the speech was based on an investigation of the repressions of the delegates of the 1934 xvii congress of the communist party of the soviet union. they were victims of the stalinist purges of the 1930s. estimates of stalin's role in history were quite changed by the speech. many in the west who had been communist party member, or at least sympathetic fellow-travellers, resigned their memberships and no longer defended the reputation of stalin. russian writers like solzhenitsyn found they were treated with more sympathy. the speech was a significant turning-point in history.