Nuclear winter was greatly exaggerated in the 1980's by Turco, Toon, Ackerman, Pollack, and Sagan. They predicted that temperatures would fall by 35C which is complete garbage. They wanted unilateral disarmament on our side so that the Soviets could hold us hostage.
Sagan even predicted in 1991 that a nuclear winter would be caused by the fires of Iraqi oil wells. He later admitted he was wrong.
Most of official liberal "scientists" now predict that global temperatures would fall by 7C to 8C in a limited nuclear war. However, they might just be manipulating the data to push their alarmist agenda.
But still, there are examples of volcanic eruptions which casued small scale nuclear winters.
The "Year Without a Summer" of 1816 was due to the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia the year before.
The eruption of Krakatau (Krakatoa) in 1883 caused global cooling.
The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 cooled global temperatures for a couple of years.
That is true. But we saw what happened when Little Boy detonated 1,900 feet over Hiroshima. A huge firestorm engulfed the city and burned 65% of it to the ground. The large amounts of soot released blocked sunlight and darkened the sky.
Again that is speculation based upon the unproven theories of global temperature declines following a thermonuclear exchange. It also presumes that the Soviets would not have taken steps to secure alternate sources of grain and foodstuffs, even if it meant raiding their Eastern European slave states for the benefit of Mother Russia.
We had plans to nuke the crap out of East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania. Storming those countries would not do the Soviets much good.
The Russians endured 20 million+ casualties in World War II, plus the wholesale murder and massacre of innocent citizens during Stalin's purges, foot shortages and the resulting death toll would not be anything unfamiliar, nor unexpected among the Russian population.
It is true. The Soviet Union lost 26.6 million people dead in WW2. That was 13.5% of their 1939 population. It took 15 years to recover from that. Soviet agricultural output from 1945 to 1960 was much lower than expected.
Today, the 30 largest cities in Russia hold about 35% of the Russian population. Let's say that 300 warheads were expended on these cities, 10 for each. 10 high-yield nuclear detonations on each city cause giant firestorms which incinerate the population.
The deaths from famine, drought and fallout would probably be even higher than the deaths from the nuclear war.
Russia would be crippled and who knows if it would even be possible to recover. Much worse than WW2.