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Churchill and Stalin were, respectively, born in 1874 and 1878. Both had a rather stressful time of it 1939-1945, to put things mildly, which affected their respective health somewhat poorly.

Churchill suffered from a series of strokes leading to resigning his premiership in 1955, aged a rather remarkable 81, left politics in 1964, and died in 1965 aged ninety. Stalin also had a stroke shortly after the war, before dying of a major stroke aged 74 in 1953. It's eerie how well the strokes line up - both men had them aged 74, Churchill's was relatively minor, whilst Stalin's was fatal.

Given the similarities between the two men's WW2 (and even pre-war to some extent) experience, it wouldn't be unrealistic to exchange their postwar health - we assume here, of course, that Stalin's cerebral haemorrage wasn't lead-induced, as some claim. In this scenario, Churchill dies of his 1949 stroke in the south of France, aged 74, whilst Leader of the Opposition. Stalin's 1953 stroke proves to be a bump in the road; he suffers another stroke in 1957, and his health continues to deteriorate until his death in 1968.

What consequences do we see from a longer-living Stalin and a Churchill cut down just after the Second World War?
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