Twilight of the Red Tsar

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Here's an idea:

It's the 80s. For the last decade or two, small town America has watched in horror as the welfare state is rolled back, the towns get smaller while the cities get bigger, the poor get poorer and the rich get richer, everyone seems obsessed with sex and money, people have forgotten God, forgotten their communities under the alter of Randism, forgotten about the working man. Eventually, it comes to a point, in an era of a suffering working class, skyrocketing crime rates, legalised abortion, mixed with shocking levels of Godlessness in society, that the backlash to Objectivisim comes in both the economic AND cultural form.

The Religious Right take over the Democrats, preaching a Socially Christian-infused idea of Leftism (a New New Deal), praising the virtue of small town America against the socially liberal city-slickers who only care about money. This leads to the re-allignment of a Libertarian Republican Party (a favourite of New England and California) and Populist Democrat Party (popular with flyover counties).

Seems like the best way economically leftist ideas can come back without any taint of Communism or Syndicalism. A uniquely American solution to a uniquely American dilemma.

That seems quite likely.
 
Well there was the wee issue of the Russian civil war that hammered the final nails in the coffin of Russian liberalism.

Which was in part due to Lenin ignoring the election. He simply should have accepted it and worked with whoever he could in the new government.
 
Well there was the wee issue of the Russian civil war that hammered the final nails in the coffin of Russian liberalism.

Lenin drove many of the socialists and anarchists against him by suppressing democracy. He could've formed a grand coalition with other socialists against White counter-revolution.
 
But who would be the next Huey Long?

Nevertheless, if syndicalism becomes a major political and economic movement in America, the two major parties would be forced to accommodate it.

Which they likely would. Most likely the economy goes into a downtown, a bunch of reforms are passed, the economy recovers and life goes on.
 
I think a Second Civil War would be a more realistic possibility.

I think the most realistic possibility is that a number of reforms are passed. You make it sound like the Great Depression was the only depression the US went through. I doubt it would be as severe as the most economically important parts on the planet aren't in ruins and not everybody and his uncle is in debt to his eyebrows to Uncle Sam. You would most likely have a severe depression for 3 or 4 years and then the economy recovers. The Great Depression happened all of once in large part because WWI happened all of once.
 
Capitalism work sure, but first pure capitalism had never ever existed except in theory and while the Great Society greatly improved the welfare state, there were a safe net before but ITTL it has been cutted and so it will remain very little when (and i say when because boom and busts it's how a capitalist system work) the recession happen.
There will be a revolution? Probably not, unless we consider a drastically schift of the electorare, as things can be corrected and as said before when someone is face to face to the prospect of a new depression he try to do everything to stop it and ideology be damned; unfortunely the Great Society not being passed and even the new deal legislation being 'throw away' mean that the general economic and sanitary problem of the minority will be much more severe than OTL creating a much more tense social and political situation even in normal time and when a recession like OTL 2008 will hit things will become worse...and much more violents.
Better remember two things, that the Gilded age was not the most quiet social period and that people when hungry tend to be very irritable...and without program like SNAP there were a lot of hungry people

This is very sensible. Like I said elections would be held, reforms would be made and life would go on. The US , in TTL like in ours, almost certainly has the largest economy in the world. It is democratic republic that has made numerous adjustments over the years, it is very unlikely to go into an unstoppable death spiral.

Look at it this way, even in the Grapes of Wrath the poor Okies move to CA in a truck. It is fictional but the story was written in 1939, when the US was just coming out of the Great Depression and it was realistic enough that , even at the time, the Joads were considered poor by the general public.

There are many, many places in the World today that owning a truck by definition makes you rich. GD 2 , if it winds up like that, is going to be from a base even wealthier than that. In all probability a poor person in the US is probably still going to own a vehicle , a TV, and appliances or at least have access to a laundromat. So the odds of an out and out revolution is slim.
 
That must have been a very solemn event: disposing the symbols of a regime that promised paradise but led a nation down the road to hell.

Ironically, the CNS actually did Lenin a favor. Despite being a central figure in the Revolution, Lenin never wanted to be put on a pedestal and worshiped like a king.

To Lenin's ghost, it was a final screw you to the monsters that ruined his work.

Or rather further wrecking his work. The work was already wrecked by the time Stalin took power.
 
I think when people talk about the Eastern Front in World War II, they might emphasize not only the collusion between Soviets and Nazis, but also their many similarities:

* The violation of international covenants against invasion (Stalin invading Poland and Finland)
* Ethnic Cleansing (Stalin's persecution of Poles, Balts, Chechens, Tatars, Volga Germans, and Kalmyks)
* Murder of prisoners (Gulags and NKVD executions)
 
I think when people talk about the Eastern Front in World War II, they might emphasize not only the collusion between Soviets and Nazis, but also their many similarities:

* The violation of international covenants against invasion (Stalin invading Poland and Finland)
* Ethnic Cleansing (Stalin's persecution of Poles, Balts, Chechens, Tatars, Volga Germans, and Kalmyks)
* Murder of prisoners (Gulags and NKVD executions)

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin might have been published sooner.
 
I think when people talk about the Eastern Front in World War II, they might emphasize not only the collusion between Soviets and Nazis, but also their many similarities:

* The violation of international covenants against invasion (Stalin invading Poland and Finland)
* Ethnic Cleansing (Stalin's persecution of Poles, Balts, Chechens, Tatars, Volga Germans, and Kalmyks)
* Murder of prisoners (Gulags and NKVD executions)
Could you not gravebump, especially if the author is clearly on hiatus?

I keep thinking that there's an update and end up being disappointed.
 

CalBear

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@CalBear could you please just lock this thread. No one has said anything since January and ToRT is dead at this point. Just smite the tread already.
I think that threads are locked only if OP arks that, are necroed or otherwise violate forum rules.
You are correct.

Ironically, by asked for the thread to be locked, nine months after the last update, the thread is now necro'd.
 
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