AHC: Stronger Soviet Union During the Cold War

As others have said no Stalin really changes the game. Stalin gets a lot of credit nowadays for dragging Russia kicking and screaming into modernity, but in many ways he was the worst possible man for the job. The damages the Purges alone did to the Soviet Union cannot be understated. Without his purges there are the obvious butterflies (some very good administrators, military men, and scientists don't get killed), but in the long term the USSR gets another advantage. The Purges killed many low and mid-level bureaucrats, some of whom would no doubt have been very skilled. These men would have probably risen to the upper echelons and been able to apply their skills to running the government. So instead of conservative and fossilized men like Brezhnev we could see more dynamic leaders, which is pretty key in stopping OTL's stagnation.
 
I think the underlying problems of the USSR was an 1. An unstable systems of leadership, meaning that the most underhanded and politically savvy rather than the most competent leader was the one to come out on top. The different groupings in the soviet government endlessly competed for power leading to an incredibly wasteful and inefficient system of government, wasting good potential on meaningless struggles as everyone had to ensure 'their' people had the powerful positions.
Khrushchev is a good example of a competent leader who was first tied up in power politics for a good few years and later deposed by the completely conservative elements of the party who were moping over not being heard enough. Giving Kruushchev more time to focus on reforms and de-Stalinization and better consolidation of power might be the USSR's its best shot at becoming a stable world power.

2. An economic policy that was a failure from the get go. Even Lenin realized that the NEP politics were necessary. Other posters have already said that seeing these ideas evolve into some kind of Yugoslavian inspired mixed-economy would help the Union out of some of its most rocky economic perils. Instead they got a succession of conservative agrarians who did not understand the emerging post-industrial world economy.
 
How about keeping Lenin alive and implementing the NEP? Anybody explored on how that would turn out?

Lenin was in favour of scrapping the NEP. Actually, if he hadn't been so sick, the evidence indicates he would have scrapped it earlier on than it actually was.

So Lenin alive and healthy likely means the NEP goes faster.

If Lenin lingers on in poor health - towards the end he was so ill he was not able to affect policy - it gets more interesting. Lenin himself doesn't really do anything, but his body still breathing means the power struggles between the other Bolsheviks play out differently. I guess the NEP could stagger on in such a circumstance.

However, the NEP was not itself a perfect economic policy, it skewed the economy in unhealthy ways just like War Communism had before it and Stalinism would after it. In truth, the NEP did have an expiration date, at which point it would hurt the Soviet economy more than it helped - when exactly that turning point would come (or even if it had already happened) - is not clear.

fasquardon
 
I think the underlying problems of the USSR was an 1. An unstable systems of leadership, meaning that the most underhanded and politically savvy rather than the most competent leader was the one to come out on top. The different groupings in the soviet government endlessly competed for power leading to an incredibly wasteful and inefficient system of government, wasting good potential on meaningless struggles as everyone had to ensure 'their' people had the powerful positions.
Khrushchev is a good example of a competent leader who was first tied up in power politics for a good few years and later deposed by the completely conservative elements of the party who were moping over not being heard enough. Giving Khrushchev more time to focus on reforms and de-Stalinization and better consolidation of power might be the USSR's its best shot at becoming a stable world power.

2. An economic policy that was a failure from the get go. Even Lenin realized that the NEP politics were necessary. Other posters have already said that seeing these ideas evolve into some kind of Yugoslavian inspired mixed-economy would help the Union out of some of its most rocky economic perils. Instead they got a succession of conservative agrarians who did not understand the emerging post-industrial world economy.
The Soviet political system in the Cold War was really in many ways defined by its Stalinist period, even long after Stalin died and was repudiated. Another observation is that Communist systems tend to produce Stalins, who latch onto the revolutionary, ends-justify-the-means/might-makes-right nature of these parties. Following the Civil War it wasn't only Stalin himself who was backstabbing and maneuvering; it's just that Stalin was well-placed for it and possessed greater skill.
 
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