I don't even see why it would transform after Stalin died. It didn't in OTL, after all, and Kruschev was about as anti-Stalin as you could get.
I guess I'm mainly interested in when does the pot boil over. France left Syria OTL when it was exhausted in 1945; how much longer would it try to stay in the ATL?
It stayed in Vietnam until 1954 OTL in spite of a local resistance a lot more formidable than whatever the Syrians could have thrown at them, and there wasn't much of a settler population to worry about, as in Algeria: OTOH Vietnam produced quite a bit of wealth in tropical products before the war, and I don't know if they ever got enough out of Syria to just cover the expenses. Some, er, streamlining of the empire seems likely to occur before long even in the absence of WWII.
What of Egypt's unsteady monarchy?
Well, without WWII Farouk probably doesn't have to deal with the embarrassment of the British establishing tighter controls in 1941, but I suspect he wouldn't have lasted much longer than OTL in a world in which monarchies were becoming increasingly old-fashioned. The question is, if a revolutionary government overthrew the king, would the British bother to intervene as long as they initially promised to respect UK rights with respect to the canal? Even without WWII, India is going independent by the end of the 40's one way or another (indeed, some have argued that the tensions leading up to WWII delayed Indian independence) and after India goes, there is less of a pressing need to control the canal.
It's hard to say what the USSR's role in all this is after Stalin dies: I find Max's claim that Stalin sans WWII "kills the enthusiasm" and brings about the collapse of the USSR rather dubious: to use Valdemar's analogy, Mao's death (and there was a man with a reverse Midas touch: everything he touched after 1949 turned into shit) did not bring about the collapse of China. The mechanisms of tyranny are all in place at his death, and Kruschev and et al are sure as hell not going to let any inner doubts about the validity of the system prevent them from applying them vigorously to maintain control.
What I do think is that there would be a bigger anti-Stalin reaction after his death in a no WWII-situation: not a switch over to capitalism as occured in China, but a more thoroughgoing move to reform.Faeelin, Kruschev inherited a system which after all had beat the Nazis, added Eastern Europe to the communist empire, duplicated the atom bomb, and seen 1/5 of humanity join their side. It was rather less clear that a clean break was needed than in Mao's case: I expect Kruschev (if he still gets the job: Butterflies may well lead to receiving a bullet in his neck sometime before 1953) would still makes some soothing noises as to the times when Stalin was right, but would feel freer to make more radical changes to the system.
Of course, radical does not necessarly mean
useful or
effective. Well-meant but badly thought out reform might indeed bring about a collapse of the system such as occured in the USSR OTL in the 80's, but it would not occur because the USSR had "become a failed state" or because Stalin's toadies had given up on Communism.
The trouble is it's hard to see exactly what way it might go. Big Yugoslavia? (Tito era, I mean). Left-fascistic ala mega-Iraq? Economically more capitalist but loudly a champion of the colonized nations? (Hm. One wonders if a TL is possible in which an informal anti-colonial alliance exists between the US and the USSR: not gun-running, perhaps, but a propaganda offensive and free chicken dinners for whatever African or Middle Eastern or SE Asian revolutionary is in town).
Bruce