Man, I didn't see that coming: the USSR saved from violent collapse because 1) Malenkov becoming a born-again Christian and 2) Molotov not giving a fuck anymore.
The violent Soviet collapse was something of a cliche so I tried to come up with a halfway route:
Russia is absolutely worse off than OTL. They have far less land, have been absolutely ravaged by Stalinist destruction of the economy and have now surrendered the one real card they have left (their nuclear deterrent) for moral credibility. Their collapse was also more violent, though never breaking out into major destruction. At the same time, the state was almost too exhausted to even bother defend itself against an insurrection. It was quite like 1917 - Malenkov didn't so much seize power as find it lying in the gutter. It was a regime too tired to play Totalitarian trying to get away with Kim Jong-Il-tier fantasies - no one had the patience for it. The Communists were hated, but by the end, and much more importantly, they were no longer feared either.