An earlier post here put the re-occurring question as to what if Trotsky became the General Secretary instead of Stalin. Let's bring some new blood into these hypotheticals. Forget Trotsky. What if Bogdanov wasn't hounded out of both his leadership position and subsequently the party by Lenin (for example Lenin dies in 1909)? Would we see a more democratic and more science based Soviet society emerge after the revolution without the superstitious excesses of anti-intellectual careerists, without the heavy handed approach of the military-originating cadres, without the cult of personality and rabid censorship of forward thinking schools of thought and individuals? Would, in essence, the Soviet Union have been able to wield authoritarianism and militancy necessary for its survival without the crippling paranoia wasting away its best and brightest and giving way to cynical careerism?
The real big "if" I play with a lot is if Stalin and Budyonny didn't disobey orders during the Polish-Soviet war and open up holes in the Red Army's lines that stopped Tukhachevsky from capturing Warsaw, which would have brought a swift end to the conflict. With Soviet soldiers on the east borders of Germany during it's revolutionary period, things would have ended very differently for the international communist movement me thinks.
Yep, bafflingly so much history seems to hang on chance events.