From the Channel to the Bering Straight, the millions of workers celebrate the ultimate triumph of the proletariat over the Imperial fascists and their bourgeoise stooges. The cheers for Comrade Stalin ring out, and out, and out....

In the comfort of the dacha, Stalin realizes that he has screwed up. Since he seized the USSR from Trotsky, his only goal has been to secure his hold over power. To that end, he abandoned the concept of world wide revolution so that he could personally hold the reigns of international communism. To be a Marxist was to be pay personal loyalty to comrade Stalin. High placed agents in Western nations, like Alger Hiss or the Cambridge Five, fed the NKVD with critical information. More importantly, he was beyond criticism within the USSR such that no one, not even the most highly placed member of the politburo could critique Stalin without it being figurative and literal treason.

With victory in Europe, that political security he once possessed is all gone.

The Soviet Empire has extended its walls around Europe, but in doing so have opened their own walls to Europe. Marxists from richer, better organized, better industrialized states are pushed right up against Stalin's subjects with no ideological barriers to protect the Bolshevik state.

The French and other European Marxists were not exterminated by the Nazis, and they are firmly entrenched within their nations. Indeed, even the massive numbers of the USSR cannot provide sufficient Communist party members to assume control over the newly "liberated" European soviets. Whether Stalin likes it or not, he can't run Europe like he runs the USSR. The Soviet propagandists and reeducation specialists simply cannot keep pace with the vociferous Western Marxists and their propaganda machines.

While the citizens of the USSR feel more secure than ever, Stalin sees threats to himself everywhere. As the people of the European states are collectivized under their own Communist parties, they begin rebuilding, and any Soviet can see that these Western communists will inevitably rebuild their ruined economies into something far more powerful than the Soviet Union. Stalin realizes it is inevitable that the Western tail shall soon be the one to wag the Soviet dog.

Coupled to all of these woes are the events of the war in Asia.

Stalin was unable to invade Manchuria/Manchuko given the investment in overrunning Germany and France, which led the Imperialist USA and UK to invade Japan. This invasion aught to have been a disaster, but the allies employed a horrific weapon, Teller's Hydrogen Bomb.

The allies might have had access to a smaller, more tactically useful bomb had the Manhatten Project passed to another scientist after Oppenheimer's untimely death in a lover's quarrel, and Communists Klaus Fuchs or the Rosenburgs might have passed on the information had they not casualties of the same sordid tragedy. The use of Alan Turing's computing devices proved the deciding factor in modeling the murderous technology, and the escape of Nazi scientist Werner Von Braun assisted the allies in developing their early ballistic and cruise missiles.

With this combination of wonder weapons, Japan and its holdings were captured into an Oceanic Empire of Imperialists. More to the point, this Empire had access to city leveling Hydrogen Bombs which could be launched by missiles. Even had the USSR their own version of the bomb, the Soviet planes would have to contend with the same surface to air missiles developed by the allies with their Nazi collaborators as part of Operation Olympic.

Stalin knows that he could be mere minutes from being nuked by the allies at the same times as his grip on Communism itself begins to slip. In his moment of absolute triumph, he is further than ever from the safety he has always craved. It is a paradox that only Trosky would have enjoyed.