Impact of a hardline Stalinist USSR

Let's say that Molotov wins out in the post-Stalin power struggle and continues hardline Stalinist policies in the USSR with a new round of purges and the like. How does it impact the Cold War? Is the Communist bloc in the Cold War united with a hardline Stalinist USSR?
 
IMHO, with Molotov in charge purges might not have happened. All opposition had been destroyed and everybody else had been scared shitless by Stalin's purges. Molotov was a ruthless individual caught up in Stalin's paranoid mania, but he wasn't a paranoid fuck himself AFAIK. We wouldn't see the Khrushchev Thaw nor the Secret Speech under him, leaving Stalin's personality cult undisputed and repression and censorship in place, except without purges of Stalinist proportions. With a continued focus on heavy industry, the relative prosperity reached under Khrushchev wouldn't have been achieved. As far as foreign policy goes, probably no Sino-Soviet Split.
 
The new round of purges is merely to remove any allies of Khrushchev and consolidate Molotov's absolute power over the USSR as opposed to a case of Molotov going "wreckers everywhere".
 
The survivors were pretty united in their desire to rule by committee after Stalin's tenure. It was far too dangerous for anyone to let anyone else become that powerful. So, another GenSec obtaining near absolute power like Stalin is highly, highly unlikely. Second, in the Soviet system, it took at least a few years to consolidate power such that you could do anything like this. Khrushchev waited 3 years before criticizing Stalin. Brezhnev didnt get rid of his opponents until the early 70s. Speaking of Brezhnev, he was basically a Stalinist minus the purges and and mass starvation. So there was a Stalinist for a good part of the Cold War in power.
 
The Soviets will find it harder to use the soft power in the Third World, for one thing. The post-Stalin policy with respect to the Third World was more or less 'who is not against us is with us' (which sounds great in theory, but led to supporting all kinds of opportunistic dictators as long as they were not pro-US - not that it was the other way on the other side), but the Stalinist USSR required nothing less than stepping in line with all the whims of Moscow.
 
IMHO, with Molotov in charge purges might not have happened. All opposition had been destroyed and everybody else had been scared shitless by Stalin's purges. Molotov was a ruthless individual caught up in Stalin's paranoid mania, but he wasn't a paranoid fuck himself AFAIK. We wouldn't see the Khrushchev Thaw nor the Secret Speech under him, leaving Stalin's personality cult undisputed and repression and censorship in place, except without purges of Stalinist proportions. With a continued focus on heavy industry, the relative prosperity reached under Khrushchev wouldn't have been achieved. As far as foreign policy goes, probably no Sino-Soviet Split.

The Sino-Soviet Split will be just delayed but it's inevitable, as the chinese will want to be seen and considered at least as equalt to the URSS and anybody in Moscow will not accept this 'attack' to their leaderships of the communist movement.
 
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