Stalin starts World War III

I remember reading somewhere that before Stalin died, he wanted to start a war with the West through some antisemitic plan that involved the Doctor's Plot and/or mass deportations of Jews to Siberia and Kazhakstan or something like that, but he was "assasinated" by Beria before he could carry it out.

First of all, what exactly was that plan of his to start a war with the West?

What if he wasn't "assasinated" by Beria or wasn't killed? He wanted to do another round of Purges before he died, so people like Beria, Molotov and Khruschev all would have been purged off. If that did happen, who were the best candidates at that time to replace them as Stalin's top henchmen?

And if he hadn't died and purged off everyone else, what if he had carried out his plan to start World War III? How would such a war play out?
 
I think there is a lot of fiction about it. Glenn Meade's Snow Wolf (1996) which I'm reading for example (though it was CIA who killed him).

I'm rereading it now so I want to know what would happen if Stalin lives and start another round of purges and mass killings.
 
Well, the only factual account I have of Stalin planning to start WW3 is Edvard Radzinsky's biography of him. However, since Radzinsky also accepted Vladimir Rezin's story about Stalin planning to suckerpunch Germany in 1941, and the fact that Radzinsky's evidence is mostly circumstantial, I wouldn't put much faith in that account.

BTW, didn't the uncut version of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's book The First Circle have a chapter depicting Stalin planning a third world war? I've never been able to find it in any of the copies I've seen.
 
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