How Long Could The Cold War Have Lasted?

It is called The Last War and is a story on this website: www.tboverse.us/HPCAFORUM/phpBB3/index.php
Access to the story is behind a membership wall. To join that site is rather difficult! They have a major fear of spammers after being hit strongly in recent years so are very picky in who they give membership to. They open it up for a short period then shut membership again. I got in one time but others have tried and failed to gain membership. the site has about 500 members (half of them with thousands of posts) but could easily have thousands of members otherwise.
The story contains a WW3 in 2005 with a surviving USSR. IIRC, the war itself is a few weeks old though the author has been writing it for several years - maybe an update a month, covering a few hours of war around different parts of the globe - and so it is an ongoing story.

Why only 10 years insect,

Do not know but did found this: What if the Soviet Union had not Collapsed?

If anything, I think it's a wonder that the USSR, and the other communist regimes in eastern Europe, lasted as long as they did. In order to make them last even longer, you're probably going to need two things to remain true:

1) The authoritarian structure needs to survive, and;
2) The economy still needs to be good (or at least decent).

I reckon authoritarianism needs to survive, because I don't think it's really possible for a semi-democratic communist regime to function in the long run: the people will just demand more and more democracy, and then vote in a non-communist government. As for the economy, I think most people living in an authoritarian society will, perhaps grudgingly, accept it as long as they're doing well economically; however, if they aren't, then they'll blame the system and come out into the streets in droves.

The People's Republic of China has survived by doing both of these two things - no doubt helped in large part by capitalistic economic reforms (it's hard for their citizens to complain when hundreds of millions of them have been pulled out of abject poverty). It is possible that some of the European communist regimes can survive for longer, by going down a similar "communo-capitalist" route. It's not necessarily the only option - there may be others - but I don't think it's really possible without at least some level of economic reform.

How easy would it be to get the USSR's population--most of whom have been made to believe for decades that communism was the Soviet Dream, and that their mainly reactionary opposition was the Devil in the flesh--to accept a fascistic leader, though?

Granted, I know that J. Stalin ruled the country with an iron (or more appropriately, steel) fist, but that was before he wound up denounced and society was liberalized by N. Khrushchev, at least to my knowledge.

Alright, I guess that clarifies things. While I can't speak too much on the other geopolitical implications of a longer-lasting Soviet Russia, why would US leadership at this time trend in a more libertarian-leaning direction ITTL? Maybe Ronald Reagan & Company will work to further distance themselves from authoritarianism by promoting more social liberties alongside their revival of fiscal conservatism?