WI: Stalin lives a longer life?

Stalin was beginning to increase the persecution of Soviet Jews right before he died OTL. Perhaps we would see the reintroduction of pogroms?
Stalin joins the ranks of infamous antisemites like Hitler. There goes any ties with Israel and even tarnishes the Soviets worldwide with the Holocaust being so fresh.
 
If Stalin does more purges then the next Leader could be weak and indecisive leading to an earlier collapse

Pretty new, tell me if I'm wrong
 
If Stalin does more purges then the next Leader could be weak and indecisive leading to an earlier collapse

Pretty new, tell me if I'm wrong

You might be right. Stalin surely would purge rest of old Bolscheviks and many rising Soviets politicians might be too killed. So it is possible that Stalin's successor is someone quiet new and inexperienced.
 
You might be right. Stalin surely would purge rest of old Bolscheviks and many rising Soviets politicians might be too killed. So it is possible that Stalin's successor is someone quiet new and inexperienced.

I think the most likely successor is someone whom Stalin would have purged had he lived five more years. That applies if Stalin lives to be a hundred.

So I don't think you get a complete newbie, but assuming we can get Stalin to, say, 1970, it isn't going to be Khrushchev, Malenkov, or even Brezhnev.
 
I think the most likely successor is someone whom Stalin would have purged had he lived five more years. That applies if Stalin lives to be a hundred.

So I don't think you get a complete newbie, but assuming we can get Stalin to, say, 1970, it isn't going to be Khrushchev, Malenkov, or even Brezhnev.

If Stalin would had lived even ten years longer, his successor is probably someone who is totally unknown in OTL.
 
yeah, Stalin will most probably purge most of the ambitious Soviet politicians and will orient more and more power to himself and once he dies the Soviet Union may collapse soon after because of lack of a good leadership
 
I wonder if the might be the only way to bring Beria into power.

Stalin launches a new Great Terror, using Beria as Ezhov, but before he can turn on Beria he dies, leaving Beria at the apex of his power.
 
I wonder if the might be the only way to bring Beria into power.

Stalin launches a new Great Terror, using Beria as Ezhov, but before he can turn on Beria he dies, leaving Beria at the apex of his power.

Problem was just that Beria hadn't any allies. Even if Stalin is able purge most of Beria's potential enemies but dies before is turning against him there would be enough enemies who are ready do all possible stop him.
 

RousseauX

Donor
I wonder if the might be the only way to bring Beria into power.

Stalin launches a new Great Terror, using Beria as Ezhov, but before he can turn on Beria he dies, leaving Beria at the apex of his power.
Beria was already on the chopping block in 1953, he had already hit the apex of his power during WWII and the last portion of the great purge in the 1930s

He would have used someone else, probably one of Beria's protege: one of the first to be purged would have being Beria
 
My history of the Soviet Union professor said Stalin was planning another Great Purge, so the postwar generation would fear the system as much as their elders. She’s convinced he would’ve escalated Korea into WWIII once Eisenhower was in office. If there’s no WWIII, biggest difference is the Cold War is focused on Europe and East Asia — Stalin saw the Third World as a bunch of backwards capitalist stooges. Oh, and Mao would follow Stalin to the hilt.
 
My history of the Soviet Union professor said Stalin was planning another Great Purge, so the postwar generation would fear the system as much as their elders. She’s convinced he would’ve escalated Korea into WWIII once Eisenhower was in office. If there’s no WWIII, biggest difference is the Cold War is focused on Europe and East Asia — Stalin saw the Third World as a bunch of backwards capitalist stooges. Oh, and Mao would follow Stalin to the hilt.

I don't think Stalin would escalate Korea. He surely knew about the massive disparity in nuclear weapons and he didn't want to rule an ash heap.
 

thorr97

Banned
Thon,

I don't think Stalin would escalate Korea. He surely knew about the massive disparity in nuclear weapons and he didn't want to rule an ash heap.

And there's the dilemma's horns.

If Stalin orders the North Koreans to accept a negotiated war's end then he'll be seen as having folded in the face of the West's "aggression." That will have huge implications for the Communist movements worldwide. It will have huge implications for Sino-Soviet relations as the Chinese poured huge numbers of their troops into that meatgrinder at Stalin's behest. A negotiated peace means all those lives - and all that risk - was for nothing.

If Stalin orders the war to continue then the pressure would mount for the US to do something truly decisive - as in making some Instant Sunshine™ take place over key targets in North Korea (at the least) and perhaps ones just over the border in China itself. The escalation spiral from that would be dangerous, yes, but it's one in which the Soviet's would lose an increasing amount the longer they let it run.

In OTL, the Soviets were able to avoid most of the damage that came with that negotiated end to the Korean war by essentially blaming it all on Stalin. Korea was "his" mistake and not the mistake of the Soviet Union nor of its new leaders.

In this ATL, I don't know which way Uncle Joe would go. Keeping the war going would risk those A-Bombs dropping. But Stalin might be betting that the West wouldn't have the stones to do that and that we'd blink first. That's a dangerous bet to be putting down.
 
Thon,



And there's the dilemma's horns.

If Stalin orders the North Koreans to accept a negotiated war's end then he'll be seen as having folded in the face of the West's "aggression." That will have huge implications for the Communist movements worldwide. It will have huge implications for Sino-Soviet relations as the Chinese poured huge numbers of their troops into that meatgrinder at Stalin's behest. A negotiated peace means all those lives - and all that risk - was for nothing.

If Stalin orders the war to continue then the pressure would mount for the US to do something truly decisive - as in making some Instant Sunshine™ take place over key targets in North Korea (at the least) and perhaps ones just over the border in China itself. The escalation spiral from that would be dangerous, yes, but it's one in which the Soviet's would lose an increasing amount the longer they let it run.

In OTL, the Soviets were able to avoid most of the damage that came with that negotiated end to the Korean war by essentially blaming it all on Stalin. Korea was "his" mistake and not the mistake of the Soviet Union nor of its new leaders.

In this ATL, I don't know which way Uncle Joe would go. Keeping the war going would risk those A-Bombs dropping. But Stalin might be betting that the West wouldn't have the stones to do that and that we'd blink first. That's a dangerous bet to be putting down.

I suspect the moment the first bombs drop he'd wash his hands of Korea and China.
 
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