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They didn't overthrow Gorbachev because Soviet society had already been sufficiently weakened by Khrushchev. And they did protest over Khrushchev. Khrushchev had to purge and sideline people like Molotov on top of putting down protests from ordinary Soviet citizens. So where are the protests against Rodriguez and purges that Rodriguez orchestrated?
There can't be a Gorbachev without a Khrushchev first. If Rodriguez is the Gorbachev, is Maduro the Khrushchev?
Soviet society under Khrushchev was still far more socialist than the current Venezuelan administration. Venezuela's revolution was incomplete to start with and has stagnated since that point, it's never been as strong as even Khrushchev era USSR even at its peak under Chavez. That step (revisionism and liberalization and bringing back market forces) can be skipped entirely because it was never implemented in the first place. Venezuela never got it's bourgeoise under control, it never restricted its market forces. There was constant tension and struggle, but the Venezuelan bourgeoise have now got the winning hand because they allied with the US and the US was willing to directly intervene to force the issue and push out the last holdouts against full Liberalization.
It's just extremely odd to me that socialists would use the argument of "this socialist state is healthy and fine because we don't see any internal revolt" when that's exactly the state of rot we saw in all of the socialist projects (many FAR more advanced than Venezuela ever was) that have failed, slow stagnation, revisionism and decline without any major internal pushback big enough to stop it.
The #1 killer of socialist projects isn't the CIA, it's internal revisionism and apathy.
The pitfalls of democratic socialism and decades of hybrid warfare can erode society and restore capitalism. However I still have faith in communes and collectives since the most advanced have always been leagues ahead of the ruling govt organizationally and ideologically. Revisionism stemmed from the reformist character and apathy from sanctions and loss in faith in the project, presumably poor cadre formation and political education but I dunno. To me the principal contradiction is amerikkkan imperialism and it's what intensifies and acts upon internal contradictions, even creating new ones, however placing too much emphasis on either is one-sided thinking, idk.