Rehabilitation (Russian: реабилитация, transliterated in English as reabilitatsiya or academically rendered as reabilitacija) was a term used in the context of the former Soviet Union and the post-Soviet states.
[1] The government also rehabilitated several minority populations which it had relocated under Stalin, and allowed them to return to their former territories and in some cases restored their autonomy in those regions.
[citation needed] In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, then in the position of First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, denounced Stalinism in his notable speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences".
[citation needed] Several large ethnic groups had been deported to Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia during population transfer; these were also rehabilitated in the late 1950s.
Many rehabilitations occurred posthumously, as thousands had been executed by Stalin's government or died in the harsh conditions of the labor camps.