AHC: USSR wins Cold War

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You don't understand what you are talking about. China required immense investment by Western companies that brought in everything. All China had was cheap labor. In any case, the point of the neo-NEP strategy would to get the West to invest money and bring in the technology under the theory that this would secure democracy through trade or create it in the case of China. This in fact happened in IOTL.

When preytell are the Soviets looking to do this?

EDIT: I admit I do struggle when it comes to arguing economics, but I remember this argument being brought up by someone before. I'll try provide a link to the discussion.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=243570
 
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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.
Well, North Korea has survived without any diminution of "socialism", despite being a miserable hellhole. So you're right about that.
I also think that, if any country could become and remain truly socialist it would be the USSR. They have plentiful resources, after all.
Quite so. No matter how disastrous the effects of socialism on the domestic economy are, with enough revenue from exports of natural resources, the regime can stay in power forever. Just make sure the police and army goons are well-paid.
So with a POD in 1921, and without them adopting capitalist reforms, make the USSR win (or at least still be around today.)
With a POD in 1921? That's a very narrow window.

However. Let's forget that restriction. Here's a timeline I wrote up elsewhere:

PoD: November 1943 - Von dem Bussche's suicide bomb attack succeeds, killing Hitler, Goering, and Himmler. (There was a new winter uniform for German troops. It was to be shown to Hitler; Himmler and Goering as heads of the Waffen-SS and Luftwaffe Field Divisions were also to be present. Von dem Bussche, the model, was to have a land mine in the knapsack, and a detonator switch in his pocket. But the sample uniform was destroyed in an air raid the night before...)

With the three biggest Nazis dead, the VALKYRIE coup succeeds as the remaining Nazis fold like a cheap suit.

The post-coup regime tries to negotiate with the Allies, is stiffed.

All Axis allies defect or surrender within a few months.

Germany surrenders in June 1944.

With Nazi Germany eliminated, a substantial bloc of Manhattan District scientists refuse to continue work on the atomic bomb.

Most of the initial impetus among scientists for the Bomb project was fear of a German bomb; with that eliminated, many return to their pacifist roots and oppose further Bomb development. OTL, the Bomb the project was continued after V-E Day because it was almost complete. Here, there's at least a year to go.

They are supported by 'conventional' armed forces leaders, who want the budget redirected. Bomb development stops in July.

The USSR declares war on Japan in September. Soviet forces overrun all North China and Korea. A Soviet-sponsored liberation government is formed in north China (analogous to the Lublin government in Poland). This government forms it own army, equipped with Soviet arms and led by Communists. The Liberation Army destroys most of the Japanese holdouts in south China, which Chiang's RoC regime is impotent against. Chiang is discredited and forced into a coalition government de facto controlled by Communists.

Japan massacres Allied PoWs and civilian internees.

US forces capture Tokyo at immense cost. The Emperor and leadership are killed. US forces bog down in slow, incredibly bloody subjugation of the rest of Japan, and extermination of die-hard Japanese forces overseas, lasting till 1950.

With the US still burdened by the Pacific War, there is no Marshall Plan. Afterwrds, the exhausted US turns isolationist.

Soviet-sponsored Communist forces gain control of most countries in Europe, including France with its colonies (which all become independent Communist states) and China, in addition to the countries occupied by the Soviet forces during the war.

The USSR starts its own Bomb project in early 1945. Information purloined or leaked from the Manhattan District includes key technology, but not the full recipe, as that was not completed. Soviet scientists replicate US work, then finish the job in 1952. The USSR builds up a large nuclear arsenal in secret.

The Manhattan District continues research into atomic fission for power - the possibllity of atomic bombs becomes a public question. The US finally resumes Bomb development in 1954.

In 1955, the USSR announces that it has the Bomb - lots of Bombs. However, the USSR proposes that the Bomb be handed to the UN exclusively, and that nations be prohibited from building or developing the Bomb. This proposal is backed by an implicit threat of war if the US tries to build its own Bomb.

The US agrees. By this time, though, the UN has a pro-Soviet majority - almost half explicitly Communist states, several more "finlandized", and some nominal neutrals leaning Soviet.

The UN "Peace Force" which takes control of the Bomb is effectively Communist controlled.

The "Peace Force" adds ground forces for "peace-keeping" duties in "trouble zones".

With the Peace Force as a "Trojan horse", Communists take control of the rest of Africa and most of the rest of Asia. The Peace Force assumes the occupation of still-restive Japan from the US.

The US has not even thought about re-arming. Conventional arms seem irrelevant in face of the Bomb. The US has no network of overseas allies and bases. Thus the remaining independent neutral nations in the Old World must submit to Communist subversion and intimidation.

By 1965, Communism controls everything from the English Channel to New Zealand, and much of Latin America.

The US has determined that without nuclear weapons, it is at the mercy of the Communists. The US starts a secret project to build its own Bombs and deter the Communists.

Unfortunately, the project is exposed before it is completed. This attempt is justification for Communist takeover of the US under UN colors in 1968.

(Arrest of all US leaders concerned, Peace Force garrisons to control the facilities involved.)

With the US fallen, the UN dictates similar terms to the remaining independent countries. The UN adds a World Police force, ostensibly to suppress crime and enforce nuclear prohibition - but in practice to entrench Communist control and maintain subjection to Moscow.

The next 150 years are not pretty at all. The global Soviet state is corrupt, hidebound, increasingly incompetent at everything but maintaining control. It has wiped out any possible external base for dissent or rebellion, any recorded memory of a real previous state of the world.

The population, stripped of its root cultures, terrorized by political police and informers, falls into demoralized passivity. Life becomes a negative-sum game, where the object is to gain extra comforts through black-marketing, crime, or entry into the Party elite. Everyone lies, steals, informs, toadies. There is nowhere to escape to. Alcoholism and drug usage are rampant. Birth rates are very low, and birth defects are common, also increasing levels of mental illness.

By 2050, whole neighborhoods, towns, and cities are being abandoned, and fall into ruin. Infrastructure of all sorts is breaking down, and severe pollution is omnipresent.

The core elite cling ruthlessly to the remaining functional goods as tools of power. But the systematic culling of anyone who doesn't place regime loyalty above all - who values, for instance, technical competence for itself, has degraded the workforce. The mediocrities at the top fear competence below. Ability is viewed as dangerous.

Despite the declining population, food has become seriously short. There are occasional spontaneous riots against the regime, or just to seize food - they are put down with increasingly extreme brutality.

No organized resistance is possible. The regime has destroyed every scrap of social organization outside itself: churches, tribes, clans, clubs - all gone.

By 2100, the manufacturing plants are all breaking down. "High" tech (vacuum-tube electronics and IC engines) are the privilege of the elite and the security forces.

At this point, central control slips. Regional centers begin to fight over the remaining goods, destroying much and aggravating the decline.

Finally, some natural disaster triggers a general collapse - an 1859 level solar storm or 1918 level viral epidemic. About 2/3 of the human race dies. The survivors live in the ruins.

=======

There. Soviet victory and survival to about 2100. Not the way you would want it, of course.
 
The biggest problem the USSR has in competition with capitalism is corruption.

When everyone is supposed to be equal, the only way to get ahead is to cheat.

Alternities, an alternate history novel, posits a successful Soviet Union (America goes more right-wing, SU gets more liberal).
 
When everyone is supposed to be equal, the only way to get ahead is to cheat.

Alternities, an alternate history novel, posits a successful Soviet Union (America goes more right-wing, SU gets more liberal).

If the social revolution after the February Revolution where workers took control of their factories is able to survive somehow and becomes the foundation of the new Soviet economy I think that's the best way to pull it off. Stalinist state capitalism combines the worst of both systems without the benefits (such as they are) of either. The problem is you would need a POD that's pre 1921 where groups like the Workers' Opposition and the Kronstaders are able to establish a strong enough position in Russia that the Bolsheviks have to co-operate with them.
 
If the social revolution after the February Revolution where workers took control of their factories is able to survive somehow and becomes the foundation of the new Soviet economy I think that's the best way to pull it off. Stalinist state capitalism combines the worst of both systems without the benefits (such as they are) of either. The problem is you would need a POD that's pre 1921 where groups like the Workers' Opposition and the Kronstaders are able to establish a strong enough position in Russia that the Bolsheviks have to co-operate with them.

Devolving power to the appropriated factories basically recreates firms motivated by the profit incentive, albeit under another name, which cures what is probably the fundamental problem of the Soviet economy.
 
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.

But all that is post-Stalin, and most of it post-Barbarossa, in it's origins. There were ample other courses open to the USSR in its early history that were forever closed off from the moment German troops crossed the border. From that point on, whatever economic and social momentum the country held was going to end up exhausted - either at war or on reconstruction.

Would the same economic problems have remained in a partially planned economy? In an economy that had never been wrecked by World War Two? Would the ideology be more ingrained if accompanied by more concrete and longterm progress?
 
It was called the cold war for a reason. What you need for the Soviets to win the cold war is for them to get the military upper-hand and do it fast enought to overcome economic imalances through war. The US must NOT have the sort of military it had in the cold war and the USSR must be able to sell its ideology while also intimidating other nations. The USA, Britain, France, Germany and the others must be rapidly destroyed if there is any hope of victory. Sometimes military power can make up for economic inferiority.
 
Longer Living Lenin+Trotsky As His Successor+Give Nikita Kruschev Longer Term+3 more competent premiers beside the last three premiers+no afghani soviet intervention:SUCCESS!
 
I thought Trotsky wanted to spread the revoultion via the Red Army so giving him power could well lead to a general anti communist war as opposed to minor expeditions and supplies.
 
Longer Living Lenin+Trotsky As His Successor+Give Nikita Kruschev Longer Term+3 more competent premiers beside the last three premiers+no afghani soviet intervention:SUCCESS!
Kruschev was, at the very least, mentally unstable. He'd announce plans one day and cancel them the next, and was a gaffe machine. Nevermind that a lot of his policies, especially agricultural, failed, and sometimes got people killed. Destalinization is more than just disavowing Stalin, it's about the end of the absolute dictatorship in the USSR.
 
I think I may have a way for the Soviets to survive the Cold War at the very least. It may win but rest assured, it will not turn into a comical evil dictatorship.

The idea of the vanguard party is killed in its infancy. Perhaps a messier disintegration of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party that leaves the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks just two of many, diverse factions which forces them to co-operate with the other left-wing parties like the SR, leading to a popular front against the Provisional Government (That would include parties that make up a vast majority of the State Duma and would probably have massive support). The provisional government collapses as they seize power in a near bloodless July Revolution that leads not to a devastating civil war, but simply picking off small reactionary armies that remain in the country. The new Soviet Union isn't as devastated and with the Bolshevik party merely one of several in a coalition government, there is no way for a certain Georgian to gain complete power and at best, is just the head of the Party while the head of state and government would probably rest firmly in SR hands. This new coalition will likely break apart and this will lead, hopefully, to free elections in the Soviet Union. With no Kronstadt uprising, failed collectivization policies, costly industrialization policies or brutal purges, Socialism as a whole is seen in a much better light far earlier.

With no Red Scare or anything similar ("The Big Bad Soviets have elections! And a market system. And actual democracy. And their citizens do have their freedoms. Their leadership isn't too bad either. Oh dear"), the nations of the world are more readily to establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and Socialist parties experience a surge in popularity over what is seen as the great success in the Socialist experiment. The Soviets industrialize rapidly and the Comintern, rather than becoming nothing more than Moscow's loudspeaker, becomes a truly international gathering of the world's socialist and communist parties. The post-war governments of Germany and much of the post Austro-Hungarian Empire and swept up in a wave of revolutionary fervor, with the 1920s culminating in the installation of a Democratic Socialist (Former SDP)- Communist government in Germany and the election of a Eugene Debs to the Presidency of the United States of America. By the end of the 20th century, most countries have embraced some form of Socialism and most Marxian theorists are still baffled as to how it all began in a country that Marx himself said was not yet suitable for revolution.

ASB? Certainly. But a man can dream, right? ;)
 
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.
Didn't seventy million Chinese people die with almost all the rest made penniless?
 
I thought Trotsky wanted to spread the revoultion via the Red Army so giving him power could well lead to a general anti communist war as opposed to minor expeditions and supplies.

If you get Trotsky in charge you'd probably end up with a different approach to leadership and power-sharing in the Soviet Union. While Trotsky isn't quite the silver bullet he's made out to be in AH I seriously doubt he would have tried or had the means to pull off the massive concentration of power that Stalin did. If you have Trotsky take the helm odds there's definitely going to be a more aggressive foreign policy but I doubt he'd have anywhere near the absolute power Stalin manged to amass for himself.
 
Warning
I think most of this 'Its ASB' talk totally missed the point.The USA didnt win the cold war because of it 'superior' system (Actually the USSR had a higher GDP growth than the USA from the 30s to the mid 80s). The USA won because the Communist bloc suffered from crissis, efficient anti-communist agitation and a leadership opportunistic enough to try to change the side (many former high polliticians from communist parties gained leading roles in the new states. Only the heads were pollitically eliminated, as scapegoats). Real economic collapse happened in ALL of those countries right after communism fell, mostly in 1991-1992. Also, I want to add that most people in the eastern bloc still supported the communist governments in 1989 (Poland and Czechoslovakia taken out). Many people also just voted non-socialist in the first elections after communism, because they were curious what would happen. In hungary for example, in the first election after the fall of communism only 11% voted socialist. In the second election after the fall of communism the socialist party had the absolute majority.

So with all that said, my point is that, what counts are the efficiency (not neccessarily the strengh) of the opposition and the will/possibility of the leadership to fight.

A more efficient communist agitation in western europe, along with a weakened leadership and economic crissis (economic crissis in the west happened every decade) could be enough for western europe to fall to communism.

Taking into account that the Italian Communist Party had 30% of the vote in the 1970s, and the French Communist party had 20% at the same time, this seems a lot less unlikely than one would think.
 

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I think most of this 'Its ASB' talk totally missed the point.The USA didnt win the cold war because of it 'superior' system (Actually the USSR had a higher GDP growth than the USA from the 30s to the mid 80s). The USA won because the Communist bloc suffered from crissis, efficient anti-communist agitation and a leadership opportunistic enough to try to change the side (many former high polliticians from communist parties gained leading roles in the new states. Only the heads were pollitically eliminated, as scapegoats). Real economic collapse happened in ALL of those countries right after communism fell, mostly in 1991-1992. Also, I want to add that most people in the eastern bloc still supported the communist governments in 1989 (Poland and Czechoslovakia taken out). Many people also just voted non-socialist in the first elections after communism, because they were curious what would happen. In hungary for example, in the first election after the fall of communism only 11% voted socialist. In the second election after the fall of communism the socialist party had the absolute majority.

So with all that said, my point is that, what counts are the efficiency (not neccessarily the strengh) of the opposition and the will/possibility of the leadership to fight.

A more efficient communist agitation in western europe, along with a weakened leadership and economic crissis (economic crissis in the west happened every decade) could be enough for western europe to fall to communism.

Taking into account that the Italian Communist Party had 30% of the vote in the 1970s, and the French Communist party had 20% at the same time, this seems a lot less unlikely than one would think.
You necro'd a 5 1/2 year old thread to PICK A FIGHT?

Don't do that!
 
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