this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2026
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It's still too early to tell what the effects of the Sino-Soviet split will end up being, and I think it's not wise to simply say "the USSR collapsed and China is winning so Mao was right." After all, would the USSR have collapsed at all if there had been no Sino-Soviet split?
Regardless, I think the consensus on Hexbear is definitely that Khruschev was a revisionist and his domestic policies were very destructive to communism. He also had solid foreign policy and would do a decent job of supporting revolutions elsewhere in the world, which was always the thing the USSR needed the most, friendly nations. But because of the Sino-Soviet split China itself would become a hostile nation to the Soviets and would often land on the same side as the US to oppose the Soviets. In this aspect of the Sino-Soviet split I think most people here disapprove of China's actions.
A criticism I cannot take seriously after the one two punch of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin
And yet, very very different. Kruschev's liberalization and detante with America was an attempt to join the imperialist club and carve up the world as an ally to the US and ultimately resulted in the absolutely horrible inequality that developed in the final decades of the USSR.
Deng's liberalization and detante with America was an attempt to get the US to fund the development of Chinese productive forces. That worked. It was not an attempt to join the imperialism club, and in fact China became less chauvinistic under Deng than under Mao. That shows correctness. And the resulting economics show continuous improvement of living and working conditions for Chinese workers when, at the same age, the USSR had already started to economically collapse.
Also, the other comments claiming that the USSR might not have collapsed without the split forget that China had almost nothing to offer the USSR at the time of the split. They were not an effective producer of anything. They were deeply impoverished. They were militarily weak. The split hurt China more than it hurt the USSR because it cost China access to technology, energy, military collaboration, etc.
I think the USSR probably would have dragged China down with it as it collapsed under the programming of the counter-revolutionaries. It's not like China didn't try. They were debates and discourse to attempt to analyze and convince the Kruschevites of the incorrectness of the oath they were on. Not only was China right rhetorically, China was right materially, and history has proven this to us.
I agree with Reform and Opening Up, and uphold Deng Xiaoping Thought as a correct response to China's material conditions at the time, just like I uphold Mao (and those who recognize my comments should gather by now). However, certainly the case could be made that the PRC could have sought development by working closely with the USSR and not the US Empire.
The PRC was deeply impoverished, correct, but I'm unconvinced that going to the US Empire for investment was preferable to a timeline where they went to the USSR for win-win development. The split ultimately hurt both the USSR and PRC, and the fact that Reform and Opening Up works does not mean that it was the only possible path. I know the USSR also gets blame, there's no such thing as hard "either/or" lines, but the split itself was bad.
What we saw was siding with Cambodia over Vietnam, and the US over USSR, all number of strategic errors. The USSR, despite its incorrect reforms as compared to the PRC's correct reforms later, managed to maintain a better internationalist line, supporting Vietnam, Cuba, GDR, and more. I blame the worm and his secret speech, incorrect reforms, etc as much as anyone else, but I can't say that Mao was 100% correct either in going through with the split.
Meaningless critique from China as an honorary member of the safari club while Corn Man was the strongest defender of international socialism in his era.
What in the world is Corn Man? Search results are (I hope) nonsensical in this context.
Nikita Khrushchev invented very heavily into introducing corn to the soviet union
Fucking lmao XD ok thanks now I get it
multiple people/states can be revisionist simultaneously
And one calling the other revisionism is at best spiderman pointing at spiderman and at worst flagrant hypocrisy to justify an opportunistic switch to the side of imperialism.
True, but spiderman pointing at spiderman doesn't been they aren't spiderman
Mao wasn't exactly fond of Deng either.
This is very hard to answer, first of all because it prompts the question of "at what point was the fate of the USSR sealed". I lean heavily away from the deterministic school of thought so I would place that point in the mid to late 80s.