Now, as we all know Stalin, genocidal dictator of USSR during late 20's and 30's, suffered a fatal heart attack after German attack his dictatorship in 1941. In a one of the greatest miracles of 20th Century the Cabal which replaced him managed not only to defeat German attack but also to raise USSR to superpower status to rival United States until the eventual collapse during early 2000's after peoples of Soviet Union decided that an alliance with China would only benefit their leaders, not the Soviet People.
One of the recurring themes of this board is a what if Stalin had not suffered a heart attack in 22 June 1941? While I think, contrary to most people, that USSR would have been able to eventually defeat German onslaught and even to drive it back to, say, Poland, before end of the war, some like sheer Stalinist fantasies. In one brilliantly written but flawed piece of work the board member UralBear "Stalin's rise to a superpower" Stalinist USSR defeats Germany and establishes a cordon sanitaire of puppet states in Eastern Europe. His successors manage to expand Soviet influence all around the world and even commit Soviet Union to a space race with USA. Despite all it's flaws this Stalinist Soviet Union manages to bungle on to early 1990's. UralBears last post suffer from a clear case of exhaustion after criticism, as this Soviet Empire collapses just in some two years, and mostly peacefully.
Why are these kind of fantasies, kind of like fantasies of Nazi Germany victorious, so popular? If we examine Stalin's USSR's performance to 22 June 1941 and some time afterwards (clearly the Cabal could not reform Soviet Army just in space of a few days) there's no signs to show that Stalin could have any diplomatic sense, or could unite Soviet peoples against German attacker.
One of the most curious points are the Soviet Wunderwaffe which appear in Soviet fantasies. Stalinists develop an atomic bomb just a few years after USA (yeah right!, capitalist science, Lysenko and all that), a hydrogen bomb just a year after USA and even space rockets, capable jet fighters etc. Why can't people see that fairly capable pieces of military equipment that USSR produced prior to 1941 were mostly based on foreign techonology and achievements of brilliant independent designers not yet exhausted under Stalin's rule? It's clear that after this generation of weapons had passed a Stalinist state would have been unable to create such weapons as MiG-15, T-55 and AK-47, to name a few Soviet successes
Finally, Stalinist fantasies omit the most serious point. A Stalinist USSR would have been totally unable to reform. A state which destroyed entire nations and groups of humans just because they were stated to be class enemies would have destroyed itself in a space of few years, even if German attack wasn't succesfull. A reformist Stalinist USSR is about as believable as reformist Nazi Germany after Hitler's death, another favourite fantasy scenario.