What does a Soviet Cold War Victory entail?

Every so often another thread discussing a Soviet victory in the Cold War comes up, and it quickly gets bogged down in arguments about whether it's ASB and practically every poster having a different idea of what it means, so I think it would be useful to have a discussion on what is a plausible victory scenario for the Soviets.

Personally, I think that the most plausible victory for the USSR would be a Finlandized Western/Central Europe (thus an end to NATO), conjoined with some sort of long-term economic collapse in the USA rendering it unable to oppose the Soviets outside of the Western Hemisphere/where ever it had bases that it hasn't been kicked out of, allowing the Soviet model to propagate freely.
 
Survival would probably be a start. There are a few discussions on the topic but the search function is against me. I'm sure some of our more learned members will have something for ya.
 
Like you said, the only way for Russia to 'win' is for everyone else to fail faster. Problem is that short of a really early POD for western Europe that leaves it balkanized and divided while the US somehow collapses, its going to be really hard for the west to fail faster than Russia.

The fundamental problem is that Russian communism in the 20th century was not sustainable, functional or truly competitive with mixed market economies like the US and Western Europe. Not in the long term anyway.

Another big problem is demographic. Russia is a medium sized country compared to the US when it comes to population. I know a lot of people are shocked to find this out in the US and wonder how Russia was ever able to compete with the US. Even though a small population can potentially have pretty huge economic power and potential if proper force multipliers are in place.

One way for Russia to win but not at the expense of everyone else is to have really massive economic reforms early on while still somehow keeping the spectre of evil that the west fears.
 
Khrushev maintains power for another decade or so. No Brezhnev.

Although it is possible that Khrushev's gambling might've resulted in a World War as well.
 
Another big problem is demographic. Russia is a medium sized country compared to the US when it comes to population. I know a lot of people are shocked to find this out in the US and wonder how Russia was ever able to compete with the US. Even though a small population can potentially have pretty huge economic power and potential if proper force multipliers are in place.
:confused: The Soviet Union seems to have had a larger population than the US during its entire existence.

Soviet Union:

January 1920 (Russia): 137,727,000
January 1926 : 148,656,000
January 1937: 162,500,000
January 1939: 168,524,000
June 1941: 196,716,000
January 1946: 170,548,000
January 1951: 182,321,000
January 1959: 209,035,000
January 1970: 241,720,000
1985: 272,000,000
July 1991: 293,047,571

United States:

1920 106,021,537
1930 123,202,624
1940 132,164,569
1950 151,325,798
1960 179,323,175
1970 203,211,926
1980 226,545,805
1990 248,709,873
 
Full acceptance by the West of permanent Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe. Something West Europeans and US liberals were pretty much willing to grant them in the late 1970's. "Peaceful Co-existence", meaning the west had to fully accept the Soviet system and hegemony as permanent and legitimate, while the USSR could support revolutionary groups seeking to overthrow or change the political and economic system of the west. Until the collapse of the USSR, the USSR had basically won the Cold War.
 
Until the collapse of the USSR, the USSR had basically won the Cold War.

You're kidding. By 1980, China was under a hostile regime which, although Communist, was no friend of Moscow; Afghanistan was about to be a sucking sound; and living standards were drifting further and further behind.
 
Something West Europeans and US liberals were pretty much willing to grant them in the late 1970's.


Given that it was Reagan who ended the grain embargo against the uSSR in the early 1980s, I'm not sure you can say this was a "liberal" trait.
 
Perhaps an Orwellian style Soviet advance to the Atlantic in Europe, following a disastrous WWII for the Allies?

With Europe entirely under Soviet control, the Soviet Union is able to slowly advance its sphere of influence into the Middle East and Africa, while the West (consisting mostly of the UK, USA) and friends are outpowered economically.

Eventually the USA and UK concede defeat in the Middle East and most of Africa, ending the cold war.
 

Robert

Banned
Timeline for Soviet Cold War Victory

1968 - Chicago Convention Riots result in Party choosing Eugene McCarthy as Democratic Presidential Nominee. Nixon and Wallace split non-peace vote, and McCarthy wins in november.

1969 - President McCarthy immediately withdraws all U.S. voices from South Vietnam. North Vietnam invades. Millions of refugees. Surviving Vietcong elements purged. Moon landing cancelled. Offer for joint U.S.-Soviet Lunar Expedition rejected.

1970 - Massive demobilization of U.S. armed forces. U.S. Navy carrier fleet reduced. Nimitz class carriers cancelled. NATO dissolved.

1971 - Soviet Union lands on the Moon. Former European NATO members join Warsaw Pact. Attempt to impeach President McCarthy result in "Military Coup", that is quickly put down leading to purge of "Right-Wing Elements" in U.S. Government.

1972 - Domestic Tranquility Act passed resulting in Government Censorship of "Provocative Views". President McCarthy wins in landslide election due to Republican opponent Ronald Reagan denied airtime under DTA.

1973 - U.S. economic and technical assistant to Soviet Union in "Partnership for Peace" Agreement. U.N. Peacekeeping Task Force armed with former U.S. Army weapons and led by Soviet Advisors, sent to all major world cities. Threat of Joint U.S.-Soviet nuclear attack for those against "Peace" discourage any resistance except from reactionary Chinese government, which enters a period of isolation.

1974- U.S. Constitution amended. Bill of Rights removed. Presidents allowed to run for unlimited number of terms. Right to a Job Provision used as a means for Government to sends those without a job to prison. Government is conveniently the source of all jobs under amended Constitution.

1976 - President McCarthy, who recognizes things have gone too far, runs for a third term, in order to "protect the people". Vice President section is left to the Democratic Party, and Tom Hayden is chosen. McCarthy wins with 99% of the vote.

1977 - Air Force One crashes on way to summit in Moscow with President McCarthy aboard. Witnesses who claim they saw Soviet fighter plane in area are taken in for "psychiatric care." President Hayden requests Soviet aide in "law enforcement and economic matters", which is happily given. Food and gas rationing begins.

1978 - U.S. and Soviet Union merge armed forces. Soviet officers placed in charge. U.S. soldiers sent to foreign locations. U.S. defenses taken over by UN forces under Soviet officers.

1979 - Reports of China preparing for war. United Nations army led by Soviet Union mobilizes. Nuclear explosions in Siberia near nuclear test range blamed on Chinese first strike. Soviet and Soviet controlled U.S. Nuclear missiles destroy Chinese cities and military forces. President Hayden commits suicide. U.S. Vice President Angela Davis sworn in.

1980 - Due to increased radiation and other conditions caused by, only Party members will be allowed to own motor vehicles. All other nations to be completely disarmed of all weapons to prevent war. One newspaper, and news broadcast, both called Truth, are created to prevent subversive and warlike thoughts from being encouraged. President Davis wins the election which is reported but not actual held.
 
In my view a Soviet Victory in the Cold War would consist of some kind of extension of Soviet influence and control into Western Europe and an American departure into renewed isolationism and relative disengagement from European affairs. The problem is that the easiest way to accomplish that may have prevented the cold war as we know it from happening. Something like a failed D Day followed by a Robert Taft Presidency. A tad simplistic, I know. But within a few years of the end of WWII I remain unaware of any point at which Western Germany France and other countries in Western Europe were likely to fall under the control of Soviet managed communist regimes, assuming American disengagement. But that might be my own ignorance talking. It should be mentioned that this discussion is largely a matter of definitions. Perhaps a Soviet victory would merely require American disengagement rather than an outright extension of the Soviet sphere. In which case you would only need some kind of return to isolationism in America after the Second World War.
 
1953: Reformers get Poland, Traditionalists get Hungary

The Central European Revolution of 1956 happens in Reverse, but with Poland going further, fighting harder, and Hungary joining in too.

This results in a reforming faction in the Political Committee, with the help of Zhukov, ousting those who would later become the "anti-party" group of our history.*1

The revolution rammifies into the USSR itself, reversing in many places the loss of working class power during the Great Patriotic War, and in some cases restoring the balance of forces of the early 1920s (particularly in Leningrad).

Western Europe goes nuts for the next 20 years—mainly as the PCF and PCI are now "off the hook" as far as their revolutionary factions go. France, Italy, Portugal, Spain in that order. The British ultra-left is larger than in the 1920s, more democratic than it had been since 1921, and forces the Labour Party left.

The influence of workers democracy in Europe means that the Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian movements have a lot more oversight over them—the gang of four is unlikely to hegemonise pissed off youth in China. These effects are largely positive given the influence of agronomists in Poland and Hungary in terms of new post-1956 humanist socialist ideology.

Workers control also ups productivity levels at plant level, and in comparison to the Soviet style societies in the 1960s and 1970s over system wide economies.

So it is a win by default sometime in the 1970s when the Central European Commonwealth offers to help mediate the political and economic crisis in the United Kingdom (probably also by simply supplying direct economic aid to the militant unions). The US's access to European markets and capital is so restricted that it can't sustain 1950s or 1960s rates of military expenditure and retreats towards a kind of isolationism combined with labour discipline through super inflation. (If this happens early enough, you might get Chile surviving).

yours,
Sam R.

*1 Chief improbable point—no PC is going to accept a Poland outside of Soviet control for defence purposes. On the otherhand, Gomułka might be willing to use the Polish military to achieve a costly stalemate, and such a stalemate could credibly cause a rethinking.
 
I think it would count as a victory, if the USA would retreat their troops from Western Europe and the Western Europe would be "finnlandisized". The USSR would use their power to demand more "financial and economic support" (practical some kind of tribut) by the european Nation and use it to stabilize the living standard. More important would be western technologie to modernisze the soviet oil-and gas-industrie.
Without Europe it would also difficult for the USA to project power to the Middle-East, so that the USSR would dominate this region to.

Here I must say, I don´t buy, that the USSR was doomed to fail in any case. Its not always the economy, stupid. I mean North-Korea and Cuba should have failed long ago, if the economy would be everything. So I think a neo-isolationist U.S. Goverment and/or a leftist/pacifist takeover in the UK and West-Germany in the 1980th, could lead to a soviet victory in the Cold War. Even if the party would then allow Gorbatschov to take over, he would never get free hand for a liberalisation.
 
I think it would count as a victory, if the USA would retreat their troops from Western Europe and the Western Europe would be "finnlandisized". The USSR would use their power to demand more "financial and economic support" (practical some kind of tribut) by the european Nation and use it to stabilize the living standard. More important would be western technologie to modernisze the soviet oil-and gas-industrie.
Without Europe it would also difficult for the USA to project power to the Middle-East, so that the USSR would dominate this region to.

Here I must say, I don´t buy, that the USSR was doomed to fail in any case. Its not always the economy, stupid. I mean North-Korea and Cuba should have failed long ago, if the economy would be everything. So I think a neo-isolationist U.S. Goverment and/or a leftist/pacifist takeover in the UK and West-Germany in the 1980th, could lead to a soviet victory in the Cold War. Even if the party would then allow Gorbatschov to take over, he would never get free hand for a liberalisation.

I don't think you even need that much.

Imaging a scenario where the US and UK are still allies, but Germany and France are neutral and engaged in selling high tech to the SU.

The US would lose a lot of credibility in this TL.


Or if Iran goes communist, or even a military dictatorship that leans that way. If the USSR were to get it's warm water port in the Fricking ME that would be a huge geopolitical problem for the West.
 
You're kidding. By 1980, China was under a hostile regime which, although Communist, was no friend of Moscow; Afghanistan was about to be a sucking sound; and living standards were drifting further and further behind.

In my mind, the Cold War was never about potential Soviet global domination and the West's (US, primarily) resistance to this. It was about the USSR holding on to what it seized in Eastern Europe and reaching the point where these gains were legitimized and considered irreversible by the West. The points at which the Soviet Union basically "won" the Cold War involve the Helsinki accords and NATO's (and West Germany's, especially)formal recognition of the DDR, thereby officially acknowledging the Iron Curtain and the division of Germany as legitimate and permanent.

That fact that this all unraveled for the USSR in the mid-late 1980's does not diminish the point that the USSR had basically achieved all that it really wanted during the Cold War. It was later US policy reacting to further real and imagined Soviet adventurism (not all of which was promoted by Reagan, BTW, Henry Jackson was influential in the change), that changed US policy from "containment" and resistance to one that attacked the tottering economic basis of the Soviet System by threats and the massive arms build up.
 
Like you said, the only way for Russia to 'win' is for everyone else to fail faster. Problem is that short of a really early POD for western Europe that leaves it balkanized and divided while the US somehow collapses, its going to be really hard for the west to fail faster than Russia.

The fundamental problem is that Russian communism in the 20th century was not sustainable, functional or truly competitive with mixed market economies like the US and Western Europe. Not in the long term anyway.
In many cases, yes. The Soviet system was dependent on growth, just as the American was - in such a competition, the Soviet Union loses pretty much by default due to having access to much less energy, resources and technology. However, there is a distinction that the Soviet Union could have at least theoretically transitioned to a steady-state economy. No such thing is possible for the capitalist countries, since capitalism is capital accumulation, or "growth" as the politically correct term goes. In the long-term, the Soviet Union would emerge a victor under these circumstances.
 
1953: Reformers get Poland, Traditionalists get Hungary

The Central European Revolution of 1956 happens in Reverse, but with Poland going further, fighting harder, and Hungary joining in too.

This results in a reforming faction in the Political Committee, with the help of Zhukov, ousting those who would later become the "anti-party" group of our history.*1

The revolution rammifies into the USSR itself, reversing in many places the loss of working class power during the Great Patriotic War, and in some cases restoring the balance of forces of the early 1920s (particularly in Leningrad).

Western Europe goes nuts for the next 20 years—mainly as the PCF and PCI are now "off the hook" as far as their revolutionary factions go. France, Italy, Portugal, Spain in that order. The British ultra-left is larger than in the 1920s, more democratic than it had been since 1921, and forces the Labour Party left.

The influence of workers democracy in Europe means that the Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian movements have a lot more oversight over them—the gang of four is unlikely to hegemonise pissed off youth in China. These effects are largely positive given the influence of agronomists in Poland and Hungary in terms of new post-1956 humanist socialist ideology.

Workers control also ups productivity levels at plant level, and in comparison to the Soviet style societies in the 1960s and 1970s over system wide economies.

So it is a win by default sometime in the 1970s when the Central European Commonwealth offers to help mediate the political and economic crisis in the United Kingdom (probably also by simply supplying direct economic aid to the militant unions). The US's access to European markets and capital is so restricted that it can't sustain 1950s or 1960s rates of military expenditure and retreats towards a kind of isolationism combined with labour discipline through super inflation. (If this happens early enough, you might get Chile surviving).

yours,
Sam R.

*1 Chief improbable point—no PC is going to accept a Poland outside of Soviet control for defence purposes. On the otherhand, Gomułka might be willing to use the Polish military to achieve a costly stalemate, and such a stalemate could credibly cause a rethinking.

This is a pretty interesting scenario here. The idea of chaotically unchained Leftist parties in Western Europe, along with a US that realizes that the only way to keep up its production is to credibly invest in African growth for fear of collapse is very intriguing to me.

It could just be my inexperience with the region's leftist politics as a whole, but I'm not quite sure how much Asian groups would be modelled after the new European/Soviet example, especially China. If anything, that would just hasten the Sino-Soviet split. Unless this is just postulating after Mao's death? And with the Soviet worker's democracy coming back into place, I think that would drive the Indian government even closer to them. Do you agree?
 
Sam R. said:
[Humanist socialist victory in 1956 in Central Europe snipped]

This is a pretty interesting scenario here. The idea of chaotically unchained Leftist parties in Western Europe, along with a US that realizes that the only way to keep up its production is to credibly invest in African growth for fear of collapse is very intriguing to me.

Well, the US would be progressively shut out of socialist markets, face competition from the Asian capitalist markets, etc. Not good for the US. One, Two, Many New Yorks in the 1970s.

It could just be my inexperience with the region's leftist politics as a whole, but I'm not quite sure how much Asian groups would be modelled after the new European/Soviet example, especially China.

There was a higher rate of information flow amongst and between the actually-existing socialist states' intellectuals than, say, with the West. Plus the Chinese Party in the mid 1950s still has a large number of party thinkers who are willing to defend their power, or to even bring workers to power. Feel free to imagine Red Guards analysing production via Imre Nagy's dry and constitutionalist _In Defence of the New Course_. Then again, feel free to imagine Zhou Enlai being forced into managing a new course by Party and Worker demand.

The kind of loose oversight regarding humanism, as a reaction to Stalin, would be significant. Vietnam, for instance, might rein in the French Educated genocides in the Kampuchean party before they start systematically murdering ethnic Viets. Then again, the Vietnamese Party might have questions asked of it about the distribution of power over rural reform in the South after the war is over, particularly if Czech or Hungarian journalists trained after 1956 are sticking their nose into the War, from the North.

If anything, that would just hasten the Sino-Soviet split. Unless this is just postulating after Mao's death?

Depends. Mao is going to have a hard time claiming this is reformism if there are people yelling about the Yan'an soviet, when they're electing workers' councils in Prague. Mao's historical retention of power faced challenges from the left and right historically, few of which were fully voiced. The biggest challenge he's likely to face is from below, particularly given that China went through a revolutionary wave within socialism in the 1960s.

And with the Soviet worker's democracy coming back into place, I think that would drive the Indian government even closer to them. Do you agree?

I lack sufficient (any) knowledge of the Stalinist & Maoist parties of India to be able to adequately comment. Additionally my ignorance of the Indian workers' movement is so great that I'm unwilling to speculate.

yours,
Sam R.
 
Perhaps an Orwellian style Soviet advance to the Atlantic in Europe, following a disastrous WWII for the Allies?

With Europe entirely under Soviet control, the Soviet Union is able to slowly advance its sphere of influence into the Middle East and Africa, while the West (consisting mostly of the UK, USA) and friends are outpowered economically.

Eventually the USA and UK concede defeat in the Middle East and most of Africa, ending the cold war.

I don't think that the Soviet Union could control all of Europe. Once they have rebuilt from WWII (20 years max) I imagine that they would try to reform like Hungary in 56 or Czechoslovakia in 68, except they would probably fight and very well win. The Soviets can then either become equal partners with Europe or have a 3 way Cold War.
 
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