26. Editorial Note
The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union opened in the Great Kremlin Palace in Moscow on February 14, 1956. In attendance were the delegates to the Congress and representatives from 55 foreign Communist parties. A selection of speeches at the Congress, the Report of the Central Committee given by Khrushchev on February 15, Bulganin’s Report on the Sixth Five-Year Plan published in Pravda on February 22, the resolutions and directives adopted by the Congress, and a list of the officials elected at the Congress are printed in Gruliow, Current Soviet Policies—II, pages 8–202. The fact that Khrushchev gave a speech before a closed session on the concluding day of the Congress, February 25, was not known in the West until the middle of March (see Document 33). Telegrams from the Embassy in Moscow to the Department of State reporting and commenting on the proceedings of the Congress are in Department of State, Central File 761.00. Bohlen’s recollections of the Congress are in Witness to History, pages 393–396.