Polish archives have three editions of Khrushchev's speech. A red original, numbered ‘218017’, had been given to Bierut at the XXth Congress. Marked ‘not for publication’, it was intended to enable regional and local CPSU organisations to inform their membership. The copies were to be returned to Moscow within three months. Bierut's copy was made available to selected readers at the top of the Central Committee building. Since many lacked good Russian, the question of translation soon arose. Alone in the bloc, the Polish Party decided to disseminate a text. Hence a blue copy was published under the Party imprint, designated ‘exclusively for inner-party use’.

Such documents tend not to remain exclusive for very long. Printers were instructed to exceed the official run (3,000) by a factor of five, and numerous private duplicates were made. The Warsaw Party Secretary Staszewski claims he handed copies ‘hot off the press’ to correspondents of Le Monde, the Herald Tribune and the New York Times. At home, the text soon found its way onto the black market. Jacek Kuroń recalls it changed hands for 500 złotys. Though a huge sum, this was less than the ‘$1 million’ allegedly paid by the Israeli intelligence service, which passed a copy to the CIA on 17 April.