Challenge: Dystopian Soviet Union, Post-1950

One possibility would be Stalin making his personality cult even more personally-oriented. Let's say he has a son that he deems suitable to continue the Dynasty of Steel, and there you go. With its experience in WW2, it's not implausible that the USSR could have gone the way of North Korea, giving up internationalism nearly completely in favor of collective nationalism.

IMO one thing that mucked up the Soviets badly in real life after Stalin was that they actually tried to compete with the West on the same terms, that is, they actually made an effort to halfway improve the well-being of their people. North Korea did not make this mistake, and is still around today. China changed only because Mao, like Stalin, did not appoint a successor who would continue the system*, not because his power structure was in any true danger of collapse.

*= I have the idea that with these kinds of really nasty totalitarian states, once the "Big Bad" dies there is a good deal of incentive among the surviving officials to liberalize in some fashion. But if there is a clear successor, as in the case of Kim Jong-il, the system can be preserved.
 
The easiest answer is that the United States chooses to strike first. All Soviet Unions subsequent this decision will be dystopic in a way that makes OTL look like the very very lucky situation it was.

* * *

Less apocalypticly:

Poland 56 or Hungary 56 goes faster or slower respectively and the Central European Revolution of 1957 or 1958 results, after a year of legitimacy for the Gormulka and Nagy programmes including legitimacy within the Soviet Union itself. Probably splits down the side of the anti-party group on one side, and the voices arguing for non-intervention in Hungary as historically on the other (Zhukov, Mikoyan, etc.). Split in the party and society is dependent on people who are attracted to the idea of workers' democracy and qualitative reform, versus self-interested nomenklatura who genuinely fear that reform will invite the West to intervene.

Worst result: a second less bloody civil war in the Soviet Union, expanded into a number of the soviet-style Societies; your mileage may vary with a choice of Western Conventional Intervention or not. Bloody on the scale of Hungary 56 during the second intervention; outcome depends on the alignment of states and forces.

Personally, I'm betting that Western occupation forces in the East will resort to the usual ethnically oriented policing functions.

yours,
Sam R.
 
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