AHC: Communist America, Capitalist Russia

Basically, invert the Cold War so that America is TTL's leader of international communism, and Stalinist, and Russia is the leader of the free capitalist world. The greater the parallels to OTL you can create, the better. POD can be at any time before WWI, possibly back into the 19th century if necessary.

I imagine this one has been asked many times before but the search function refuses to function for me tonight, so I may as well ask to satiate my curiosity. :p
 
I'd say two ingredients are needed:
Wider support for socialism, pre-war, in the US. This is quite plausible - perhaps a Eugene Debs presidency? You may even achieve Communism without a nasty civil war.
The other ingredient is, alas, harder to come by. That would be a reformist minded Tsar, with a leaning towards democracy and the charisma to drag the aristocracy along for the ride, liberalising politics and the economy. Trouble is, Russia was still, in many ways, pre-industrial on many areas and the gulf between the aristocracy and the peasants so wide, I can't see many ways you can avoid a messy revolution. The war was in many ways a catalyst that bought down the house of cards.
 
In my TL Once Upon a December, I have a "communist" USA in existence, though it's more like a New World version of North Korea with the need for "self-reliance", echoing the Juche ideology. I guess this challenge is already accepted in some ways, but I can explain it more. Basically to have a reformist Russia, the Decembrist Revolt has to succeed in order to get the reformist tsar the Russian Empire needs: Constantine I. Him and maybe a couple of Decembrists surviving, then there's reformist Russia.
 
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