AHC: USSR wins Cold War

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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.

I think he meant that the Soviets were luckier, which they were. I admit that my scenarios probably a type 2.5 on the scale, but as the Challenge is pretty tough some liberties do have to be taken.

But thanks for the kind words, everyone. :)
 
Lenin did bring in market reform in the early 1920s to combat food shortages allowing farmers to sell foods at market prices. This end with the collection of farming in the early 1930s.
The only chance I can see for the soviets willing would be for Trotsky to be come leader instead of Stalin and have the revolution spread world world by communist agitators as quickly as possible.
Without the purges Stalin did the soviets were in a much stronger position.
Trotsky said that unless the revolution spread world wide quickly the more efficient free market economy would out compete the communist economy in the soviet union and in the long term they would lose.
The problem is the more are come under communist control the greater the danger of counter revolution.
The soviets might be able to win but once the soviets take over the world they would be faced with long termproblems or rebellions world wide that they would lose in the long term.
 
I think he meant that the Soviets were luckier, which they were. I admit that my scenarios probably a type 2.5 on the scale, but as the Challenge is pretty tough some liberties do have to be taken.

But thanks for the kind words, everyone. :)

Just misunderstood everything. :eek: What I mean is Jello's The Reds timeline, not you The Red. My God. Sorry.

But yeah, I saw you're scenario... hmmm... all I can say is you're welcome. Hahaha. Some liberties do have to be taken considering the really tough scenario. Ok. One lesson learned for me, read carefully. Hahaha.
 
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.

The only times we've given-up territories are times where we specifically took control of them with the intent for them to be independent (but American aligned) or when we've been forced to.

We did'nt give-up the Panama Canal to focus on Domestic Concerns, we gave it up because the Panamanian government threatened to try and destroy it/do enough damage to shut it down for a month or two, which would have seriously hurt the American and world economy.
 
I would not alter the early character of the Soviet Union, but instead have different events going down in WWII or even just in the post-war settlement to give the Communists more presence in Western Europe.

If the Soviets take all of Germany, or if post-war elections see a Communist government in France, and then if Communists are successful in the Greek civil war, then you have a hotly contested Europe.

And whichever side "wins" Europe, can be seen as a clear victor, not just survivor, of the Cold War.

So, with Greece and either France or all of Germany in the WarPact or equivalent, there gets to be a proxy conflict in Italy any time from the late 40's For All Time Style to the 60's, right? As Gladio on Steroids meets emboldened Italian communists.

If in the balance of those conflicts, by the winding down of the 20th century the Soviet Union has won more of Europe and held on to what it has, if in the theater of Western Europe and the UK the Comintern is more powerful than NATO or its equivalent, then yes; the Soviets would have won the Cold War.
 
What if lennin initially looked east for russias future? laying thousands of miles of traintrack to connect moscovy to vladvisok and invest in industry within the boomtowns that connect the way? with a much larger non european industial economy when the germans come knocking; even assuming they reach as far as OTL (which is unlikely with a now huge industry and population past the urals.

und could a better navy help? if they build aircraft carriers similar to their allies, then you take away stalin and someone less (for lack of better word) evil came to power? Then, along with the army they build up the navy which although won't help against the Germans (unless they can successfully blockade the baltic and hault german iron ore mines in sverige.)

But post WWII, i think carriers are one of those things that helped the US (they rule(d) the seas much as their english forbears did before them.) So if its russia who rules the seas do they have a better change of "winning" the cold war.
 
IMO we're missing a major point

The main reason the USSR lost the Cold War IOTL is that economically,
it was run enitrely by fiat with hardly any relation to normal economic limits and external reference points revealed by trade.
The Soviets traded with people on their terms or not at all . A few trading partners wanted hard cash like the US, but most were fraternal "exchanges" of commodities between Comecon partners or straight-up donations to Third World clients so they restricted commercial trade to what the Soviets could readily sell commodities to pay for.

It made the post-WWII Soviet economy such a bizarre, isolated Potemkin village that butterflying that takes butterflying Stalin's collectivization and a more ordoliberal approach to developing Soviet resources as well as a far more open and decentralized state than Stalin's successors would ever dream of.

I believe anyone can learn and do anything well, given time and practice but the development of a Soviet commercial class needed more time, effort, and political capital than reformers such as Khruschev and Grobachev had.
 
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.

"Great capitalist assault"? If the Allied intervention post-WWI had been anything remotely resembling Barbarossa, the Reds would have been exterminated.
 
The only times we've given-up territories are times where we specifically took control of them with the intent for them to be independent (but American aligned) or when we've been forced to.

We did'nt give-up the Panama Canal to focus on Domestic Concerns, we gave it up because the Panamanian government threatened to try and destroy it/do enough damage to shut it down for a month or two, which would have seriously hurt the American and world economy.

You know you can see right there in your own post that you're responding to an argument I never made.

That's interesting about Panama, I'd never known. It sounds like the kind of thing that would have happened in a USSR cold war victory timeline, amusingly enough.
 
The USSR will still run facefirst into the calculation problem, even if they depose Stalin or listen to Zhukov and Tukachevsky before 1941. Soviet consumer goods were of notably inferior quality, the workers became increasingly drunk and absent, and the Politburo/nomenklatura had essentially admitted defeat when they established the Zil lanes and special stores. The Soviet economy was embarrassingly dependent on imports from the West in its later years (as much as a third of Soviet grain was imported from the United States and then Canada). Furthermore, price controls enabled a Soviet worker to clear a supermarket and inflate the value of the ruble to unrealistic levels, which destroyed Soviet savings when Gorbachev reinstated the price mechanism. Finally, Communism wasn't really ingrained anywhere it took hold. The various SSR's saw it as a Russian imposition (the satellites even more so), and in Russia itself it wasn't very well-entrenched. In the Third World there would be a lot of "leftist" states existing just to spite their former colonial masters, but a lot of it is really just strongman rule and redistribution of favors just like it arguably was in Europe.

e: I guess if America drops the ball in the Cold War, maybe the Soviet Union can pull off a "win," but in the end the fundamental problems of a planned economy still exist.
 
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The Soviet Union can win if it successfully carries out the master plan from New Lies For Old.

Which requires magic. The USSR economy was so decayed that the prospect of them being more attractive than the United States for say Europe, or indeed the rest of the world is slim. Corruption is such a massive problem in the Soviet Union, that loosening grips and liberalizing to a point where they look more attractive than the US is almost impossible.
 
The USSR had become so inept that Gorbachev actually asked Reagan if he could see the US reports on Soviet agriculture, having given up all hope of getting an honest analysis from his own people.

Which is beyond depressing.:(
 
All they need is to retain control over the intelligence services. This in fact happened IOTL. You don't need magic to retain power and influence.

You also need the CIA and Europe's own intelligence agencies to be compeltely inedpt, which they weren't in OTL

You also need to offer something. The USSR wanted to pull Europe out of the USA's camp by appearing more attractive partners socially and economically. Just appearing to be more liberal isn't enough, you need to offer something that the US can't. What can the USSR offer?

The USSR is also hopelessly corrupt, getting any honesty from anywhere was impossible so I doubt without a far back POD and a lot of reforms that the USSR can achieve European trust.
 
You also need the CIA and Europe's own intelligence agencies to be compeltely inedpt, which they weren't in OTL

You also need to offer something. The USSR wanted to pull Europe out of the USA's camp by appearing more attractive partners socially and economically. Just appearing to be more liberal isn't enough, you need to offer something that the US can't. What can the USSR offer?

The USSR is also hopelessly corrupt, getting any honesty from anywhere was impossible so I doubt without a far back POD and a lot of reforms that the USSR can achieve European trust.

what if it just remains a union of kazikastan, ukraine, belarus, and russia? doesn't it have enough resources to last throughout the cold war? or was america always gonna win even with a pod in 1921?
 
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! :D
 
But the CIA was completely caught off guard by the apparent collapse of Communism. And the European agencies were not as good as the CIA. This is not really a matter of competence as much as a matter of wanting to believe something, namely that a corrupt and inept Soviet Union finally fell apart.

The theory of convergence was that the Soviets would appear to become democratic, as would E Europe, as a way of getting Western money and investment. So the Soviets can be as corrupt as they want in most sectors because that will only add to the grand deception.



You are ignoring the practicalities of such a deception. The CIA and such were kept in the dark because the USSR and the West had only courteous relations at best. You are proposing that the USSR liberalize and open up, that changes everything, suddenly the West gains an insight into what is going on. You can't keep an economy going on the pretense that you are a good trading partner when the truth is simply the opposite. The USSR have little to offer that the USA can't and even if the West is duped into thinking they can invest in the bloated corpse that was the Soviet Economy, how long before they realise that they are getting NOTHING back? A few years? A decade? You eventually have to pay the piper and Europe is going to swing right back into the US sphere, who in that time is not going to collapse. All you have done is keep the USSR on life support for a little big longer, not saved it in any fashion. It was wishful thinking and it wouldn't work.
 
Consider China and you will have your answer.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

China and the USSR are very diffrent beasts. They are not comparable in this situation, the difference was that China had actually created a functioning economy, the Soviet Union was at best running on borrowed time. You seem to seriosuly underestimate just how sick the Soviet Economy was. Investment in the Chinese economy ACTUALLY pays dividends, investment in the Soviet economy wouldn't because it barely existed. In this case it is literally a lie.
 
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