Tooze hasn't written a book on the Soviet economy that I'm aware of,
He makes remarks about it throughout Wages of Destruction which make pretty clear what his views are.
Harrison talks about in "Account of War" how the Soviets were overheating their economy and Lend-Lease kept them going as they tried to get their industry back into action after the invasion.
Harrison attributes the stabilization of Soviet economy to victory at Stalingrad both in that book and elsewhere more then he does to lend-lease. Indeed, he notes in his article on the Soviet war economy in
The Soviet Union at War that stabilization of the Soviet economy was necessary to make effective use of lend-lease, not the other way around. He draws a direct comparison to US foreign aide to modern developing countries, much of which is similar in scale to lend-lease, and how it tends to get wasted because of those countries dysfunctional systems and hence has little impact on what their trying to alleviate. Just having the aid provided isn't enough, the aid also has to be
effectively utilized. That effort rests on the political-economic system of the receiver.
Note I'm not saying that the Soviets were out of fat in 1942,
Your words were, and I quote:
they had run out of the fat accumulated in the pre-war years,
This in a post about 1942.
Lend-Lease increased to fill in the holes in their economy.
Except the increase in lend-lease came after 1942, not during. Lend-lease actually
declined in mid-'42, as a result of the northern route being shut down.
Parts of it, the Donbass fall in late Autumn,
And Moscow was wrecked, Leningrad was put out of commission, and Kharkov-Orel was occupied. And only a portion of the defense industry in all these regions made it out.
Sure and it would have been worse, far worse without the roughly 800k tons of Lend-Lease food that arrived in October 1941-December 1942.
Whether it would be worse enough to cause a collapse you have not at all proved.
That's not counting all the other resources that were shipped, including raw materials, finished weapons, and industrial equipment.
None of which you have demonstrated to be enough
Famine and the death of the working class as well as Add to dictionary males does mean collapse is starting. The people that died IOTL were the old, very young without access to food, and the sickly. Famine did not bite hard enough to start biting into the worker and soldier base.
Wrong. There are reports of armaments plant workers starving to death at their canteens as late as 1943, something Harrisson talks about. Instances of soldiers dying of hunger in '42 also appear.
You have to fill in this thought more.
I did, with some editing.
Actually most historians have been using the Soviet propaganda line, because the Soviets were the only source on the Soviet economy.
These are historians writing in the 90s, 2000s, and 2010s with full access to Soviet archives. I've named them and you have used them in the past (and even in this thread) fully confident that they are not simply using the Soviet propaganda line. Trying to play "it's just Soviet propaganda card" isn't going to cut it.
There is no POD I can think of that has the US in the war and the Soviets surviving without Japanese entry that has Lend-Lease not happening.
Even with Japanese entry, the Soviets would still get their L-L. Overall throughput would fall, but not by 50%. The allies used Vladivostok so much because it was the safest route, as well as the closest to the American west coast. Had Vladivostok been closed they'd have delivered the cargo through the Indian ocean, or the northern route. Longer and more perilous but the allies would have a surfeit of transport. The most likely result is the US puts their shipping in through the northern route to keep it open, with the extra ships more then offsetting any losses. It would have been inconvenient and probably cost them a few more ships and sailors, but it would hardly be fatal to either lend-lease efforts or the Soviet Union.
Plus, if Lend-Lease in 1942 was relatively unimportant compared to 1943, then lend-lease via the Pacific route was even more so constituting only 1/3rd of shipments in 1942 compared to the roughly 1/2 in 1943-45.
Overall their lowest GDP was in 1942 as the Germans penetrated to their maximal extent into the USSR; industrial output was probably lower in 1941 in terms of weapons, but overall economic output was lowest in 1942.
GDP isn't what matters in the military contest. What matters is the industrial output of the defense industry.
As it was they skirted the edges of it, but there was not widespread famine;
Several million dead in three years is on a level comparable to the 1933-34 famines. It definitely is not "skirting the edges".