The membership of the American Communist Party had fallen to around 20,000 in 1956, when Khrushchev's speech to the 20th Congress of the CPSU (the "Secret Speech") on the personality cult of Stalin became known. The paper printed articles in support for the early stages of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, a popular revolt by the Hungarian people against continued domination by the Soviet Union, which subsequently installed a puppet regime, the János Kádár government, in Budapest and had begun to persecute its political opponents. The "Daily Worker's" editor, John Gates opened the paper for discussion of the topic, a novel event for a party-line newspaper, and one appeared to promise further liberalization and dialogue inside the Communist Party in the United States.