A lot of leftists really seem to hate Khrushchev, it's like everyone points at him and says "and this is where it all went down hill". If you're a Khrushchev-stan in the comments show yourself because more than likely there isn't one. Lenin's the goat, Stalin's a problematic fav, but Khrushchev leaves the bland taste of cardboard in my mouth. The thing is, IDK who would really have been better? Zhukov might have been a good general but I can't say he would have been a good governor, like I said IDK. Please enlighten me oh wise hexbear with your years of theory under your girthy communism enjoyer belts.
Malenkov was Stalin's preferred choice, though after his death I really don't think his opinion should matter much. Khrushchev wouldn't have been that bad except for the fact that destalinization and the secret speech was completely moronic and self-serving. Khrushchev ardently purged plenty of people for Stalin then tried to blame it all on the scary big man after the fact, same goes for a lot of the CPSU who went along with destalinization. Engaging in that "historical nihilism" (in the words of the CPC) fundamentally rattled the proletarian and revolutionary credentials of the party domestically and cause a massive rift in the world communist movement that was completely avoidable.
In my opinion, it was definitely necessary to "loosen the bolts" on society after the years of war and purges. But trying to tear down Stalin for doing what the entire party agreed was necessary just so Khrushchev could get a cheap pop and marginalize his political rivals? Fuck you dude, maybe you and the rest of the CPSU should have grown a spine and removed him if Stalin was really that terrible.
"Stalin had simply been a criminal and a maniac, personally to blame for all the nation's defeats and misfortunes. As to how, and in what social conditions, a bloodthirsty paranoiac could for twenty-five years exercise unlimited despotic power over a country of two hundred million inhabitants, which throughout that period had been blessed with the most progressive and democratic system of government in human history—to this enigma the speech offered no clue whatever. All that was certain was that the Soviet system and the party itself remained impeccably pure and bore no responsibility for the tyrant's atrocities." -Leszek Kołakowski, 1978
No wonder the Soviet working class became disillusioned and apathetic, with opportunists like Khrushchev spitting on the past sacrifices they made for the party and fulfillment of the revolution.
Now compare them to China and the CPC, who actually did remove Mao from power once his policies caused economic disaster and political turmoil, but they still had enough sense not to attempt the trash the reputation of one of the heros of the revolution. They criticized his excesses and failures, but upheld the good, and remembered that his legacy was their legacy. They didn't let a dead man tear their political system apart and force themselves to act embarrassed whenever anyone brings up a massive part of their own history.
Carlos Martinez’ essay on the fall of the Soviet Union goes into more detail… but one thing he points out is many/most Soviet citizens didn’t really have much of an understanding of what “socialism” was and how it worked. What they DID know was that under Stalin their lives got a lot better materially. That material conditions increase was intertwined with Stalin personally and what they understood socialism to be. So by trying to tear down Stalin’s legacy, to many Soviet people this was the same as tearing down the legitimacy of socialism.
undefined> Now compare them to China and the CPC, who actually did remove Mao from power once his policies caused economic disaster and political turmoil, but they still had enough sense not to attempt the trash the reputation of one of the heros of the revolution. They criticized his excesses and failures, but upheld the good, and remembered that his legacy was their legacy. They didn't let a dead man tear their political system apart and force themselves to act embarrassed whenever anyone brings up a massive part of their own history.
China has learned a lot from the mistakes of the USSR. This is why Communism will win (provided humans don't go extinct) we learn from every mistake and every success.
i think khrushchev was responsible for the sino soviet split beyond just the ideological revisionism
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deng had a fairly negative opinion of him from the fallaci interview
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cpc suddenly was not happy with its comprehensive sovietization direction only after khrushchev came into power
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china went into recession immediately after the split, GLF could be considered mao's attempt at an economic recovery
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can't really find any other reasons besides the oft stated accusations of revisionism and social imperialism
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judging from what it took for the cpc to seriously start to decouple from the US (trump's 2018 trade war), potential damage to material interests must have been massive for them to consider pivoting away from sovietization
leads me to think that khrushchev reneged on or tried to renegotiate a bunch of stalin's aid/tech transfer deals that didn't go down well with the cpc and the ideological justifications came afterwards
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Khrushchev would have been a Gorbachev had the Soviet Union not been riding the high of beating the nazis.
through his support of Cuba, Vietnam, Egypt etc.
That was just Realpolitik, though. Khrushchev wasn't backing Cuba because he was a huge fan of Che and Fidel. He was backing Cuba because Eisenhower had just moved Jupiter Missiles into Turkey and this was the tit-for-tat counter-move. Similarly, control of the Suez Canal was incredibly important for trafficking out of the Black Sea. Support for Egypt was paramount to Soviet international trade relations.
Vietnam was, similarly, a central player in Pacific sea trade for the Soviets, following the Sino-Soviet split. Incidentally, I'd argue that set the entire Communist project back a solid 50 years. A united Russia/China might have produced the kind of sustained economic development that dwarfed the West inside another generation. But they fumbled the bag.
I don't think Beria at the top would have been good news, but any reasonably competent actual Marxist would have been better imo, including Molotov as another said (and I think for a period while Stalin was the leader Molotov held the highest office anyway, since the government wasn't actually as centralized on one consistent single office like the US).
Also as another said, K shouldn't have been an option because he should have been purged for being a fucking conspiracist along with anti-Marxist.
Legitimately things might have been easier if Trotsky was immediately killed or put in solitary rather than exiled, since he was towards the center of an absurd network of conspiracy that ended up enabling Khrushchev on various levels, even two decades after Trotsky finally was killed. It was Trotsky's collaborators among the Old Bolsheviks that precipitated the Great Purge and one of the heads of the KGB during the peak of the Purge was confirmed to be a conspiracist by a member of the conspiracy who was in the west and admitted it freely! It was the one before Yezhov, I forget his name.
I come back to read about this topic now and then and my brain fries more and more each time.
Wrong question, Stalin should have purged harder and created a society where the best option wasn't Khrushchev. Just a sign of already forming terminal fractures in Soviet society (with amerikkka just, y'know, banging their hammer against the Soviet hull)
Getting the dad from Arrested Development to run Soviet Russia would, at the very least, be funny as hell.
Really want to see him and Kissinger in the sweet tent.
I'll give some bad choices:
Rokossovsky
Voroshilov
39 year old Andropov
Erich Honecker
Eric Hobsbawm
just put me in the credits of your HOI4 mod, thanks.
