 It is often seen in totalitarian or authoritarian countries.The term came to prominence in 1956, in Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences", given on the final day of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.In the speech, Khrushchev, who was the First Secretary of the Communist Party – in effect, the leader of the country – criticized the lionization and idealization of Joseph Stalin, and by implication, his Communist contemporary Mao Zedong, as being contrary to Marxist doctrine.