Stalin dies at least 2 days later than he did.

Stalin died a day before announcing his successor Pomorenko, he never had the oppertunity to as he died under suspicious circumstances without autopsy with claim of a stroke by the zinovievists/trotskyists/khurshevites and Pomorenko was consistently demoted until he became the soviet ambassador to Nepal.

What if stalin died 2 days later and announced that Pomorenko is his preferred successor which would sway the soviet congress and the party into electing him next. There were plans for a 1952 purge to get rid of khruschov his lot and some remaining trotskyites so thats how he lived.

So the year is 1953 and stalin has died; Pomorenko is now the Premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. What does his reign look like? (He lives until 1984)
 
fuck forgot to mention I call ponomarenko pomorenko cause thats how I read it first its my nickname for him like john major is john mcmajor to me because I read it like that at first
 
A lot bad for the URSS and the East block as Stalinist politics will continue for the long term benefit of nobody, in the immediate probably a series of purges of political adversaries and other 'dangerous' element, maybe the Sino-Soviet split it's delayed of some years. We will not see any Hungarian revolt in 1956 and this can have some repercussion over Suez and in general the communist economy will suffer
 
Ponomarenko was a moderately important politician, but hardly a likely successor to Stalin. Stalin didn't even put him in the Bureau of the Presidium (which was in effect the successor to the old Politburo, but with Molotov and Mikoyan excluded):

Bureau of the Presidium[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_Presidium_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union

Like a number of other comparatively young men who had been promoted by Stalin, Ponomarenko was demoted after Stalin's death, which may have given rise to rumors that Stalin was planning to name him as his successor as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, but I have seen no evidence that this was in fact the case.

There is, by the way, no evidence that Khrushchev was in danger in the last months of Stalin's rule. Mikoyan and Molotov, yes. Beria, too, given that the security organs were attacked for "lack of vigilance" in the Doctors' Plot (and "lack of vigilance" could easily be converted into allegations of actual complicity). And that business about "zinovievists/trotskyists/khurshevites" is nonsense. Khrushchev had shown some sympathy for the Trotsky opposition in 1923. He later confessed that to Stalin, who apparently was willing to forgive that in 1937 as a political mistake made in the distant past. https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/khrushchev-perishes-in-the-yezhovshchina-1937.390663/ It is of course always conceivable that Stalin would suddenly bring it up again in 1953, but there is no evidence that he did so or was about to do so.

FWIW, Ponamernko later claimed that he had expressed doubt about the guilt of the accused doctors and that Stalin had threatened him for that: https://books.google.com/books?id=an48DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA221

One thing that I do like about Ponamerenko: he was probably the biggest jazz fan in the Presidium. When he had been party chief in Belorussia, he made the State Jazz Orchestra of the Belorussian SSR the best jazz band in the USSR, with the great trumpet player Ady Rosner:



It's quite obvious why rumors circulated about Stalin being murdered but there is really nothing necessarily sinister about a 73 year old man with serious health problems having a fatal stroke.
 
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