I feel like if the USSR had avoided Gorbachev and his bloc's bullshit we probably wouldn't be having that conversation and would probably see Khrushchev as a forgettable, minor figure with bad but ultimately inconsequential policies. It's the fact that Khrushchev's reforms ultimately led to Gorbachev (and the material conditions that created his base of support in the liberal-leaning academics and Soviet equivalent of the PMC) that makes him so infamous today.
To put it another way, if Khrushchev's actions didn't have the consequences they did, we wouldn't care enough to argue whether he was a net good or bad. And hell, maybe in ten or fifteen years we'll have stopped caring about Deng because everything will have worked out in the end, or maybe we'll have conclusively decided that just like Khrushchev he was the defining turning point where China's course really changed for the worse.
I feel like if the USSR had avoided Gorbachev and his bloc's bullshit we probably wouldn't be having that conversation and would probably see Khrushchev as a forgettable, minor figure with bad but ultimately inconsequential policies. It's the fact that Khrushchev's reforms ultimately led to Gorbachev (and the material conditions that created his base of support in the liberal-leaning academics and Soviet equivalent of the PMC) that makes him so infamous today.
To put it another way, if Khrushchev's actions didn't have the consequences they did, we wouldn't care enough to argue whether he was a net good or bad. And hell, maybe in ten or fifteen years we'll have stopped caring about Deng because everything will have worked out in the end, or maybe we'll have conclusively decided that just like Khrushchev he was the defining turning point where China's course really changed for the worse.
Hot take: Stalin ruined everything by dying.