Yeah, preventing Perestroika is a necessity. The OPEC Depression of the 70s discredited free-market capitalism but that wasn't enough for the East to win the Cold War, the communists had to prove that they could offer not just good living conditions but that it could actually provide freedoms. As long as there was KGB, turnips, and the Amiens Wall, Russia couldn't win. Once it had that sorted out, people looked at the Western model and said "yeah, but what about Chile, Argentina, Britain, the Persian Gulf ect".
Even then, the Western Bloc could have won if it could've shown a capitalist/socialist compromise could work but President Maranello had too much powerful opposition to get more than a half-arsed job done on the US economy. Iran pulled it off in the late 1980s, they could have pulled it off after the People's Revolution if Iraq hadn't attacked & delayed things but the late 80s was too late for a nation that didn't have the US's global reach. So there's two potentials: Maranello's administration was better at internal diplomacy/more hardcore (depending on your POV) and Iraq had been discouraged from invading instead of told "yeah, go on, do it". But for the latter, you need Bob Dole to win in 1976 instead of Rumsfeld (as I can't see the Democrats winning in '76, the Republicans were all better at playing the "tough on crime" card).
I guess another POD would be no coup in Britain, because we were still an influential nation - especially in media and culture - and that whole affair didn't help the Western Bloc's hearts-and-minds one bit.
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OOC: The communist model doesn't have to be providing awesome living conditions and freedoms ITTL, just enough (and the Western Bloc bad enough) that a guy living in 2015 would say it does.