(POD: Stalin died in the Russian Civil War. Otherwise, know this TL will be… a bit jumpy in regards to chronology.)
"The USSR isn't going anywhere, and we know it. So why do we build more guns and bombs to fight it? Why do we waste our time and lives on it?" Leader at a Peace Rally, 1993.
The Soviet Union is a state of contradictions. It is head by a Communist Party, yet has many private enterprises. It is one of the world’s wealthiest countries, yet has sanctions placed upon it by the United States. It flaunts itself as anti-imperialist despite taking over much of mainland Europe during World War 2. Most of all, despite starting life as an international pariah, it has become a superpower, both economically and militarily.
But how did the USSR do it? How did a country that was mostly agrarian at first, had no allies, and was an international pariah transform itself into a superpower that dominated half of Europe and has one of the world’s highest GDPs? The short answers are two fold for its economics.
1. State Capitalism: The economic doctrine of the Communist Party since Lenin, it seeks to accelerate processes such as primitive accumulation, in order to properly enter the Socialist, and after it, Communist stage of development as seen by Marxism. Whether the party actually believes this, or it’s just propaganda, is mostly irrelevant, the economics themselves work quite well. While in theory radically socialist, in practice, the economic system is another mixed economy.*
2. Natural Resources: Russia is one of the only countries capable of autarky on Earth, and even when that was no longer needed, had massive resources with which to provide a foreign market with.
These two in combination gave it the economics necessary for it to succeed. However, its military successes were what would end up allowing it to survive in the long run by giving it, “breathing room.” After the USSR had finished in WW2, the territory they had gained, as well as the international instability caused by the war, insured that, “containment,” was never going to succeed, as the USSR had grown too large.
However, to delve deeper will require much more, and one for which interviews were collected to begin with. In the…
*(Yes, I know, it wasn’t that simple with Lenin, economically speaking, however he was still more blunt with that than Stalin, ironically enough.)
Note(This is not a Soviet victory TL. This is a Soviet survival TL, and the impacts on the world the USSR sticking around has, including onto ideologies like Neo-Liberalism.)