Cultural legacy of Soviet victory in the Cold war
- Thread starter Bukabuck
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Not sure if they would have the same impact. Short of collapse of the USA, which during said time period i would find off base.
Let's say soviet victory.
This would mean the survival of the eastern block. So in those places obvious influence.
How do the Soviets get the trust for influence on nations like west Germany, Japan, France, Britain, Canada and others.
Do the Soviets reproach China?
The Soviets are not loved in the Middle East. They are tolerated for weapons.
How does chernobyl play out.
How do you make a friendlier communist world.. Ie less kgb.. Stasi.. Etc.. How do they rule by mandate of the people and not by fear and gulag.
How do the Soviets even come close to matching manufacturing and quality manufacturing at that with evn the likes of China.
At best descalation with the west which could help the Soviet cause if they are not just throwing money into the military. On the other hand if the Soviets are continuing to destabilize regions and nations then that won't do much to get the west on board.
So that goes back to let's define wins the cold war. How does one get the united states and the rest of the west to collapse?
Hell even in our time line it's still asb that the Soviet union just peacefully went into the history books and wrapping my head around that is still awkward.
The United States doesn't have or had those internal issues on the same level of forced top down politics.
Let's say soviet victory.
This would mean the survival of the eastern block. So in those places obvious influence.
How do the Soviets get the trust for influence on nations like west Germany, Japan, France, Britain, Canada and others.
Do the Soviets reproach China?
The Soviets are not loved in the Middle East. They are tolerated for weapons.
How does chernobyl play out.
How do you make a friendlier communist world.. Ie less kgb.. Stasi.. Etc.. How do they rule by mandate of the people and not by fear and gulag.
How do the Soviets even come close to matching manufacturing and quality manufacturing at that with evn the likes of China.
At best descalation with the west which could help the Soviet cause if they are not just throwing money into the military. On the other hand if the Soviets are continuing to destabilize regions and nations then that won't do much to get the west on board.
So that goes back to let's define wins the cold war. How does one get the united states and the rest of the west to collapse?
Hell even in our time line it's still asb that the Soviet union just peacefully went into the history books and wrapping my head around that is still awkward.
The United States doesn't have or had those internal issues on the same level of forced top down politics.
Deleted member 140587
I don't think you that the USSR could win the Cold War without serious (near ASB) PODs. You'd have to radically change the way the Soviets governed themselves and the way they thought geopolitically. They'd have to avoid the Korean War (which spurred the U.S. to re-arm heavily), not waste money on costly nuclear weapons (so no Cuban Missile Crisis, which would also be bad because that probably requires the US to have successfully invaded Cuba), get rid of Brezhnev completely, the list is quite long.
Now if you want to have the USSR survive, that's a different story. Have Khrushchev hang on a little longer, maybe Alexei Kosygin rise to a higher position of power in the USSR or perhaps Gorbachev's reforms of the USSR are more successful. It would probably usher in a new era of detente in the world. As for how long this new detente lasts, it depends. It might continue to the present day or we might have a re-ignition of the Cold War on the pseudo-scale we have in OTL or in a much more drastic fashion. It's anybody's guess (I am also not a USSR Expert so I'd be hard pressed to say what the great minds of the Kremlin would have on the cards).
However, to have the USSR win the Cold War on the same scale the U.S. did is just ASB. America didn't have the same internal flaws that the USSR did and I just can't see the US collapsing in that way.
Now if you want to have the USSR survive, that's a different story. Have Khrushchev hang on a little longer, maybe Alexei Kosygin rise to a higher position of power in the USSR or perhaps Gorbachev's reforms of the USSR are more successful. It would probably usher in a new era of detente in the world. As for how long this new detente lasts, it depends. It might continue to the present day or we might have a re-ignition of the Cold War on the pseudo-scale we have in OTL or in a much more drastic fashion. It's anybody's guess (I am also not a USSR Expert so I'd be hard pressed to say what the great minds of the Kremlin would have on the cards).
However, to have the USSR win the Cold War on the same scale the U.S. did is just ASB. America didn't have the same internal flaws that the USSR did and I just can't see the US collapsing in that way.
So best case Soviet “victory” scenario would be that NATO is abolished in continental Europe or never formed, Western Europe joins the USSR in a continental collective security agreement, and any remaining COCOM trade restriction between Western Europe and the USSR are curtailed or abolished entirely. This satisfies the USSR’s mid-term goals - European peace and security and unrestricted access to imports of advanced technology from the West.
I don’t think this would grant economic stability to the USSR, but it would allow it to reform under much less “high stakes” circumstances. On the other hand, increasing economic and political linkages between Western and Eastern Europe would likely lead to the reform or collapse of “pure” state socialism much faster. So by the 80s/90s much of Eastern Europe and the USSR would be some form of market socialism, with some countries on the very liberal end (Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland) and others taking a more moderate track (The USSR and Romania).
Germany, I think, might reunify if the USSR is willing to countenance a neutral and capitalist Germany as a fair trade for a collective security agreement with France/the UK which excludes the US.
I don’t think this would grant economic stability to the USSR, but it would allow it to reform under much less “high stakes” circumstances. On the other hand, increasing economic and political linkages between Western and Eastern Europe would likely lead to the reform or collapse of “pure” state socialism much faster. So by the 80s/90s much of Eastern Europe and the USSR would be some form of market socialism, with some countries on the very liberal end (Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland) and others taking a more moderate track (The USSR and Romania).
Germany, I think, might reunify if the USSR is willing to countenance a neutral and capitalist Germany as a fair trade for a collective security agreement with France/the UK which excludes the US.
Deleted member 140587
Why would the US agree to any of this? The Soviets blockaded Berlin and had established Communist puppet regimes over all of Eastern Europe, the State Department was scared shitless that they'd continue to spread Communism westwards, which lead America to start the Marshall Plan to economically prop up Western Europe. You'd have to radically change the thought behind postwar Anglo-American foreign policy, which would have to be done by radically changing Stalin's vision of a postwar world, which was a ring of Soviet satellites between Germany and Russia that would serve to deter another German invasion of Russia (the Germans had invaded twice in less fifty years, so Stalin was justifiably anxious of a resurgent Germany invading Russia for a third time).
A earlier unified Germany is, on the other, theoretically possible. I know Stalin offered (and Beria planned to offer) a unified neutral Germany but Adenauer and his CDU (and the SPD for that matter) distrusted the offer and turned it down. Plus, by that time, Western Europe had already signed on to NATO and gotten the ball moving on the Pleven Plan, a plan to unify Europe's militaries. The only other offer I can think of was Ludwig Erhard's plan to simply buy back East Germany, which was also, in theory, possible but also highly unlikely.
The Cold War was unavoidable.
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I don’t disagree, the US would never support such an outcome. Soviet strategy was to divide Western Europe from the US and bring it willingly into their collective security orbit. As you noted, because of heavy-handed Soviet foreign policy these efforts failed.
That doesn’t mean that potential fissures didn’t exist which the USSR could’ve exploited, though IMO that requires Stalin kicking the bucket as early as possible. In particular, Western Europe’s strong trade relationship with Eastern Europe made America’s insistence on a coordinated and expansive embargo scheme (COCOM) undesirable and caused serious tension IOTL. And France, the USSR, and the UK all shared equal worries about a remilitarized Germany which the US could be insensitive to.
You’d also need to see the USSR continue to allow its Eastern European “friends” more autonomy than IOTL - this was the trajectory before 1948, when Stalin pursued a hardline approach towards Europe. A less domineering USSR might’ve let its “friends” follow a more diverse set of routes towards socialism as long as they remained Soviet-friendly.
Eastern European states and USSR were given opportunity to join the Marshall Plan, but Stalin refused.