Could the communists have "won" the Cold War?

With a POD after the Allied victory in WWII, could the Soviet Union & Co "win" the cold war against the USA and have communism become the dominant world economic model?

Some ideas...

1. Have Breznev die of a heart attack before he takes office.

2. Somehow prevent the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union or have it much less devastating then OTL.

3. Have Lenin live a bit longer.

Any thoughts?
 
There are a couple. If you want a PoD during ww2 you could have an earlier Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor say before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, or you could have the US go to war with Japan in 1937.

If it's a post ww2 PoD you want I have a few, you may need to combined several to get a communist "victory"
. No Marshal Plan(which means no truman doctrine)
. US lets south korea fall to the communists
. US stays in Vietnam
. US doesn't intervene in Vietnam

Basically as I see it you should either have the US go completely isolationist after ww2, or go completely interventionist after ww2. The first one will make more of the world fall to communism, the later will bankrupt the United States. I would say the latter is more likely. If you get the US to intervene everywhere the communists are rising up in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and everywhere else you'll have a US that's spending itself into oblivion. At some point in the early 90's the US government goes bankrupt and is forced to pull back all of its forces around the world.

So I would say a communist victory would come not from a smarter Soviet Union but from a more reckless US.
 
-Have the North Koreans win the Korean War quickly, discrediting the US internationally and turning more of Africa/Third World/Latin America to the USSR. Eventually the West runs lean on resources and European nations fall one by one into Moscow's orbit, eventually the US is isolated and goes Communist too.

-Vietnam is even more of a fiasco for the US and eventually China becomes involved, by 1974 China and the US are involved in a direct conflict that burns them out and the USSR is left as the last one standing by default. Europe does not have the resources to remain free and Moscow decides to rebuild a post-apocalypse US.

-Stagflation in the 70s remains despite the government's best efforts and by 1985 the US is in economic turmoil, the US goes hard left at the ballot box and becomes very friendly to Moscow be default and their own internal weaknesses are never revealed.
 
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