This article studies the reactions of the population to the Secret Speech of Khrushchev, as formulated at meetings which were organized to discuss the results of the 20th Congress. It relied primarily on the archives of the Gorki regional committee of the Communist Party. The approach is that of a social historian, who tried to capture the people’s voice on a political event. The documents show in detail the domination of the local officials of the Party-State in their relations with the people, especially in the countryside. As a result, the communist party appeared above all as a political soap box for the party leaders. In the region of Gorki, de-Stalinization remained mostly under the control of the authorities. The importance of the debates about the “€œcult of personality” should not be overestimated. When this theme was discussed, the local preoccupations dominated: the denunciation of the Stalin cult aimed at criticizing all those in power. Here again we find the old opposition between “€œthem” (the officials) and “€œus” (the people): thus, as before 1917, the Russian people asserted their right to dignity and protested against the outrages committed against them by those in power.