The Longest Possible Cold War?

What the longest possible ideological conflict between the USA and USSR (and allies)?
And what are the PODs necessary for it?
 
The best route I believe is to avoid the Cuban Missile Crisis and prevent Khrushchev from losing face in Soviet politics. This may butterfly Khrushchev's removal from power, as well as the Brezhnev Stagnation and ultimately Gorbachev's ascension to power. If the Soviets play their cards right, the Cold War may continue to the present day.
 
What the longest possible ideological conflict between the USA and USSR (and allies)?
And what are the PODs necessary for it?

Maybe 1993-94 at the very latest, even if Brezhnev's regime gets butterflied and with no Cuban Crisis. The U.S.S.R. just wasn't going to be that long lasting after Stalin came to power.
 
I agree with Vizio. Add to that Khrushchev or his successor taking Chinese way to improve economy, better standard of living of the people, a little more opening to the world to gain new technologies (or get help inventing their own), better treatment of satelite states and encouraging them to follow the same route as far economy goes, etc. Also modernization of armed forces into more professional force, less quantity, more quality. I think it is cheaper.
 
but then again with Khrushchev going the chinese route you also might see changes in the political situation, in other words the cold war might actually might get less intense as otl
 
Yes, that is probably correct. The more reformist you make the USSR (with all the attendant economic reforms, contracting the military, and staying far, far away from military adventures such as Afghanistan), the raison d'etre for the Cold War continuing shrinks. And you might get a longer-lasting Soviet Union if it institutes Perestroika-like reforms earlier than OTL rather than bleeding itself in a continued confrontation with the West. Such a successfully reformist regime would probably be as different from what we associate as being the Soviet Union as we think of contemporary China compared to Maoist China.

A POD that allows for a longer Cold War would probably require that the West, for whatever reasons, is economically weaker than OTL.
 
but then again with Khrushchev going the chinese route you also might see changes in the political situation, in other words the cold war might actually might get less intense as otl

Well, if someone such as Alexei Kosygin were to be in charge, the USSR would take a more moderate and less hawkish foreign policy approach that is more accepting of liberal reforms in the WP but tensions with the West would still be going strong. You'd also see enough economic reforms to guarantee stability under a Kosygin regime without completely reforming into a market-based economy.
 
I think that having the USSR begin life larger might help.

I don't know if there's a logical way to have the USSR keep Russian imperial territory (Poland, Finland, Tuvan Republic, Moldova, Baltic states) but that would likely be a help. More so if they can grab any territory from Turkey/Germany/AH.

Nextly when Mongolia gets it's independence, having Inner Mongolia come with it would help seeing as it ended up as a Soviet puppet state.

With this larger USSR, Stalin's invasion of East Turkestan in the 30s might actually succeed in fully annexing the territory.

This of course leads to a smaller and less powerful PRC which can probably be twiddled to avoid the Sino-Soviet split.

IMHO, if this is possible, then barring some catastrophe, the USSR still stands to this day
 
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