The only real difference between Uncle Joe and Lenin was that of scale, not the methods
Right. And if Lenin had lived longer, I have no doubt he would have scaled up his crimes as it became clear that the other choice was a compromise of his ideas.
Once you have three times the Warheads needed to knock out every major US Metro area and cover each missile field, why keep building? Waste of money and resources
Keep in mind that the Soviets didn't have guidance as good as that the US had. So to be sure of hitting the key targets if war happened tomorrow, they needed more warheads.
The whole situation was crazy, but each step was perfectly logical. Which is to say, the Soviets were no more nuke-crazy than the Americans were.
Overbuilding the Militarys after 1970 is what did it.
Imagine, for a moment, an alternate world where the Soviets spend, oh, 3/5ths or 4/5ths of their OTL military budget. If political and economic factors remain the same, are they really going to do much better?
In my view, it wouldn't make much difference at all. The economy would reach a slightly higher apogee with the freed up labour and investment but they'd still be suffering from resource exhaustion, malinvestment, out of control agriculture and investment budgets, shortage of middle managers of a reasonable age in the generations decimated by WW2, international trade will still be grossly inefficient and Gorbachev is still likely to break the system when he tries to reform it.
The only way things can be different is if the slightly smaller military provides enough slack that it gives Gorbachev's useful reforms enough time to start working before he feels he needs to do something really drastic as happened in OTL's 1987.
fasquardon