Germany, as an advanced capitalist state, was most suited to a [radical] socialist government by the time of the Russian revolution and civil war.
By 1923 the Bolsheviks were pinning all of their hopes on the German Communist Party (K.P.D.) pulling off an armed insurrection similar to the one pulled off in Russia in October (or November) of 1917.
They even considered sending Trotsky over to Berlin to lead such an insurrection!
However, the insurrection never materialized and with it chances for a revolutionary capture of state power in Germany also went with it.
Had the insurrection occurred as planned in the streets of Berlin, (with or without Trotsky) then the K.P.D. would end up at the helm of a new socialist German state government.
In a best case scenario for the USSR, Germany would possibly merge along with any other revolutionary states into the Soviet Union as a federated soviet socialist republic. Lenin actually had plans to incorporate many other states in Europe, if not all of them, into this Soviet Union. It never was supposed to be relegated to just Russia; On such a point, Stalin disagreed and thought that each revolutionary state should be independent of this Soviet Union.
Have the Soviet Union win the civil war (plus the Soviet-Polish War) and have a successful revolution (or two) in Europe occur in at least one or more of the advanced capitalist states and capitalism is done for, or at least severely crippled for a very long time.
This won't erase the top-down nature of Soviet-socialism, but should potentially remove Stalin from the picture and put the Soviet Union on either equal footing with other capitalist states or even on greater footing.
In effect, no Stalinism and a much different flavor of Soviet-socialism that is potentially more democratic and egalitarian then OTL's Soviet-socialism. (within the framework of single-party state rule that is).
The thing is, without a POD in either 1917 or 1918, the Soviet Union is destined to be solely led by the Bolshevik Party.
Regardless, this is the best-case scenario that I can think of for a Soviet Victory in any future Cold War.
I hope someone writes this!
