A World Divided

On the way to the Kremlin for a meeting to elect a successor to Konstantin Chernenko on March 11th, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev's driver suffers a heart attack, the car crashes into a wall and Gorbachev is killed. Therefore, he is not elected CPSU chairman, Perestroika and Glasnost do not occur and the Cold War continues.
==The Course of History ==
1954
Constantin Rozanoff did not encounter a plane crash.
1961
NASA Mariner 1 is successful. Gagarin became the first to orbit the Earth, though not into space.
1962
Pyotr Dolgov survived space jump
1965
Zond 2 successfully flew to Mars.
1985
March 11th: Mikhail Gorbachev dies on the way to a Politburo session in the Kremlin to elect a new leader of the CPSU; Grigory Romanov is elected as Secretary General.
1986
February 12th: On the CPSU Party Congress, Romanov tells the delegates that the USSR will not move back in Afghanistan and that NATO in Europe is a weak, disunified entity and no longer a threat; soon after he orders troops worth five divisions withdrawn from East Germany to relocate into Afghanistan and Central Asia.
March 12th: Following a massive campaigning from both the extreme right and left (those secretly supported by the Soviets), Spanish voters decide for leaving NATO only a few months after joining.
1989
March 5th: Romanov visits Beijing in an effort to rekindle cooling Soviet-Chinese relations. however to no avail.
August 12th: Given China's increasing anti-Soviet stance, the United States begins to back China economically and militarily.
1990
February 2nd: Iraq invades Kuwait and conquers the country in less than five hours. Both the Soviet Union and United States of America condemn the action and threaten Iraq with war unless Iraq withdraws by January 1st, 1991.
1991
January 1st: The Soviet Union and NATO declare war on Iraq. It ends with Iraqi defeat.
1992
Soviet Union began planning to send probes to explore outer solar system.
2001
9/11 attacks against the Soviet Union.