Zhukov is a hard figure to read, as can be said for any person living within an authoritarian environment. To be sure, he left a lengthy memoir, as well as additional writings and correspondence, but it still exists within that system, and was written to conform to certain requirements.

Take his relationship with Brezhnev for instance. You could say he was a 'fan' of Brezhnev on the one hand. Brezhnev was instrumental in Zhukov's rehabilitation during the 1960s for instance, allowing his return to public life and the publication of his memoirs. But it was at a price. Brezhnev wanted to bask in the glow of a war hero, and the rehabilitation was a deal where Zhukov traded his endorsement it. Famously, in his memoir, he included a line praising Brezhnev's acumen during the war, when in reality he was a fairly minor political officer at the time. Supposedly Zhukov in private remarked it was a small price to pay, and he didn't mind since people who knew him would know what was going on. So maybe he didn't like Brezhnev all that much, and simply was fine with what he got from the relationship.

Another critical issue is that the manager of his legacy is his daughter, Maria, and she has opinions, driven by two different factors. The first is that, born to his mistress (and eventual second wife) a decade after the war, her memories of him are of an old man (he was 61 when she was born, I believe), retired from politics, and a grandfatherly figure. He died when she was about 17. Not that his older daughters hated him, but certainly their memories are of a more distant military man, which is interesting to contrast. Maria released a blistering response to the portrayal in Death of Stalin for instance which, as I recall, said her father wouldn't swear... which is interesting to contract with a man who during the war would threaten to execute subordinates a few times if they failed (he never followed through, for the record).

Additionally, Maria has been instrumental in crafting a specific image of her father that fits into the current strain of Russian nationalism. Holder of his personal papers, she has overseen a number of editions of his memoirs published post-USSR, but only what she of course is OK with, which means it all has a very specific angle and won't contradict what she wants said of him. I've written more on this issue before, specifically with issues of religious belief, which you can find here.

Pulling back more broadly though, again, it is hard to penetrate to the inner mind in a case like this, but what can be said with confidence, I think, is Zhukov was a fairly simple man politically. He bought into the system, and was by all accounts, and indications, a faithful believer in the Soviet brand of Communism, but not the type to engage with it on an intellectual level. I expand on this a bit more here, as well as going a bit into his relationship with Stalin.