Although this timeline had begun to diverge from our own by the second decade of the twentieth century, initial changes were relatively minor (and significantly far removed) that there wasn't much of an impact on the course of the Great War in Europe, though changes began to quickly accumulate in the aftermath. Sure, a
rabble-rouser in exile in Kureika was beaten to death by a young girl's outraged father, and on the eastern front a man who would otherwise have been a nameless corpse in a trench survived, but individuals are a small thing in the game of nations, and a version of the USSR was still successfully forged on schedule. This had the effect of scaring the living daylights out of everyone else, and would directly contribute to the rise of
Futurism.
Codified in Filippo Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto in 1909, Futurism would achieve it's political expression in 1919 with the establishment of the Italian Regency of Carnaro. Declaring itself an "anarcho-syndicalist corporatist state", Carnaro made big business by disparaging internationalism of every kind, supporting ethnic separatism, anticolonial uprisings and blatant theft of war materials from nations it rightly argued weren't using it anyway, all awash in exotic drugs, mysticism, and jazz music.
Though rampant arms sales would put the Regency at odds with most of the great powers, all the splinter nations they were supporting saw much to admire in the Futurist system, with the ideology's rabid anticommunist attitude winning over many on the right concerned with labor agitation and Soviet subversion. The rise of Carnaro would reach its apex with the 1922 March on Rome, which would install Gabriele D'Annunzio as the Duce of the new Italian Futurist Republic. Under his leadership, the Republic would go on to lay the foundation of the Carnaran League, a network of co-belligerents that would begin preparing for what they saw as an inevitable Second Great War aimed at the USSR and its puppet regimes.
As the Carnaran League began its preparations, the Soviets were having something of a harder time expanding their influence. With the resolute lobbying of Leon Trotsky, the Union under Vladimir Lenin had embarked on a policy of Permanent Revolution, with little to show for it. Futurist militias throughout Europe were openly attacking Marxist organizations with the blessing of conservative leaders, if not from the government at large, and the efforts to fund the Chinese Communist Party had been deemed an abject failure in the wake of the Sun's purges of the group throughout the early 1920s. Had Sun died earlier, a resurgence on that front might have been possible, but it was not to be. It was 1924 and Vladimir Lenin was dead.
In contrast to the alternate history cliche, a USSR without Stalin did not ultimately devolve to Trotsky. The plain fact of the matter was that he wasn't very popular (even ignoring the failures of his Permanent Revolution policy), and with Lenin gone there was no one left to vouch for him. A new leader, destined in OTL to die in a freezing trench, had seized his moment, consolidated power, and would steer his nation (and the world) on a different course.
Advocating a new pragmatic policy he termed
National Socialism, the USSR would change tactics. A former soldier, the newly-declared Vozhd would first reach out to the survivors of the White Army in an attempt to bring them into the fold with a shared nationalist goal. With the loss of blood and treasure in the wake of orthodox internationalism met with crippling foreign sanctions beggars couldn't be choosers, of course. The most radical of these remnants remained aligned with the White Khanate, but enough signed on for clemency to create a notable reactionary current in the halls of power in Moscow.
Second, in order to stabilize a nation under siege and in the grips of a transition of power, certain internal policies were changed to bring the public more fully on board. Repression of religion would be relaxed, as long as the government and its policies were actively cheered on from every pulpit. Early reforms to family life and morality legislation would be undone, with the recriminalization of homosexuality and the full might of the state thrown behind a family values campaign designed to create loyal comrade-patriots from womb to tomb.
With the home front secure, the Vozhd would next turn the nation's attention beyond its own borders once more, inspired by an unlikely source: the Empire of Manchuria. It was clear to everyone at the time that Japan had been pulling the strings in Manchuria. They had taken their militarist ideology, put a local spin on it, and let it loose. And it had worked. Sure, Republican forces under General Yan Xishan kept the border bloody, but the Manchurians were holding their own and Japan was reaping the benefits. There was much to learn from this.
The Vozhd would ultimately make the decision that pragmatism would be more prudent than rigidity. New allies fostered by Moscow would be national creatures, with their own particular versions of Marxism. They would win over the public, and the USSR would stick to discrete support until the time for decisive action came. This policy would see the rise of Strasserism in Germany and Populism in Mongolia, among other groups, and when the Second Great War finally began in 1930 with the German invasion of Austria-Hungary, Moscow had built a network of allies it was certain could crush the Carnaran League. If only things had been so simple.
. In all seriousness, I've given this idea a bit more thought since I was off work today and figured I'd give it a go. To set things up, the Xinhai revolution occurs on schedule and Sun Yat-Sen still ends up giving the first presidency of the ROC to Yuan Shikai, but the 
