Stalin fit and ready for Great Purge 2.0

Fenestella

Banned
Let's say Stalin's henchmen had nothing to do with the deterioration of his health

The Doctors' plot is the prelude to Great Purge 2.0 which Stalin is fit and ready for

Beria, Molotov, etc. are all targets

What happen next?
 
Let's give Stalin another ten to fifteen years...

- You avoid the Sino-Soviet split. International Communism remains monolithic.
- There's no 1956 Hungarian Crisis (no-one is that suicidal). This ironically keeps western Communist Parties as more of a going concern.
- If the Cuban Missile Crisis or something similar happens, it doesn't escalate. Stalin's foreign policy is more cautious than Khrushchev's.

At home, things are bleaker:

- The Gulags remain.
- Emphasis on industrial goods at the expense of consumer goods.
- New Purge likely takes out Molotov and Company, and potentially the likes of Khrushchev too.
 
Will they allow themselves to be sitting ducks?
Will the hunter become the hunted?
I'd think a living, healthy Stalin would be more or less politically invulnerable as the victor of the Great Patriotic War. I do wonder if the memory of Barbarossa would make a paranoid Stalin go lighter on the Army (to prevent weakening the Army in the face of possible Western aggression) or harsher (as the Red Army is an alternative heir to the legacy of the GPW).

As for long term effects, it depends partially on who lives and who dies.
 
Eastern European populations get ten more years of Stalinism, inculcating them with more of the fear and political apathy that characterized the USSR proper.
 
Will they allow themselves to be sitting ducks?
Will the hunter become the hunted?

the general suspicion is that Stalin wound up dead before Beria and Molotov because they didn't want to be sitting ducks.

In the scenario where Stalin lives longer they would have been purged before they had a chance to try to take out Stalin first.
 
- Emphasis on industrial goods at the expense of consumer goods.

This isn't beneficial for the average Ivan, but it will help the general Soviet economy a lot, since it was the concentration on consumer goods (since 1960/70) which was, besides the arms race, deadly for the Soviet industry.

- New Purge likely takes out Molotov and Company, and potentially the likes of Khrushchev too.

Maybe it will also take out the corrupt ones (like Brezhnev's gang), so this might expand the USSR's lifespan too. At the expanse of the normal Soviet Union citizen, naturally.
 
Stalin living another ten years means he's in charge until 1963.

1) The Korean War might last longer. Stalin's death allowed the parties to finally agree.

2) Yugoslavia might join NATO, and might even embrace reforms of Milovan Dilas and become more democratic socialist than Communist.

3) Soviets don't embrace penetration of the Third World. Stalin did not have a high opinion of the colonialist independence movement or Arab nationalism. Khruschev saw opportunities there.

4) Different Non-Aligned Movement if Mao's China is not involved. Unlikely that China would be represented in the 1955 Bandung Conference if there is no Sino-Soviet split.

5) Probably no 1954 Geneva Accords over Vietnam. Instead of setting up a situation for two provisional Vietnams and a referendum later, the US probably just supports the existing State of Vietnam and gives no recognition to a North Vietnam. War may not turn out any better, but it'll be a different dynamic.

6) Instead of the general rebellions in eastern Europe between 1953-1956 after Stalin's death, the pressure will continue to build up until there is time for a release. When Stalin does die, the Soviet leadership will have a lot more to contend with. This is likely to happen in China too. With Stalin in power, Mao is not likely to initiate a Hundred Flowers campaign. This may mean more built up resentment in the early 1960s. What post-Stalin politics would look like in both the USSR and PRC is very uncertain.
 
He's not healthy, but I have a TL where Stalin survives his stroke (link in my sig).

The problem with a healthy Stalin is that by the 1950s he suffered from a variety of aliments, including having suffered both a stroke and a heart attack, being an alcoholic, and atherosclerosis (a disease where the white blood cells line the artery walls, causing the walls to thicken and limited the flow of blood to the brain). The POD needed to change that is fairly early (maybe Stalin stops smoking in the 1930s for instance) that it would butterfly away the Doctors' Plot. In addition no atherosclerosis in particular would change Stalin's personality, since the mental issues associated with the disease seems to have made him more mercurial, forgetful (he sometimes talked about dead comrades like they were still alive), and irrational. Change that and you change a lot of things.
 
This isn't beneficial for the average Ivan, but it will help the general Soviet economy a lot, since it was the concentration on consumer goods (since 1960/70) which was, besides the arms race, deadly for the Soviet industry.


Maybe it will also take out the corrupt ones (like Brezhnev's gang), so this might expand the USSR's lifespan too. At the expanse of the normal Soviet Union citizen, naturally.

Much more likely that WWIII happens.

Building more guns while the rest of the population starts looking like North Koreans will be a hard sell to the 3rd World on the glories of State Marxism
 

Fenestella

Banned
the general suspicion is that Stalin wound up dead before Beria and Molotov because they didn't want to be sitting ducks.

In the scenario where Stalin lives longer they would have been purged before they had a chance to try to take out Stalin first.
I think the cabal saw what was coming and preempted Stalin; his seizure and death are too suspicious for me to believe otherwise.
 
Top