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After Stalin died in 1953, Khrushchev slowly but surely centralized all power in his hands. He did this by inventing "evil crimes committed by Stalin" and purging anyone who disagreed under the accusation of "having collaborated with stalinist crimes". For example, Lavrenty Beria suffered this fate. Principled party members like Molotov and Kaganovich tried to depose Khrushchev in a vote but he staged a military coup and had them arrested too. Once all opposition was gone, he continued "destalinization" by proposing his "peaceful coexistence theory", meaning that capitalist west and socialist east can coexist peacefully forever, so no reason to worry about WW3. This is ludicrous, socialism and capitalism simply cannot coexist, in the end one always wins over the other. He also said that the Communist Party should represent "the entire soviet people", instead of just the workers and peasants, basically including the bourgeoisie into the party. This contradicts every basic marxist tenet of class struggle. No, you cannot unite bourgeoisie and proletariat under 1 party, its impossible. The workers and peasants only must rule under socialism.
Mao saw all of this, and initially tolerated it. But after the military coup in 1957 and his "peaceful coexistence" theory, he had enough. He began rightfully criticizing Khrushchev, to which the USSR responded by cutting economic aid. In the end this escalated in 1961 when the USSR cut diplomatic relations with China. From then on, the international communist movement split in 2, proUSSR or proChina. Albanias Enver Hoxha supported Maos criticisms, which ultimately led to the Soviet Albanian Split, in which Albania sided with China against USSR.
PD: This is obviously a simplification, research more yourself.
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Khrushchev's revisionism didn't sit well with the CPC, and they rightfully cut ties.
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I think when we are talking about the two largest countries in the world identifying as socialist we should be hesitant to praise the cutting off of the other. We should definitely side ideologically against revisionism, but totally cutting off the SU and then siding with the imperialist camp geopolitically to the point of funding the mujahideen.. I'm not sure should be praised.
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I mostly agree with you, but it was the USSR that cut ties, not China. Mao only rightfully criticized Khrushchevs revisionism, but in response Khrushchev cut economic aid, later on all political ties and tried to stage a coup against Mao. Same with Albania, it was Khrushchev that broke the ties.
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With the historical hindsight we have today, its clear to us what the consequences of Khrushchev's policies have led to. Had the CPC maintained its position with the Soviets, especially at a time when China was far weaker than it is today, who's to say that it wouldn't have gone down the same road as the soviet union? We can't outright say that the split was objectively wrong or objectively right, because we don't know what would have happened were history different. I believe that Mao was perhaps a bit too idealistic and the level of hostility was too much, but between co-operating with a revisionist state and cutting ties, I think his decision was closer to what was necessary at the time.
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