Sentence:  The most surprising thing about the Twenty-second Congress of the Soviet Communist Party is that it <WSD>was</WSD> surprising - perhaps quite as much , in its own way , as the Twentieth Congress of 1956 , which ended with that famous `` secret '' report on Stalin . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)