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What if after WWII, the Soviet leadership decides to simply demilitarize Eastern Europe, take reparations for the damage done by the Nazis and their allies, and then withdraw their armies. To make sure this sticks, they legitimize by treaty the right to intervene militarily should any attempts to remilitarize occur but do not impose Communist governments or base the Red Army there.

No Warsaw Pact, but between the damage done by the war and the assets taken back into the USSR, there's no way anything hostile to the USSR will be emerging within the next generation if not more.

No Stalin might be a good way to go about this, but Stalin taking a more "enlightened self-interest" approach might think that imposing Communism on Eastern Europe and garrisoning it will create enemies in the West and close by and be a needless drain of resources.
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