What the would have happened if the USSR had won the Cold War?

The Soviet Union ceased to exist on December 25, 1991 when the then president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, resigned and the flag with the hammer and sickle was removed from the Kremlin.

Previously, the 1990s had seen the fall of the Berlin Wall, which certified the end of the so-called "real socialism", whose regimes dependent on Moscow fell one after another like dominoes. But what if things hadn't happened that way? What if the USSR had endured and even expanded its territorial power?

Published in 2007, 'The Gladiator', a novel by American writer Harry Turtledove (specialized in playing with fantasies based on alternative historical events) - presents a world in which the Soviet Union won the Cold War.

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In Harry Turtledove's fictional book, the United States (under President Kennedy's leadership) allows the USSR to place nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba and withdraws from Vietnam. Both events strengthened Soviet power and Marxist governments took power throughout Latin America.

With the USSR dominating Latin America and Asia, throughout the 80s and 90s, European countries fell under the influence of communism, starting with Italy and France.

The United States collapses before the siege of the communist countries and also converts to socialism in 'The Gladiator'.

In 'Red Army', a novel by Ralph Peters, the retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel turned author envisioned an invasion of West Germany by the forces of the Warsaw Pact (the military organization equivalent to NATO led by the Soviet Union).

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In reality, 'Red Army' does not go so far as to propose what a "Sovietized" world would be like, but instead proposes an exercise in military imagination: what would a ground offensive by the socialist bloc have been like if the Wall had been torn down from the other side?

If the USSR had triumphed, the socialist model would be predominant and even Superman (as seen in the comic 'Superman: Red Son') would carry the hammer and sickle on his chest.

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'Superman: Red Son' raised the possibility that that child from Krypton had fallen into the Soviet Union instead of the United States. The comic is the work of Mark Millar and was published in 2003, becoming an instant classic.

In any case, it is difficult to know what a socialist world like the USSR would be like since the Soviet Union itself, in the 1990s, began an opening and liberalization led by Gorbachev that changed the system. Would communism today be, for example, similar to the Chinese system that still exists?

If we look at China (and other countries like Vietnam), with 21st century communism there is a kind of state capitalism with a margin for freedom of enterprise and enrichment but with tight control by the Party. And without political freedoms, of course.

A 21st century under the rule of the Soviet Union as a great power, in reality, has has all the elements of an impossible dystopia. But you never know if history is about to turn out differently.