WI Stalin remarries in the 1930s

Stalin's 2nd wife died under debatable circumstances in 1932, some say she killed herself same say her husband did it for her. Generally this is seen as the point where Stalin loses all touch with reality.

What if, after her death and before the great terror Stalin remarries?
What potential stabilization would this have upon his personality if any?

Or is his mental state already too far gone to be interested in a third wife?
 
I would say Stalin was a man with no preoccupation with sex or a romantic life. If he did remarry, I don't think it would have much of an effect on him, nor would he have a desire to remarry.
 
I would have to disagree; Stalin did seem to have a great interest in both romance and sex. When Kato died, he was crushed. He also wrote what are very affectionate letters to Nadya whenever they were apart. Even after her suicide (I personally don't beleive he killed her), he was also devestated. In the years that followed, he had affairs (or at least rumored affairs) with many of of the women surrounding him. He likely didn't find a woman with whom he connected (or whose husband he could not yet get rid of.)

Maybe he found the sex meaningless in a sociopathic kind of way, but he was not incapable of affection as a sociopath would be. He certainly adored his daughter Svetlana, at the very least. And he had a certain level of care for some of his childhood friends, whom he saved from arrest. We like to think of the 'bad guys' of history as great evil monsters, devoid of feelings, but that wasn't completely the truth in Stalin's case (even Hitler had asffection for his dogs, after all.)

I think that Nadya's suicide (and Kirov's assassination, whether or not he had anything to do with it), must have been events that seemed to dip Stalin over the edge of sanity enough to begin the Terror. Without these events, would it have happened? I think the challenge of managing a country as big as the Soviet Union as well as the Nazi threat was big enough to prompt a great purge of some kind, but it might have started later and would not have been as massive...at least that says maybe...
 
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