to front wrapper: 12861. A few light creases to wrappers. A A very nice, clean, and fresh copy.Previous owner's name to title-page. 95, (1) pp.
Extremely scarce second impression, printed for private circulation only (""exclusively for inner-party use""), of one of the most important documents of the 20th century, namely Khrushchev's so-called ""Secret Speech"", also known as the ""Khrushchev Report"". This seminal speech was delivered at an unpublicized closed session of Communist Party delegates, with guests and members of the press excluded, and the present Polish version, which appeard in two different printings, of it was the only one that circulated during the Cold War, the official Russian text being unknown until its 1989 publication. The CIA counterfeit edition [falsely stating Moscow 1959] was in fact a translation into Russian from the present Polish text, which was smuggled out of Moscow and leaked, via Israel, to the USA. There are two impressions of the first edition of Khrushchev's speech, both bearing the date March 1956 and both ordered by the Polish communist party authorities in the span of March 27 - March 31. As opposed to the even scarcer first priting of the text, this second priting of 96 pages was edited to give only Khrushchev's speech (without the recorded interjections and ovations), but containing also a second part, ""Unpublished materials"" with Lenin's ""Testament"", Lenin's ""On the National Question"", and Stalin's notes.The present publication shook the Western world and changed our history for good. ""Its consequences, by no means fully foreseen by Khrushchev, shook the Soviet Union to the core, but even more so its communist allies, notably in central Europe. Forces were unleashed that eventually changed the course of history. But at the time, the impact on the delegates was more immediate. Soviet sources now say some were so convulsed as they listened that they suffered heart attacks"" others committed suicide afterwards."" (John Rettie, in The Observer, Sunday 26 February 2006 ).On February 24, 1956 before assembled delegates at a secret session of the Communist Party's Twentieth Congress, Nikita Khrushchev delivered his so-called ""Secret Speech"", denouncing Stalin for his transgressions. The public session of the 20th Congress had come to a formal end on 24 February 1956 when word was spread to delegates to return to the Great Hall of the Kremlin for an additional ""closed session,"" to which journalists, guests, and delegates from ""fraternal parties"" from outside the USSR were not invited. Special passes were issued to those eligible to participate, with an additional 100 former Party members, recently released from the Soviet prison camp network. The speech was thus secretly held in this closed session, without discussion, and it was neither published as part of the congress' proceedings nor reported in the Soviet press. The speech that sent shock waves through the congress participants denounced Stalin, describing him as satanic despot and terrorist who had committed the greatest of crimes. Quoting from correspondence, memoranda and his own observations, Khrushchev gave details of Stalin's horrible actions during the Terror of the late 1930'ies, the unpreparedness of the country at the time of the Nazi invasion in June 1941, numerous wartime blunders, the deportation of various nationalities in 1943 and 1944, and the banishing of Tito's Yugoslavia from the Soviet bloc after the war. Absolving the party itself of these grave actions, Khrushchev attributed them to the ""cult of personality"" that Stalin encouraged and his ""violations of socialist legality"". According to Khrushchev's speech, Stalin was a tyrant, a murderer and torturer of party members.Khrushchev gave his grim tale of the obscene crimes committed by his predecessor, Josef Stalin, only three years after the death of Stalin, who was then celebrated as a great leader and whose death was mourned by the great majority of Soviet citizens, who saw him as a divine father. It is no wonder that this lengthy speech from their new leader completely shocked Soviet communists, being told so soon after his death that far from far from being divine, their hero Stalin was actually outright satanic. The leaders who inherited the party from the old dictator had agreed - after months of furious argument - that Khrushchev should make the speech, but on the condition that it should never be published.Khrushchev read from a prepared report and no stenographic record of the closed session was kept. No questions or debate followed Khrushchev's presentation, and it is reported that delegates left the hall in a state of complete disorientation. It is even said that several delegates suffered heart attacks and that some even committed suicide upon listening to the horrifying speech. On the evening of the congress, delegates of foreign Communist parties were called to the Kremlin and given the opportunity to read the prepared text of the Khrushchev speech, which was treated as a top secret state document. Reports of the speech soon reached the West and as early as March the contents were reported in Western media. ""The content of the speech reached the west through a circuitous route. A few copies of the speech were sent by order of the Soviet Politburo to leaders of the Eastern Bloc countries. Shortly after the speech had been disseminated, a Polish journalist, Viktor Grayevsky, visited his girlfriend, Lucia Baranowski, who worked as a junior secretary in the office of the first secretary of the Polish Communist Party, Edward Ochab. On her desk was a thick booklet with a red binding, with the words: ""The 20th Party Congress, the speech of Comrade Khrushchev."" Grayevsky had heard rumors of the speech and, as a journalist, was interested in reading it. Baranowski allowed him to take the document home to read.As it happened, Grayevsky, who was Jewish, and had made a recent trip to Israel to visit his sick father, decided to emigrate there. After he read the speech, he decided to take it to the Israeli Embassy and gave it to Yaakov Barmor who had helped Grayevsky make his trip to visit Grayevsky's sick father. Barmor was a Shin Bet representative"" he photographed the document and sent the photographs to Israel. By the afternoon of April 13, 1956, the Shin Bet in Israel received the photographs. Israeli intelligence and United States intelligence had previously secretly agreed to cooperate on security matters. James Jesus Angleton was the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) head of counterintelligence and in charge of the clandestine liaison with Israeli intelligence. The photographs were delivered to him. On April 17, 1956, the photographs reached the CIA chief Allen Dulles, who quickly informed U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. After determining that the speech was authentic, the CIA leaked the speech to The New York Times in early June.""""In the West, the impact of the speech received a colossal boost from the publication of the full, albeit sanitised, text in The Observer and the New York Times. This was the first time the full text had been available for public scrutiny anywhere in the world. Even local party secretaries who read it to members had to return their texts within 36 hours. (Those texts were also sanitised, omitting two incidents in the speech that Orlov related to me.)According to William Taubman, in his masterly biography of Khrushchev, the full text leaked out through Poland where, like other central European communist allies, Moscow had sent an edited copy for distribution to the Polish party."" (John Rettie, in The Observer, Sunday 26 February 2006).The speech sent shock waves throughout the Communist world and caused many Western Communists to abandon the movement. In central Europe, the impact of the speech was enormous. By autumn Poland was ready to explode and in Hungary an anti-communist revolution overthrew the Stalinist party and government, replacing them with the short-lived reformist Imre Nagy.""Some may doubt that Stalin's Soviet Union could ever have been reformed, but Khrushchev was not among them - and neither, indeed, was Gorbachev. But after two decades of decay under Brezhnev, even he could not hold the country together. It can well be argued that the 'secret speech' was the century's most momentous, planting the seed that eventually caused the demise of the USSR."" (John Rettie, in The Observer, Sunday 26 February 2006).It is the present version of the seminal text that leaked behind the Iron Curtain. Allegedly the CIA offered USD 1.000.000 for a copy, before they came into possession of the text through other channels. Khrushchev himself stated: ""It was supposed to have been secret, but in fact it was far from being secret.. our document fell into the hands of some Polish comrades who were hostile towards the Soviet Union. They used my speech for their own purposes and made copies of it. I was told that it was being sold for very little.""Like the first impression, almost all the copies of this extremely scarce publication - which were all numbered and strictly registered - were withdrawn and destroyed after 11 April 1956. We have been able to locate no copies of either impression outside of Poland and can find no copies registered in OCLC.
O kulcie jednostki i jego nastepstwach. Referat I Sekretarza KC KPZR tow. N. S. Chruszczowa na XX Zjezdzie Komunistycznej Partii Zwiazku Radzieckiego 25 lutego 1956 r. Nieopublikowane materialy doreczone delegatom na XX Zjazd KPZR. [i.e. On the Cult o... - [THE SECRET SPEECH THAT CHANGED WORLD HISTORY]
Warszawa, March (31st) 1956. 8vo. Original printed wrappers. With ""Wylacznie do uzytku organizacji partyjnych"" (""Exclusively for inner-party use"") printed to top of front wrapper. A very nice, clean, and fresh copy. 95, (1) pp.
Extremely scarce second impression, printed for private circulation only (""exclusively for inner-party use""), of one of the most important documents of the 20th century, namely Khrushchev's so-called ""Secret Speech"", also known as the ""Khrushchev Report"". This seminal speech was delivered at an unpublicized closed session of Communist Party delegates, with guests and members of the press excluded, and the present Polish version, which appeard in two different printings, of it was the only one that circulated during the Cold War, the official Russian text being unknown until its 1989 publication. The CIA counterfeit edition [falsely stating Moscow 1959] was in fact a translation into Russian from the present Polish text, which was smuggled out of Moscow and leaked, via Israel, to the USA. There are two impressions of the first edition of Khrushchev's speech, both bearing the date March 1956 and both ordered by the Polish communist party authorities in the span of March 27 - March 31. As opposed to the even scarcer first priting of the text, this second priting of 96 pages was edited to give only Khrushchev's speech (without the recorded interjections and ovations), but containing also a second part, ""Unpublished materials"" with Lenin's ""Testament"", Lenin's ""On the National Question"", and Stalin's notes.The present publication shook the Western world and changed our history for good. ""Its consequences, by no means fully foreseen by Khrushchev, shook the Soviet Union to the core, but even more so its communist allies, notably in central Europe. Forces were unleashed that eventually changed the course of history. But at the time, the impact on the delegates was more immediate. Soviet sources now say some were so convulsed as they listened that they suffered heart attacks"" others committed suicide afterwards."" (John Rettie, in The Observer, Sunday 26 February 2006 ).On February 24, 1956 before assembled delegates at a secret session of the Communist Party's Twentieth Congress, Nikita Khrushchev delivered his so-called ""Secret Speech"", denouncing Stalin for his transgressions. The public session of the 20th Congress had come to a formal end on 24 February 1956 when word was spread to delegates to return to the Great Hall of the Kremlin for an additional ""closed session,"" to which journalists, guests, and delegates from ""fraternal parties"" from outside the USSR were not invited. Special passes were issued to those eligible to participate, with an additional 100 former Party members, recently released from the Soviet prison camp network. The speech was thus secretly held in this closed session, without discussion, and it was neither published as part of the congress' proceedings nor reported in the Soviet press. The speech that sent shock waves through the congress participants denounced Stalin, describing him as satanic despot and terrorist who had committed the greatest of crimes. Quoting from correspondence, memoranda and his own observations, Khrushchev gave details of Stalin's horrible actions during the Terror of the late 1930'ies, the unpreparedness of the country at the time of the Nazi invasion in June 1941, numerous wartime blunders, the deportation of various nationalities in 1943 and 1944, and the banishing of Tito's Yugoslavia from the Soviet bloc after the war. Absolving the party itself of these grave actions, Khrushchev attributed them to the ""cult of personality"" that Stalin encouraged and his ""violations of socialist legality"". According to Khrushchev's speech, Stalin was a tyrant, a murderer and torturer of party members.Khrushchev gave his grim tale of the obscene crimes committed by his predecessor, Josef Stalin, only three years after the death of Stalin, who was then celebrated as a great leader and whose death was mourned by the great majority of Soviet citizens, who saw him as a divine father. It is no wonder that this lengthy speech from their new leader completely shocked Soviet communists, being told so soon after his death that far from far from being divine, their hero Stalin was actually outright satanic. The leaders who inherited the party from the old dictator had agreed - after months of furious argument - that Khrushchev should make the speech, but on the condition that it should never be published.Khrushchev read from a prepared report and no stenographic record of the closed session was kept. No questions or debate followed Khrushchev's presentation, and it is reported that delegates left the hall in a state of complete disorientation. It is even said that several delegates suffered heart attacks and that some even committed suicide upon listening to the horrifying speech. On the evening of the congress, delegates of foreign Communist parties were called to the Kremlin and given the opportunity to read the prepared text of the Khrushchev speech, which was treated as a top secret state document. Reports of the speech soon reached the West and as early as March the contents were reported in Western media. ""The content of the speech reached the west through a circuitous route. A few copies of the speech were sent by order of the Soviet Politburo to leaders of the Eastern Bloc countries. Shortly after the speech had been disseminated, a Polish journalist, Viktor Grayevsky, visited his girlfriend, Lucia Baranowski, who worked as a junior secretary in the office of the first secretary of the Polish Communist Party, Edward Ochab. On her desk was a thick booklet with a red binding, with the words: ""The 20th Party Congress, the speech of Comrade Khrushchev."" Grayevsky had heard rumors of the speech and, as a journalist, was interested in reading it. Baranowski allowed him to take the document home to read.As it happened, Grayevsky, who was Jewish, and had made a recent trip to Israel to visit his sick father, decided to emigrate there. After he read the speech, he decided to take it to the Israeli Embassy and gave it to Yaakov Barmor who had helped Grayevsky make his trip to visit Grayevsky's sick father. Barmor was a Shin Bet representative"" he photographed the document and sent the photographs to Israel. By the afternoon of April 13, 1956, the Shin Bet in Israel received the photographs. Israeli intelligence and United States intelligence had previously secretly agreed to cooperate on security matters. James Jesus Angleton was the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) head of counterintelligence and in charge of the clandestine liaison with Israeli intelligence. The photographs were delivered to him. On April 17, 1956, the photographs reached the CIA chief Allen Dulles, who quickly informed U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. After determining that the speech was authentic, the CIA leaked the speech to The New York Times in early June.""""In the West, the impact of the speech received a colossal boost from the publication of the full, albeit sanitised, text in The Observer and the New York Times. This was the first time the full text had been available for public scrutiny anywhere in the world. Even local party secretaries who read it to members had to return their texts within 36 hours. (Those texts were also sanitised, omitting two incidents in the speech that Orlov related to me.)According to William Taubman, in his masterly biography of Khrushchev, the full text leaked out through Poland where, like other central European communist allies, Moscow had sent an edited copy for distribution to the Polish party."" (John Rettie, in The Observer, Sunday 26 February 2006).The speech sent shock waves throughout the Communist world and caused many Western Communists to abandon the movement. In central Europe, the impact of the speech was enormous. By autumn Poland was ready to explode and in Hungary an anti-communist revolution overthrew the Stalinist party and government, replacing them with the short-lived reformist Imre Nagy.""Some may doubt that Stalin's Soviet Union could ever have been reformed, but Khrushchev was not among them - and neither, indeed, was Gorbachev. But after two decades of decay under Brezhnev, even he could not hold the country together. It can well be argued that the 'secret speech' was the century's most momentous, planting the seed that eventually caused the demise of the USSR."" (John Rettie, in The Observer, Sunday 26 February 2006).It is the present version of the seminal text that leaked behind the Iron Curtain. Allegedly the CIA offered USD 1.000.000 for a copy, before they came into possession of the text through other channels. Khrushchev himself stated: ""It was supposed to have been secret, but in fact it was far from being secret.. our document fell into the hands of some Polish comrades who were hostile towards the Soviet Union. They used my speech for their own purposes and made copies of it. I was told that it was being sold for very little.""Like the first impression, almost all the copies of this extremely scarce publication - which were all numbered and strictly registered - were withdrawn and destroyed after 11 April 1956. We have been able to locate no copies of either impression outside of Poland and can find no copies registered in OCLC.
Nieopublikowane materialy doreczone delegatom XX Zjazd KPZR (Polish, i.e.: Unpublished Materials Delivered to the Delegates of the 20th CPSU Congress). - [ THE PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED MATERIALS THAT LED TO KHRUSHCHEV'S SECRET SPEECH]
Warszawa, March (presumably 27th, but no later than 31st) 1956. 8vo. Original printed wrappers. With ""Wylacznie do uzytku organizacji partyjnych"" (""Exclusively for inner-party use"") printed to top of front wrapper. Stamped serial number to front wrapper: 0563. Some creases to spine and corners of wrappers and a tear to the back wrapper. Title-page a little cleased and with two small marginal holes caused by the original clips. All in all a fairly well preserved copy. 32 pp.
Extremely rare first printing thus (presumably the first printing at all, and definitely the first separate printing), printed for private circulation only (""exclusively for inner-party use""), of the previously unpublished materials that led to one of the most important moments of 20th century politics, namely Khrushchev's so-called ""Secret Speech"", also known as the ""Khrushchev Report"". This seminal speech was delivered at an unpublicized closed session of Communist Party delegates, with guests and members of the press excluded. The ""Unpublished materials"" contain Lenin's ""Testament"", Lenin's ""On the National Question"", and Stalin's notes.The speech itself appeard in two different printings. As the present publication, those the two printings of the speech also bear the date March 1956 and all three publications were ordered by the Polish communist party authorities in the span of March 27 - March 31. The extremely scarce first printing of the speech consisted in 71 pages, namely Khrushchev's speech with the recorded interjections and ovations"" the second printing, which appered four days later, consisted of 96 pages, was edited to give only Khrushchev's speech (without the recorded interjections and ovations), but containing also a second part, ""Unpublished materials"" with Lenin's ""Testament"", Lenin's ""On the National Question"", and Stalin's notes.The present publication constitutes the ""Unpublished materials"" alone, with a separate pagination (pp. 1-32, including a title-page) - exactly the same material as pp. 71-(96) of the second printing of the speech from March 31st, but here published separately, with its own title-page. Thus, the present publication was most likely published at the same time as the first printing of Khrushchev's Speech, March 27th, and meant to be an accompaniment to this. And later, it was thus incorporated into the edited second edition of the speech and publised after that, as pp. 71-(96). Khrushchev' Speech shook the Western world and changed our history for good. ""Its consequences, by no means fully foreseen by Khrushchev, shook the Soviet Union to the core, but even more so its communist allies, notably in central Europe. Forces were unleashed that eventually changed the course of history. But at the time, the impact on the delegates was more immediate. Soviet sources now say some were so convulsed as they listened that they suffered heart attacks"" others committed suicide afterwards."" (John Rettie, in The Observer, Sunday 26 February 2006 ).On February 24, 1956 before assembled delegates at a secret session of the Communist Party's Twentieth Congress, Nikita Khrushchev delivered his so-called ""Secret Speech"", denouncing Stalin for his transgressions. The public session of the 20th Congress had come to a formal end on 24 February 1956 when word was spread to delegates to return to the Great Hall of the Kremlin for an additional ""closed session,"" to which journalists, guests, and delegates from ""fraternal parties"" from outside the USSR were not invited. Special passes were issued to those eligible to participate, with an additional 100 former Party members, recently released from the Soviet prison camp network. The speech was thus secretly held in this closed session, without discussion, and it was neither published as part of the congress' proceedings nor reported in the Soviet press. The speech that sent shock waves through the congress participants denounced Stalin, describing him as satanic despot and terrorist who had committed the greatest of crimes. Quoting from correspondence, memoranda and his own observations, Khrushchev gave details of Stalin's horrible actions during the Terror of the late 1930'ies, the unpreparedness of the country at the time of the Nazi invasion in June 1941, numerous wartime blunders, the deportation of various nationalities in 1943 and 1944, and the banishing of Tito's Yugoslavia from the Soviet bloc after the war. Absolving the party itself of these grave actions, Khrushchev attributed them to the ""cult of personality"" that Stalin encouraged and his ""violations of socialist legality"". According to Khrushchev's speech, Stalin was a tyrant, a murderer and torturer of party members.Khrushchev gave his grim tale of the obscene crimes committed by his predecessor, Josef Stalin, only three years after the death of Stalin, who was then celebrated as a great leader and whose death was mourned by the great majority of Soviet citizens, who saw him as a divine father. It is no wonder that this lengthy speech from their new leader completely shocked Soviet communists, being told so soon after his death that far from far from being divine, their hero Stalin was actually outright satanic. The leaders who inherited the party from the old dictator had agreed - after months of furious argument - that Khrushchev should make the speech, but on the condition that it should never be published.Khrushchev read from a prepared report and no stenographic record of the closed session was kept. No questions or debate followed Khrushchev's presentation, and it is reported that delegates left the hall in a state of complete disorientation. It is even said that several delegates suffered heart attacks and that some even committed suicide upon listening to the horrifying speech. On the evening of the congress, delegates of foreign Communist parties were called to the Kremlin and given the opportunity to read the prepared text of the Khrushchev speech, which was treated as a top secret state document. Reports of the speech soon reached the West and as early as March the contents were reported in Western media. ""The content of the speech reached the west through a circuitous route. A few copies of the speech were sent by order of the Soviet Politburo to leaders of the Eastern Bloc countries. Shortly after the speech had been disseminated, a Polish journalist, Viktor Grayevsky, visited his girlfriend, Lucia Baranowski, who worked as a junior secretary in the office of the first secretary of the Polish Communist Party, Edward Ochab. On her desk was a thick booklet with a red binding, with the words: ""The 20th Party Congress, the speech of Comrade Khrushchev."" Grayevsky had heard rumors of the speech and, as a journalist, was interested in reading it. Baranowski allowed him to take the document home to read.As it happened, Grayevsky, who was Jewish, and had made a recent trip to Israel to visit his sick father, decided to emigrate there. After he read the speech, he decided to take it to the Israeli Embassy and gave it to Yaakov Barmor who had helped Grayevsky make his trip to visit Grayevsky's sick father. Barmor was a Shin Bet representative"" he photographed the document and sent the photographs to Israel. By the afternoon of April 13, 1956, the Shin Bet in Israel received the photographs. Israeli intelligence and United States intelligence had previously secretly agreed to cooperate on security matters. James Jesus Angleton was the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) head of counterintelligence and in charge of the clandestine liaison with Israeli intelligence. The photographs were delivered to him. On April 17, 1956, the photographs reached the CIA chief Allen Dulles, who quickly informed U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. After determining that the speech was authentic, the CIA leaked the speech to The New York Times in early June.""""In the West, the impact of the speech received a colossal boost from the publication of the full, albeit sanitised, text in The Observer and the New York Times. This was the first time the full text had been available for public scrutiny anywhere in the world. Even local party secretaries who read it to members had to return their texts within 36 hours. (Those texts were also sanitised, omitting two incidents in the speech that Orlov related to me.)According to William Taubman, in his masterly biography of Khrushchev, the full text leaked out through Poland where, like other central European communist allies, Moscow had sent an edited copy for distribution to the Polish party."" (John Rettie, in The Observer, Sunday 26 February 2006).The speech sent shock waves throughout the Communist world and caused many Western Communists to abandon the movement. In central Europe, the impact of the speech was enormous. By autumn Poland was ready to explode and in Hungary an anti-communist revolution overthrew the Stalinist party and government, replacing them with the short-lived reformist Imre Nagy.""Some may doubt that Stalin's Soviet Union could ever have been reformed, but Khrushchev was not among them - and neither, indeed, was Gorbachev. But after two decades of decay under Brezhnev, even he could not hold the country together. It can well be argued that the 'secret speech' was the century's most momentous, planting the seed that eventually caused the demise of the USSR."" (John Rettie, in The Observer, Sunday 26 February 2006).It was in the form of the second printing of the speech, with the ""Unpublished Materials"" in their presumably second printing, that it was leaked behind the Iron Curtain. Allegedly the CIA offered USD 1.000.000 for a copy, before they came into possession of the text through other channels. Khrushchev himself stated: ""It was supposed to have been secret, but in fact it was far from being secret.. our document fell into the hands of some Polish comrades who were hostile towards the Soviet Union. They used my speech for their own purposes and made copies of it. I was told that it was being sold for very little.""Like the two impressions of the Speech, on with the ""Unpublished Matrials"", almost all the copies of this extremely scarce publication - which were all numbered and strictly registered - were withdrawn and destroyed after 11 April 1956. We have been able to locate no copies of either impression outside of Poland and can find no copies registered in OCLC.
