the state of acquittal. Mass amnesty of the victims of Soviet repressions started after the death of Joseph Stalin. Initially, in 1953, this did not entail any form of exoneration. This release became coupled with rehabilitations after Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalinism in his 1956 speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences. Several entire nationality groups that had been deported to Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia during population transfer were rehabilitated in the late 1950s. Both the modern Russian Federation and Ukraine have enacted laws "On the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Repressions", which provide the basis for the continued post-Stalinist rehabilitation of victims. See also Self-criticism References Communist terminology Political repression Law of Russia Law of Ukraine Political repression in the Soviet Union Soviet law Soviet phraseology De-Stalinization