No doubt this has been done to death, but I was curious and I wanted to ask.
How would the USSR develop after the death of Lenin, if it were Bukharin and not Stalin holding the reins? Bukharin strikes me as a much more reasonable type than the other Soviet leaders at the time (from what little I've read of him). Would the USSR have managed to industrialize up to at least OTL 1939 levels by.....well, 1939, and emerge triumphant at the end of *World War 2? Would the USSR have survived, or even prospered, up to the modern day?
*Assuming a roughly convergent war occurs.