AHC: USSR wins Cold War

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I find this question interesting, mainly because most see it as impossible.

I for one, disagree with this and I truly believe with a POD beginning with the creation of the Soviet Union that they could win. I also, don't believe that they would need to adopt capitalist reforms in order to survive.

I also think that, if any country could become and remain truly socialist it would be the USSR. They have plentiful resources, after all.

So with a POD in 1921, and without them adopting capitalist reforms, make the USSR win (or at least still be around today.)
 
I assume you want it to win the Cold War without it turning "hot", right?

The biggest problem the USSR has in competition with capitalism is corruption. While capitalist citizens are no more or less corrupt than the communists, the top-down approach of the soviet union makes the corruption a worse problem: it affects all the facets of life (government, industry, science, culture) and it's very difficult to remove.
And yes, to remove this you probably need a PoD at the beginning: after people are in power, convincing them to have more checks in their power will be difficult.

The biggest asset the USSR can have is science. While capitalist science often "wastes" minds in apparently futile pursuits (which are not so futile, really, discovery is a roundabout path) like hair tonics, marketing or videogames, the Soviets could theoretically put them to do actual science full-time. But the Soviets also had 2 real problems: lack of stimulus/market-type-competition (miniaturization and microchips, for example), and again, corruption, which made many fields of the soviet science the "private party" of scientists who were up high in the Party ranks.

Find a way to introduce checks in the power of the party members, and i mean real checks, real ways for citizens to control their leaders, early on, and you'll have an actual chance. There's still the matter of introducing free creativity and competitive innovation... but that could come later than the PoD.
 
I would say you need to have greater democracy in the USSR to get the greater checks and balances.

At the same time, I'm not exactly sure if no (as opposed to limited in some situations) capitalist reforms is possible in such a situation, as the checks and balances are still useless if the only candidates are essentially handpicked by the establishment anyway.
 

sharlin

Banned
Maybe going more like the Chinese are which is a kind of weird pseudo communism. (note that i'm most likely horribly wrong and if so point it out!)
 
The USSR can't really win the Cold War in a same way as the US won it IOTL (=forcing its enemy to disintegrate and basically destroying it). What it might can possibly do, is to force the USA to turn to some sort of isolationism where it is still recognized as a superpower but where its influence has greatly reduced in international politics compared to the Soviet Union.
 

sharlin

Banned
I'd classify simply surviving as winning. There's no way the west would back down or 'loose' but the wall could come down still, reconciliation between the superpowers and things like Glasnost could still happen with a surviving Soviet State.

For a start you could have them from 21 onwards be a more moderate form of communism if thats at all possible.
 

edtorockio

Banned
This needs to be moved to the ASB section. There is no possible way for the USSR to win a Cold War and then survive afterward. In winning their enemies are defeated, and without the threat of the West seeking to destroy communism the communist leaders would very quickly loose control over their own populations.

The only way for the USSR to win is through brute strength in a conventional war shortly after WW2 with ASB removing America's nuclear capabilities and for mind control technology to be developed and implemented very early on.

The only people that ever want communism are those at the top pulling the strings, and those that live outside of communism dreaming of its utopia to right the wrongs of capitalism... People living under its yoke, well they will tell you how much them love it, with a gun pointed at their head.
 
I suggest that you read Jello Biafra's Red timelines, if you know about it. But it's about a Red America anyway, but you'll get ideas how the Soviet Union can win the Cold War.

What kind of socialist are you anyway? Are you Marxist kind of a socialist? I think you are. The sig shows it. Then what kind actually? But I tell you this, Top Down State Socialism and planned economy is not gonna work. But yes, you can avoid adoption of social democratic capitalist economics either. Check out his work. See the list of my posts. You can find it there.
 
This needs to be moved to the ASB section. There is no possible way for the USSR to win a Cold War and then survive afterward. In winning their enemies are defeated, and without the threat of the West seeking to destroy communism the communist leaders would very quickly loose control over their own populations.

The only way for the USSR to win is through brute strength in a conventional war shortly after WW2 with ASB removing America's nuclear capabilities and for mind control technology to be developed and implemented very early on.

The only people that ever want communism are those at the top pulling the strings, and those that live outside of communism dreaming of its utopia to right the wrongs of capitalism... People living under its yoke, well they will tell you how much them love it, with a gun pointed at their head.

It's not that ASB, given the POD is the formation of the USSR. Take out Stalin please. THAT would certainly help.

And "communism" as in Stalinist state socialism? I agree with you. ;)

And you Mr. PoeFacedKilla, look at the timeline I've suggested to you. The Union of American Socialist Republics is still in the Cold War at 2012, but the USSR has changed its ways of socialist reconstruction beginning in the 1980's.

And I'll be careful, I'll classify the Soviets winning the Cold War by 1990 in the way that three fourths of the world especially the Third World is following the socialist path and the Internet revolution is changing socialist economics towards greater parecon.
 
The Soviets Break the Ice -

The Soviet Union follows through on what Zhukov and later Meltyukhov proposed they should have done, launched a pre-emptive strike against the Third Reich. Hitler considered that a Soviet invasion was inevitable, but he did not expect it to happen in the very near future. German troops were diverted to activities of secondary importance, and the beginning of Operation Barbarossa was postponed. At 3.30 am Moscow time on 6July 1941, tens of thousands of Soviet guns shatter the silence, announcing to the world that the great 'liberation' campaign of the Red Army has begun. The Red Army's artillery is superior both in quality and quantity to any in the world. There are vast reserves of ammunition stockpiled on the Soviet frontiers. The rate of Soviet artillery fire swiftly increases until it becomes an infernal thunder roaring along the thousands of kilometres of front stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The first artillery salvo coincides to the minute with the arrival of a thousand Soviet aircraft flying across the state
frontier. The German airfields have been extremely badly sited right on the border, and the German pilots do not have the time to get their aircraft airborne. There is a great number of aircraft assembled on the German airfields. They are standing wing-tip to wing-tip, and when one burns the fire spreads to the others like a fire in a matchbox.

The main events of the war are not taking place in either Poland or Germany. In the first hour of war,operating along with the air arm of the 9th Army and the Black Sea Fleet, the 4th Soviet Air Corps delivers a heavy shock strike at the Ploesti oilfields, turning them into a sea of fire. Bombing raids on Ploesti continue round the clock. The glow from the oil fires is visible at night for many kilometres, while by day columns of black smoke hide the horizon. The 3rd Airborne Assault Corps has landed in the hills to the north of Ploesti. Operating in small elusive groups, it is destroying everything connected with the production, transportation and the refining of oil. Lieutenant-General Batov's 9th Special Rifle Corps has landed in the port of Constanza and to the south of it. Its objectives are the same: pipelines, oil storage tanks, and refineries. The most powerful of all Soviet armies, the 9th, has burst out onto the Romanian plains.

Avoiding becoming involved in protracted battles with scattered enemy groups, the Soviet troops drive forward. The frontier bridges in Brest-Litovsk have been captured by Colonel Starinov's saboteurs. The Soviet saboteurs are astonished that the German bridges have not even been mined. How can one possibly explain such a scandalous degree of unreadiness for war? The suddenness of the attack has a stunning effect, bringing a whole chain of catastrophes in its wake,each one of which, in its turn, brings on others. The destruction of the air force on the ground renders thetroops vulnerable from the air, and since they have neither trenches nor ditches in the frontier area, they are compelled to withdraw. Withdrawal means that thousands of tons of ammunition and fuel are abandoned at the border. Withdrawal means that airfields are left behind, and the enemy immediately destroys the remaining aircraft there. Withdrawal without ammunition and fuel means inescapable destruction. Withdrawal means that the command has lost control. The command does not know what is happening with the troops and is therefore unable to take any expedient decisions, while the troops are given no orders at all, or they are given orders which are completely out of keeping with the situation which has come about.

At the same time, Soviet saboteurs, who crossed the frontiers with time in hand, are active everywhere on the lines of communication. They either cut the communication lines, or plug into them and transmit false signals and orders to the enemy troops. The enemy's operations become separate, unco-ordinated battles. The German commanders ask Berlin what they should do. It is a serious question, because the Wehrmacht has not prepared itself for defence. What do we do? Advance? Operate in accordance with the pre-war Barbarossa plan?Without air supremacy?

The 3rd Soviet Army delivers a surprise strike at Suwalki. The 8th Army from the Baltic Military District goes to meet it. From the very beginning there are blood-letting engagements with great losses in Soviet troops. But they have one advantage: the Soviet troops have the latest KV tank, the armour of which the German anti-tank guns cannot penetrate. The Soviet Air Force rages overhead. The 5th Airborne Assault Corps has landed behind the German forces. The Soviet 8th, nth, and 3rd Armies have become bogged down in long drawn out bloody battles with the extra-high-power German forces in East Prussia, but behind this titanic battle, the extra-high-power Soviet loth Army, having broken through the almost nonexistent defences, drives on to the Baltic Sea, thereby cutting off three German armies, two tank groups and Hitler's command post from the rest of the German troops.

The Soviet loth Army has not been able to break out to the Baltic Sea. It has suffered fearful losses. The Soviet 3rd and 8th Armies have been completely wiped out and their heavy KV tanks destroyed by German anti-aircraft guns. The Soviet 5th, 6th and 26th Armies have lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers, having been stopped on the approaches to Cracow and Lublin. At this moment, the Soviet High Command throws the Second Strategic Echelon into the battle. The difference is that the Wehrmacht has only one echelon and
insignificant reserves, while the Red Army had two strategic echelons and three N K V D armies behind them. In addition, mobilization was declared in the Soviet Union as soon as the war began. This had given the Soviet High Command five million reservists in the first week of the war. These will replace Soviet losses, and over the months which follow will be formed into more than three hundred new divisions who will enable the war to continue.

Despite fighting effectively and causing huge Soviet casualties, the Germans are shattered by this relentless onslaught. Without air superiority and without a steady supply of oil they have no means to effectively counterattack and are drawn further and further back into the Reich. A desperate Hitler offers an alliance to the British, an offer which is swiftly rejected. Germany is out of luck and out of time to prepare new armies. By December 1941, the Red Flag flies above Berlin.

Post-war Europe is one less damaged than in 1945 but is still war ravaged and poverty ridden. The Americans have little concern, they have a war to win in the Pacific. the British are in terrible debt themselves, and they have colonies to defend. The great cities of Europe fall under an Iron Curtain as they embrace their new saviour, Joesph Stalin. The war in Japan finally ends in 1943 after a Soviet offensive into Manchuria the year before turns the tide. With peace established in the Pacific and Europe, Roosevelt declines to run for the fourth term, to the panic of the DNC, who go on to see Harry Hopkins lose a close fight to Robert Taft. America is back in isolation, and recovery is still to be found. Britain, looking for new partners, establishes new economic ties under Prime Minister Attlee's Labour government, who are more focused on domestic reform than fighting the Soviets abroad.

As the old European empires recede the gospel of Marx and Lenin spreads throughout Africa, Asia and South America. Britain finds herself increasingly Finlandised, and the US becomes increasingly insular and authoritarian as civil rights becomes one bloody riot after another. The Soviets are in Havana as well after all, and the US doesn't yet have a bomb to push them out. Premier Kruschev celebrates two decades of rapid economic growth by putting Yuri Gargarin on the moon in 1971, a great success for the famous Von Braun and Korolev partnership. More and more, peoples in the capitalist nations begin to wonder if maybe liberal democracy isn't the best way to ensure prosperity. By the year 2012 the contest is still very much on, but the future looks far brighter for one side than the other, although the Soviets worry that their Arab brethern may be becoming a tad too uncooperative over their oil pricing. Some sort of intervention may have to be necessary...
 
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Esopo

Banned
Butterfly the second great capitalist assault against the soviet union (the first being the entente's invasion).
Whitout ww2 the soviet union will be far stronger.
 
Is there any way to get race issues in the US to somehow end up far worse?


That was my thought!

MLK Sr. moves to Canada with his family, preventing MLK Jr's rise to being MLK Jr.

Instead of being indoctrined in the power of non-violence, the vanguard of the American civil rights movement succumb to human nature and react against the white-hot hostility of the segregationist establishment in like coin plus ten percent. It escalates...

American moral authority worldwide is hard to maintain with black people being rounded up by KKK-dominated militias and the Soviet strategic services planners and operators very delicately develop a way to ensure that African-American insurgents are never without American-made, and, with cut-outs and what-not, apparently American-sourced almost military-grade weaponry. (Tommy-guns, M1 rifles, etc.)
 
I suggest that you read Jello Biafra's Red timelines, if you know about it. But it's about a Red America anyway, but you'll get ideas how the Soviet Union can win the Cold War.

What kind of socialist are you anyway? Are you Marxist kind of a socialist? I think you are. The sig shows it. Then what kind actually? But I tell you this, Top Down State Socialism and planned economy is not gonna work. But yes, you can avoid adoption of social democratic capitalist economics either. Check out his work. See the list of my posts. You can find it there.
i'm not necessarily a marxist, i just love that quote.
i'm my own kinda socialist, no particular idealogy
 
Simply take out Uncle Joe,Gorby,and give trotsky a term,prolong Nicky Kruschev's term,Make Breznhev dont mess things up,and voila,you won the cold war.
 
That's fantastic, The Red, but probably a bit too optimistic. The Russians at that point were still fighting in the old French combined-arms mode, rather than outright blitzkrieg tactics. They didn't completely switch over to the war of maneuver until its efficacy had been demonstrated across much of their territory. That said, I don't disbelieve the proposed outcome of the war, though again the post-war prognosis is a bit optimistic.

That said, I totally agree on the main point: The moment the Soviet Union lost the Cold War was in 1941.

After fighting off Barbarossa it would literally (and ironically) have taken an act of God for them to surpass the United States on the world stage by conventional methods. And as for the unconventional method.... No matter how bad off the enemy is, it's not really winning if 80 percent of your population dies in the process.

Incidentally, the US historically did abandon possessions around the world, most notably the Panama Canal Zone, toward the end of the Cold War. In a situation where it was giving up on the idea of rolling back Communism in favor of a focus on domestic concerns, the territorial cessions would probably be viewed somewhat similarly to what happened to the USSR in OTL. Though obviously no one would be claiming the US self-destructed.
 
Nice stuff The Red, ASB but still :)

:confused: ASB? :eek: Look where this timeline was put up, Is it in the ASB section? I really beg to differ in this idea that America is somewhat immune from developing a socialist tradition given the circumstances. Maybe you should read the TL's (the original, revised edition, then the post-1933 one) more closely. It's truly a strong possibility.

MASSIVE EDIT: Misunderstood The Red's sample scenario versus The Reds timelines by Jello. Sorry. :eek:
 
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That's fantastic, The Red, but probably a bit too optimistic.

The TV tropes article on it says that it's totally on gray and gray, not super black and shining white. That's still too optimistic for you? Look, I'm not looking for a confrontation here. It's probably just I don't understand all of this dystopia surrounding this ideology and then utopia on the other ideology. Considering state socialism's legacy here in OTL, these perceptions cannot be blamed.

MASSIVE EDIT: And yeah I'm talking about The Reds timelines by Jello again. Sorry. :eek:
 
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