Stalin forced out by Kirov

So the POD is the Communist Party Congress of 1934. In our timeline Sergei Kirov received the least number of votes against him, while Stalin received the most in the Central Committee elections. A group of senior leaders was said to have approached him about replacing Stalin as leader but he declined, less than a year later Kirov was assassinated. So what if Kirov does take this opportunity and becomes Soviet leader? Does Stalin go quietly or does he rally supporters and divide the politburo into rival camps?

Assuming Kirov comes out on top of any leadership battle, what path does the Soviet Union take from then on? perhaps greater emphasis on civilian consumer production, and there are certainly no purges of the army. How does this affect WWII, would Kirov sign the Pact with Hitler as Stalin did, would his more sane leadership prevent the surprise attack or lead to a better defense with all the still living officers? This could go either way however, perhaps without the iron (or steel...) leadership of Stalin, the nation crumbles under the weight of the invasion.

A lot of questions obviously...I think the Red Army would have been the real winners here, surviving the 1930s intact. I'm sure he was by no means a saint, so this is not to suggest the USSR would become a Socialist utopia but I think the people in general would have had a better quality of life with a leader less bloodthirsty and paranoid.
 
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This is ASB in terms of the premise chiefly because Sergei Kirov was a fanatical, loyal Stalinist. His reaction would have been a Sherman statement and he would probably have been begging old Joe not to think he had anything to do with it and orchestrating show trials of the ones who did. Kirov was not one to challenge Stalin. There, however, was an actual and significant challenge to Stalin by an old Bolshevik during the Height of the Purges and it illustrates the real-world fate of such attempts: http://www.executedtoday.com/2012/01/10/1937-martemyan-ryutin-for-his-affair/

The crude measure of the difference between deposing Stalin and deposing Hitler is that there are dozens of known attempts on Hitler's life. Since the opening of Soviet archives in the 1990s there are still no known attempts on Stalin's. And it's not like Stalin went out of his way to earn love and kindness from a good-sized chunk of the Soviet population, either. And trying to out-intrigue a real-life version of Machiavelli's Prince in real life seldom ends well for the poor sorry suckers that try it.
 
So is there a Stalinist who could be the leader of the USSR without Stalin himself? There was a thread about a challenge with a Trotskyist taking over the USSR without Trotsky himself.
 
So is there a Stalinist who could be the leader of the USSR without Stalin himself? There was a thread about a challenge with a Trotskyist taking over the USSR without Trotsky himself.

Sure. If Joe bought it for some reason, say a car accident, then there would be plenty of Stalinists who would take over the place during the early '30s. They may or may not end up being more extreme than Stalin himself (probably less...they don't have Stalin's aura), but most of the political class by that point were Stalinists.
 
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