title: Chapter Three From Khrushchev to Chernenko
abstract: The Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party: adjustments to the Soviet politics of memory After the death of Stalin, the existing system of power was shaken.A series of dramatic events occurred before it could assume a new personal shape with Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. 296 The crucial change was the arrest of Lavrentiy Beria, the chief of the NKVD, who had been Number 2 in the Soviet Union up to that time, and a group of his closest co