>Be the Bolsheviks
>Fight a brutal civil war with every major power intervening to stop you
>Win the Civil War
>Country is devastated
>Implement NEP
>Scissors crisis
>Lenin dies
>Elect Stalin
>Begin to massive industrialization and collectivization
>bad harvests and kulak resistance
>Trotsky becoming a pain in the ass and splitting the international left
>Trouble in the far east with Japanese imperialists
>Major power in central europe lets to power an austrian painter who's entire ideology is based on anti communism
>Industrialization and collectivization begins to pay off
>Trotskyites begin several plots within the party to commit treason and engage in terrorism
>Accelerate the 5 year plans and militarize the Union
>Germany remilitarizes the Rhineland
>Brits and Frenchies do nothing
>Poland and Germany make a pact
>Spanish Civil War begins
>Support Republicans
>Brits and Frenchies do nothing
>Japanese invade China
>Germans annex Austria
>Brits and Frenchies do nothing
>Propose anti fascist coalition against Germany
>Brit and France reject it
>Germans annex Sudetenland and Memel
>Brits sign an agreement with the Hitlerites
>Germans betray it and take the rest of Czechoslovakia
>Brits and French finally have enough
>Germans invade Poland
>Japanese invade Mongolia
>Decide to bide for time and limit German influence in East Europe by signing temporary non-aggression pact with the krauts
>BTFO Japs at Khalkin Gol
>Move in to liberate Western Ukraine and Belarus
>build up and prepare for war
>move borders west
>Icepick Trotsky but the damage is done and the left is split just like Trotsky's skull
>Germans attack 2 years earlier then expected
>desperate defense
>total war
>finally win the war
>23 million dead
>devastated eastern europe + Soviet Union
>Cold war with the world's primary superpower undamaged by WW2
How under these conditions were the Soviets even expected to win a political, economic and scientific Cold War?
Alt
>communist parties win elections in France and Italy post WW2, take power and NATO and the EEC either never form or are very weak, USSR gets more advanced technologies from Western Europe to rebuild
>KPA crushes the Pusan pocket in 1950 before the US intervenes, DPRK unites Korea
>Greece goes red as a result of more support from the socialist states
>Turkey and Iran become socialist or left leaning republics due to the USSR offering help for development and independence
>warm water ports for the Soviet navy
>Soviet influence in Africa spreads much faster, Arab union forms, Israel is crushed
>As a result of a socialist France, all of Indochina goes socialist early on
>Salazar regime collapses earlier on due to greater Soviet support for insurgencies in Africa
>Spain is isolated, republicans rise up again and Red Army sends support, Francoism collapses
>Britain stuck in 1970s style turmoil, unions are much stronger, withdraws from most overseas colonies and cannot add much, left wing Labour government comes to power and quits NATO
>Benelux and West Germany are left alone in Europe
>USA engulfed in civil unrest, borderline insurgency in black majority areas
>USSR and China never split, can focus all their forces on undermining imperialism
>NATO collapses in the early 1990s, GDR unites Germany, USA collapses into a civil war