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