Joseph Stalin, uninterrupted (1922-1960)

[Aznavour]

Rewatching the all-time classic Death of Stalin got me thinking, what if he had just lived a couple more years?

Perhaps an obvious immediate effect would be a purge. The Doctor’s Plot and the escalating persecution of the Jews in the USSR could have been a starting point, but there’s plenty of potential victims to go around. Zhukov seems obvious, but too popular. Beria could have followed Yagoda and Yezhov. Not sure about Molotov, Malenkov or Khrushchev.

Then there’s Korea and the Space Program. Would the war be pointlessly prolonged? Would Stalin keep Korolev and the rest building missiles without considering the idea of shooting dudes to space?

Of course there’s other Foreign Policy issues, like whether he’d support things like the Cuban Revolution or stick to his spheres of influence, or how the Soviet Economy would look like without Khrushchev’s Big Ideas.

 

[Creekmench]

Rewatching the all-time classic Death of Stalin got me thinking, what if he had just lived a couple more years?

Perhaps an obvious immediate effect would be a purge. The Doctor’s Plot and the escalating persecution of the Jews in the USSR could have been a starting point, but there’s plenty of potential victims to go around. Zhukov seems obvious, but too popular. Beria could have followed Yagoda and Yezhov. Not sure about Molotov, Malenkov or Khrushchev.

Then there’s Korea and the Space Program. Would the war be pointlessly prolonged? Would Stalin keep Korolev and the rest building missiles without considering the idea of shooting dudes to space?

Of course there’s other Foreign Policy issues, like whether he’d support things like the Cuban Revolution or stick to his spheres of influence, or how the Soviet Economy would look like without Khrushchev’s Big Ideas.

Yeah, Molotov and Mikoyan are dead because he criticized them in the last party congress of 1952, on foreign policy korea would be longer until POTUS threatens nukes. Malenkov may live to succeed Stalin. Cuba is a no-go because he is a cautious type, on the second great purge Beria's dead because historically purges start with the killing off the secret police guy and wind down with killing off the guy who replaced him. Not sure if it was going to be a second holocaust or literally deporting Soviet Jews to the JAO which would be bloody on both ends. I'm not apologizing but i haven't read the about the doctor's plot. More Russification will be done. No Hungary intervention bc the Warpac states would be dogmatically Stalinist until he died. No Virgin Lands or focus on consumer goods, and his plan to transform nature would still be done.

 

[Aznavour]

Other potential foreign policy ramifications:

-No Hungarian Revolution, not in 56 at least; Rakosi would remain in power.

-different development of the East German situation in 1953: Stalin would presumably order an earlier crackdown without concessions.

-different reactions to Suez in 56 and Syria in 57; in fact, it might take way longer for any sort of Soviet-Arab rapprochement, even if they’ve already turned on Israel and Zionism.

-Presumably no Sino-Soviet Schism for another few years.

-Castro, Nasser and others are more or less on their own.

-Probably no Sputnik Crisis.