What if Stalin lived longer?

Narnia

Banned
Apologies if this has been done before but I've always wondered what the world would be like if Joseph Stalin lived longer. It's perfectly possible that if he abstained from smoking and drinking and pursued a healthier lifestyle throughout his life. He could have lived up to 1960, but maybe 1970.

Would this make a difference in the Sino-soviet split? Would that have happened at all with Stalin living longer? Stalin may have even purged Khrushchev and had his successor be just as brutal as him.

Another point of interest would be the Cuban Missile Crisis? Would Stalin let it boil over into war or would he follow the same route as reality? Would the Americans back down?
 
He certainly needs better doctors to monitor his health. Granted, the purges had actually came back to bite him as the doctors that are left are incompetent.
 

Cook

Banned
Apologies if this has been done before but I've always wondered what the world would be like if Joseph Stalin lived longer. It's perfectly possible that if he abstained from smoking and drinking and pursued a healthier lifestyle throughout his life.
Asking Stalin to abstain from smoking, maybe; but asking him to not drink? Give up one of the few pleasures in life that the old Bolsheviks liked?

Would this make a difference in the Sino-soviet split?

Undoubtedly, Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin and change of Soviet domestic policy directly lead to the split with Mao. Keep Stalin and the split is delayed or prevented.

Stalin may have even purged Khrushchev and had his successor be just as brutal as him.
There a lot to support the theory that Stalin was going to purge the entire inner quorum and start afresh. And anyone who ever showed signs of being a strong candidate as his successor was immediately purges because they were the strongest threat to Stalin.

Another point of interest would be the Cuban Missile Crisis?
Shipping missiles to Cuba, America’s backyard, was an enormous gamble; one that Stalin would have been very unlikely to have undertaken because of its obvious need for an American response if they discovered it. Stalin’s foreign policy was really very cautious; his greatest gamble was the blockade of Berlin (which was in his backyard), and he was careful not to push that too far.

the purges had actually came back to bite him as the doctors that are left are incompetent.
Incompetent, or just having a conflict of interests? (Their patient’s and their own.) Stalin had a nasty habit of sending his doctors off to the gulags even after they’d successfully treated him, so it wasn’t exactly in the doc’s best interests for Stalin to recover.
 
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katchen

Banned
He would have exiled all of Russia's Jews to Birobizhan. Which would probably have done wonders for the settlement of Russia's Far East and led to an economic boom around Birobizhan and Khabarovsk long after Stalin died when China starts to boom.
 
World War III. Seriously, as he got older Stalin got *crazier*, pretty sure he was bent on a "final conflict" It's a damn bloody good thing he croaked when he did :eek:
 

Narnia

Banned
I don't think Stalin wanted WWIII. He was more into making his own country powerful and consolidating his rule within Soviet Russia. Even spreading Communism across the world was a secondary objective to him. He didn't even help Mao much until he was 100% sure he would take over China.
 
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