I know historical hindsight is 20/20, but how did no one bully this guy into giving up his moronic “de-stalinisation” policy? Like the SU was built by Stalin and now suddenly hes satan incarnate? No wonder SU citizens lost faith in the party over time, how can you trust a bunch weather vanes?
The re-introduction of liberal ideology into the Soviet leadership. That started with Khrushchev.
Unfortunately it seems that the ideological grip of liberalism did not allow itself to be purged that easily even in a socialist state. Merely one generation later and it comes back in full force. By the time we get to Gorbachev the entire Soviet leadership had gone full liberal.
It never fully left to need to be “reintroduced”. It had only been a few decades since the revolution — the scars of the old society don’t dissipate that quickly and the struggle continues. As Lenin said a decade or two is a period of time so insignificant in the scheme of world history it is a trifle; and it is a serious theoretical error to measure political realities by the yardstick of world history. As well the war killed a lot of the most vigorous and energetic and politically dedicated youth who would have replaced them in the coming generations.
What Khrushchev did (on top of severing connections to the past which inherently breaks materialist continuity) was legitimize liberal ideology (dangerously doing so with a Marxist mask) and cease struggling against it, instead declaring victory, and as such undermining vigilance and diligence, allowing it to reassert itself without resistance — or even knowledge half the time; after all, if socialism won in the USSR, why ruthlessly criticize all that exists including our own ethos?