Is Nikita Kruschev "overrated"?

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Jukra said:
By time of Cuban crisis US had so overwhelming nuclear capability that it could have retaliated despite any Soviet decapitation strike. Besides, decapitation strike remained a veritable scenario throughout the Cold War, for example via SSBN sneaking close etc.
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Retained strike capacity sure. But letting the Soviets get the first hit in means risking staggering damage to the populations of Western Europe and maybe even a few US cities. When you think about how much trade there was between Europe and the US and how many US citizens were in Western Europe in 1961, even if no damage is done to the US itself, a war with the Soviet Union would be extremely painful, especially if they got to start it.

agap said:
Do you honestly think that man who survived two similar coup attempts couldn't survive this one? Truth is that only reason Khrushchev lost is because he didn't fought. He got tired of ruling a superpower. Reading his actions before the coup he was all but saying "Yeah, I know and I don't care". And it was smart thing to do, Brezhnev couldn't retire even through he attempted multiple times.
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I've always thought the same. But from what his family have said in interviews and memoirs, retirement seemed to hit him hard.

Also, that he lacked the backing of the state security services during the Brezhnev coup could also why things went differently to the struggle with the anti-Party group.

agap said:
It's often memed that Yeltsin dissapointed in communism after visiting American supermarket, but what people forget is that Khrushchev was first to do so. I think it have caused cognitive dissonance in a man who fought in revolution and world war, to see that he might be wrong. That can explain his rush to overtake USA, to prove to himself that he was right. And, honestly? He was probably the only Soviet leader who come close to achieving that.
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Keep in mind that the Soviet leadership was well aware of just how far behind they were. It wasn't a surprise that the US - the richest country in the world when they were all young men - was still rich and powerful when they were old men.

Khrushchev's issue was more that he was pretty optimistic about what technology, the Russian spirit and Socialism could do when combined. More optimistic than most of his fellows, I'd say. So I think he aimed high because he genuinely believed that the Soviet Union could get that high in his lifetime.

Consider that in his life he'd seen Tsarism actually fall to (as he saw it) the worker's revolution, Russia brought to it's lowest point during the civil war, then the rapid advance of industry during Stalin's tenure, then the Soviets are invaded by Germany, and experience an absolutely horrific war and not only remain a cohesive society that could offer organized resistance, but actually managed to win. The Soviet survival in the teeth of Barbarossa really was a wonder. Given that his crimes under Stalin (which I bet predisposed him to think "everything I did was worth the outcome") and his ideological bias would have inclined him to downplay the negatives of the regime he was a part of, but also to even further emphasise these positives, it's not especially surprising that he thought the Soviets could genuinely close the gap.

Unfortunately for him, the Soviets didn't have enough peasants to continue Stalinist input-driven growth beyond his tenure, so instead of year after year of growing 10% a year for 30 years, the Soviet economy grew slower and slower. But even in 1964, it wasn't clear that the system was in such trouble and that switching to efficiency-driven growth would be so hard for them.

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