Fifty years ago the leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, stunned the communist world by denouncing his predecessor, Stalin, as a torturer and a murderer. But the speech was made in secret to the Communist Party elite, so how did it leak out? Former Reuters and BBC correspondent John Rettie reflects on how he broke the story.
One evening, early in March 1956, I was in my Moscow flat packing before leaving on holiday to Stockholm the following morning when the phone rang.
It was Kostya Orlov, a young Soviet citizen of my acquaintance, whose urgent voice I heard saying: "I've got to see you before you go."
I was reluctant, as it was getting late and I had to leave early for a break I was more than ready for.
For 10 days in February, Moscow's few Western correspondents had been covering the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, where "the cult of personality", a veiled reference to Stalin, was repeatedly denounced.
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