Let's not forget how NDCR treats the Soviet Union: Khrushchev holds power till 1967 (which since there's no Cuban Missile Crisis is somewhat justifiable), and when the Prague Spring breaks out he lets the Czech Republic go and join NATO (for some reason Slovakia splits with the Czech Republic and stays in the Warsaw Pact). This leads to a coup against Khrushchev, who gets replaced KGB chief Vladimir Semichastny. Semichastny then proceeds to fix the Sino-Soviet Split, makes the USSR Neo-Trotskyist, the converts to Christianity after a near-death experience and tries to take the USSR down from the inside. Later Alexander Solzhenitsyn joins the Politburo. At some point this government is overthrown by the hardliners, who start WWIII on very flimsy circumstances. Now obviously this isn't offensive like the treatment of Mandela was, but as a Soviet nerd it really got my goat because:
1. It's never explained why the Soviets don't intervene in the Prague Spring. Like, the TL literally says "Why Khrushchev hesitated to order the Red Army in to crush what was being called the Prague Spring is a question banded about by modern historians. No one can agree on an answer, and with the events that happened afterwards the question would never be solved." There Soviets have a multitude of reasons to invade, and very little reason not to. The Slovaks also have little reason to secede, as Slovakia was Dubcek's political base and was controlled by his allies.
2. Semichastny as leader is odd. Semichastny was KGB chairman, and going straight from the KGB to the post of General Secretary was unheard of (someone will say Andropov, but he became Second Secretary at the very end of the Brezhnev years). More importantly, there were much stronger candidates to lead the coup and become General Secretary, including: Leonid Brezhnev, Nikolai Podgorny, Mikhail Suslov (although he didn't want the General Secretary job he could still lead the coup), and Alexander Shelepin (who's also Semichastny's political mentor, and thus Semichastny would logically defer to him). Again, it's never explained why these figures didn't lead the coup. That said, compared to the rest of the events related to the Soviet Union in this TL this is a pretty minor point.
3. Fixing the Sino-Soviet Split wouldn't happen with Jiang Qing in charge. The whole idea rests on Jiang Qing betraying the Gang of Four, which is unlikely because that's her political base and she's built a reputation as a hardliner. Once again, it's never explained why Jiang Qing changes sides. Finally, one of the biggest causes of the Sino-Soviet Split was that the Chinese and Soviets were fighting over the leadership of the Communist world. Neither side is going to abandon that struggle, particularly when both sides are controlled by hardliners.
USSR becoming Neo-Trotskyist makes no sense. Trotsky's ideas were despised in the USSR, since he basically called the Soviet government illegitimate (and implementing his ideas would have meant radical changes that no one wanted to make). It's worth noting that not only was Trotsky never rehabilitated by the USSR, but his assassin was given a Hero of the Soviet Union award after his release in 1961 (funder Khrushchev). Also, the Trotskyism described in NDCR bears little relation to how Trotskyism is practiced. ITTL the Soviets adopt what is essentially the idea of Permanent Revolution, but Permanent Revolution is not all there is to Trotskyism (another major element is the opposition to the sort of bureaucracy that had evolved in the Soviet Union). At best political scientists and historians would say that an aggressive foreign policy bears some resemblance to Trotsky's idea of Permanent Revolution. But no one would call it Neo-Trotskyist, least of all the Soviets themselves.
5. Solzhenitsyn would never join the government of the Soviet Union even (as the TL says) to take it down from the inside. That would require keeping his mouth shut, and Solzhenitsyn was the kind of person who made his opinion known. The Politburo also doesn't have much reason to let Solzhenitsyn in. Even if we assume that the General Secretary has undergone a sea-change and become a radical reformer, the rest of the Politburo hasn't. They're not going to let an ex-Gulag inmate with no government experience, and who isn't even a member of the Party, become part of the Politburo. The whole situation has the same issue as Nelson Mandela working with apartheid did: it requires everyone involved to radically change their motivations and go against common sense.
There's a lot more I could get into, but you get the idea.
