Permanently Deleted
I mean I half agree but let’s be honest Kruschev lit the fuse that started the Hungarian protests with his ridiculous “Secret Speech” (which was somehow leaked immediately to the West) and split the Communist movement in half worldwide
From that point on (and particularly with the revisionist Kruschevite policies ending in the restoration of the profit motive in the USSR with the 1965 Kosygin reforms) the USSR was toast without a new Marxist-Leninist revolution
So while you point to the handling of the Hungarian uprising by the Soviets I would point more to the counter-revolution of Kruschev (which sparked the protests)
I agree with you there but for different reasons - the Secret Speech itself was not wrong, but the fact that it got out into the West allowed it to become fodder against the Soviet Union. Interestingly Mao made the same critique - that largely what Khrushchev was saying was right in the sense that Mao also agreed that Stalin had made crucial errors and was also principally against what he saw as a personality cult, but that with Khrushchev having voiced these critiques, communist parties in the West that had tied their legitimacy to Stalin were suddenly done for. Mao was correct, the Secret Speech was a mistake in how it was done.
The 1965 reforms were obviously a terrible idea, but then they came from a decidedly anti Khrushchev faction that was wary of endemic economic issues. I think this represents a marked shift to technocracy in the Soviet Union which was ultimately terrible for everyone, but I am not sure that we can make a link between that and Khrushchev himself considering that he was ousted BECAUSE he was seen as not ‘fit’ to ‘modernize’ the economy.
But also I think in many ways even had the Secret Speech not been made, there were just certain fundamentals about the Soviet position in Europe that were just going to lead to dissent and splintering. It is a shame. Much of it could have been handled and I think defanged but ultimately being besieged by capitalist powers all the time and from every side just made all the 20th century socialist experiments wary, and I can’t blame them.
but the fact that it got out into the West allowed it to become fodder against the Soviet Union.
This is an incorrect reading of history. It was leaked to the West in the same way it was sent to 0.1% of the Communist party. To pour poison through the Communist party because if they’d released the speech in its entirety the grass roots masses would’ve lynched the Kruschevites
So they sent it to all the top cadres of the Communist Party who were told under no circumstances to let normal members know about it. This demoralised and paralysed the entire party and ensured the pro-Stalin communists (ie. of real socialism) could never rise to remove the revisionists
Domenico Losurdo goes over this specific point in Chapter 1 of his book on Stalin, How to cast a God into Hell
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WS8cCjXDgdJaXFrkW9b1ldY3xlwiPPQ89AwZo53Amlk/edit
And Grover Furr wrote an entire book examining the Secret Speech and checking each statement of the 52 statements made by Kruschev and every single one of them was a lie, a fabrication or rumour and conjecture. In some of the cases Furr points out how they were actually the fault of Kruschev.
https://archive.org/details/pdfy-nmIGAXUrq0OJ87zK
William Bland came to the same conclusion as the 2 above and in his book RESTORATION OF CAPITALISM IN THE USSR he points out how step by step the Kruschevites privatised the economy and disparaged Central Planning they did so in Soviet economic textbooks with attack phrases like “Central planning is a Stalinist holdover we must move past” and “organising Soviet enterprises to the profit motive must be done to move past the Stalin era” etc.
With this you see casting a God into hell to then nullify his policies was the true aim rather than some introspection into the party about events like the Yezchovchina
