On February 25, 1956, Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev delivered the so-called "secret speech" in the Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU in which he denounced Stalin's transgressions and the cult of personality around the deceased dictator. Replete with sharp criticism of the Terror of the late 1930s, the unpreparedness of the USSR for the Nazi invasion, numerous wartime blunders, and the deportation of various nationalities, the speech reverberated throughout the subordinate Soviet republics. For republics such as Azerbaijan, the speech was an unmistakable signal to readjust the entire...