this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
0 points (NaN% liked)
askchapo
22694 readers
407 users here now
Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.
Rules:
-
Posts must ask a question.
-
If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.
-
Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.
-
Try [email protected] if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think Khrushchev gets a bad rap. He was trying to play a tricky hand
The soviet union needed in order to compete with America to adapt to having a more educated workforce and away from a purely industrial economy. This wasn't feasible with the systems and institutions as set up by Stalin when the biggest priority was rightly building the nations industrial capacity, modernising the infrastructure and getting rid of the counterrevolutionary elements. He also struggled to reform these elements that had been necessary but had become a hindrance without getting ousted by hardcore Stalin loyalists so the only option he had that he could think of was to get rid of Stalins image. Unfortunately this threw the baby out with the bathwater and disilusioned a lot of people with Communism in general
he fucked up but he had a difficult job to do and he was trying his best
Learning about him in Blowbacks Cuba series made me see him more sympathetically.
Kruschev was smart enough to get himself into trouble but never quite smart enough to get out of it. Tragically Beria was capable of running the Soviet Union post Stalin but was on a personal level a monster.
Like how Henry the 8th was the one to break the political power of the dukes and barons thus enabling England to modernise but was also a serial killer
he did a particularly neat job with the unification of countries in a similar situation to Germany unlike the absolute mess that was the East / West Germany situation and its exacerbation of the cold war
I don't know what Hexbear's general opinion of Furr is, but I'm currently reading through his book "Krushchev Lied" and it's an interesting picture. I don't think you're wrong, the USSR was absolutely at a tricky point and needed to adapt to stay competitive, but (assuming Furr is even sort of correct, I need to read other historians (and probably learn some Russian as well)) he was pretty damn shady in undermining Stalin's image.
And for the record, I do think he handled the Missile Crisis pretty well, all things considered.