It could be as bad, that isn't the argument. The argument is that it will probably be better and most of that argument is that OTL was pretty close to "As bad as it can get."
White Victory in Russia; Horrible?
- Thread starter Johnharry
- Start date
It could be as bad, that isn't the argument. The argument is that it will probably be better and most of that argument is that OTL was pretty close to "As bad as it can get."
Both theories go too far . One says "Everything can be blamed on the individual dictator" and the other says "Nothing can be blamed on the individual dictator". In real life dictators give orders in the real world. They guide the over all policy but things get messy. So basically both have a point. A better dictator would result in a better Russia but it would hardly have been utopia regardless.
BTW, let's even assume that a White government would be relatively moderate at first. That would hardly prevent it from giving way to a more extreme right-wing government in the future. (The moderate Louis XVIII was after all succeeded by the ultra-royalist Charles X.) The Great Depression is presumably still going to happen and in Russia as in other countries it could lead to the rise of a radical right as well as left. To quote an old post of mine:
1930 Duma election, though (as usual) manipulated, reveals a backlash against the conservatives who have ruled Russia since the Bolsheviks were defeated in 1919. Major gains for Adolf Gitlerov and his "National Socialist Union of Russian People." Gitlerov accuses Denikin of "Jewish-Masonic" sympathies. "Why has Russia failed to gain anything from its victories over the Germans and the Bolsheviks? Why are so many people unemployed? Who is to blame? Read the Protocols!"
1930 Duma election, though (as usual) manipulated, reveals a backlash against the conservatives who have ruled Russia since the Bolsheviks were defeated in 1919. Major gains for Adolf Gitlerov and his "National Socialist Union of Russian People." Gitlerov accuses Denikin of "Jewish-Masonic" sympathies. "Why has Russia failed to gain anything from its victories over the Germans and the Bolsheviks? Why are so many people unemployed? Who is to blame? Read the Protocols!"
I'm seeing a decent number of posts stating that there's physically no way it could be as bad as Stalinist Russia. Yes, the Whites would probably be better than the Reds under Stalin. But it's not particularly unlikely that they're nearly or just as bad in my opinion.
What's the point of constantly reiterating this? Because it was very bad there's no conceivable way the Whites could match it? I think there are both decent and downright horrible outcomes to a White victory - some downright horrible paths would probably put them on par with the Stalinist Terror
Even if that was entirely true and White victory installed a "White Stalin" death rates are very unlikely to be as high as, while the Right were not nice people, they did not generally view the world through the narrow ideological prism that the Bolsheviks did and there simply weren't enough Russian jews and committed socialists/communists/anarchists/syndicalists to match 10 million deaths as per OTL.
OTL the Nazis were no more than two months away from bankruptcy before Hitler became Reichskanzler. The absence of any White Russian and German anti communist funding would have been critical.
marathag
Banned
Because without the largest country on the planet being Communist, there no International. Comintern doesn't exist
How can the be a goal for World Communism?
just another failed Revolution after the Great War
The USSR won't be there as a step for communism being everywhere.
Instead, seen as another failed movement like 1848 and 1871. No sweet doses of Propaganda flying out fro Moscow on the wonders of Communism that many willing Leftists lapped up.
They wouldn't choose Communism.
So the Left will be very divided
I don't think revolutionary leftism will suddenly be extinguished because Leninist tactics failed in Russia - it will do more to discredit Leninism and probably boost the arguments of "spontaneity of the masses" and general strikes as methods of the class struggle. Left Communists/KAPD will probably be the leading radical left ideology in Germany and will almost certainly still exist and operate. The Orthodox Marxists will point out that Russia lacked a strong industrial working class and bourgeois development and was too agrarian to truly achieve a proletarian revolution and that will be concluded in their minds. Communism as an ideology was not entirely pinned on the success of Lenin. Those still interested ITTL in communist rhetoric will likely not be dissuaded because the RSFSR lost its revolution. There will probably be less centralization, but the KPD was extremely sectarian IOTL and other radical left groups were shunned because they didn't tow the Comintern line so probably no worse for left unity than OTL and perhaps even a tad bit better.
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The word pogrom is generally used to describe one-time incidents. It is something different from a systematic long-term extermination of the Final Solution.
More violent than Tsarism still does not have to imply violence on the level of Stalin.
Just as the Red victory required the taking of southern and eastern Russia.
Whatever a White Russia does in the country, it will not be engaging in things like wasteful (probably too delicate a word but I can't think of a better one right now) dekulakization. A drive to extract resources from tose who in OTL were called kulaks may exist, but without the communist ideological underpinnings there will be no drive to destroy them.
It is one thing to say that the USSR ended up reusing most bureaucrats. This I agree with. But it is another thing to say that the ideological drive to eliminate the undesireable elements associated with the capitalist order had no appreciable effect on the working of the bureaucracy. Besides depriving itself of useful individuals, the Soviet bureaucracy also spread itself thin by attempting to control aspects of life which the Whites would have left alone in the drive to introduce communism. Without having to try to conform with the ideological vision of how a communist economy should work, there would be more room for maneouver. I conclude that that a White Russia would have a more competent bureaucracy, facing less demanding tasks, with more agricultural resources to go around, during its own reforms.
BobTheBarbarian
Banned
1. Even if alternate Russia was militarily defeated by Germany (or at least bludgeoned to the point of being unable to conduct organized resistance), the consequences would not have been as bad as OTL. The Allies would have dominated the continent, Russia and Eastern Europe could have been rebuilt under the Marshall Plan, the famine of 1946-47 could have been mitigated or alleviated entirely, and communism (with associated horrors) would not have spread. All things considered Russian deaths alone from 1920-1950 might actually have been less, and with no Cold War to boot.
2. A few more months or years of European colonialism would have been infinitely preferable to the Iron Curtain in Europe and Red Dominoes in Asia.
3. Without the Cold War that threat goes down, no? Mutually assured destruction cannot exist without mutuality.
4. ... Is a viable conclusion, especially if one puts the Cold War in general on them.
5. The 'Soviet system' was never competitive outside its own propaganda. Thanks to that same 'system' Eastern Europe is now decades behind the West in many key economic indices; in some places conditions are closer to those in sub-Saharan Africa.
On the contrary, Pol Pot's ideology was as Marxist as it gets. That the Soviets and Chinese didn't get as far was because they realized how insane it would actually be to carry out Marx's theories to their logical conclusion.
To quote:
Bull🤬
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It’s also worth mentioning that Stalin persecuted the Jews too.
Saudi Arabia actually had pretty decent relations with Egypt, all things considered. Relations cooled after the ascension of Faisal in 1964 - but they warmed right back up by 1970., before the Saudi turn towards...whatever it is now. The religious stance of Saudi Arabia that we're so familiar with I think is more a dual reaction to the Grand Mosque Seizure and the Islamic Revolution in Iran, both of which took place in the same year.
1. How do you think the allies would defeat Germany if Russia lost? They either dont or use a lot of nukes. I also think that nazism was worse than communism and the only reason the latter has a higher bodicount is that it existed much longer.
2. My country was behind the Iron Courtain and yes to us it would have been much better if it didnt exist. But Im loath to exchange or even try to equate our freedom with the lives of Africans and other colonials.
3. Other countries did develope nukes as well. And I dont want to buy in to the idea that "The more dominant the USA is the better for the world" which this implies. Looking at the world after the soviets collapse is not too convincing an argument in favour of this.
4. Was it the soviets that forced the americans to support Osama in Afghanistan? No. That was an american decision. It has it pros and cons from USA view point. It contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union. It also resulted in the rise of Al Qaeda with the known results. I would also add that american interventions in the Middle East and support of Israel did a lot to make the USA the target of radical Islam. Neither was forced on them by Moscow.
5. The soviets industrialisation produced incredible results - at a horrible human price. But the result you cant deny. And I used the word: seemed competitive. But the point was that it created a much higher standard of living for the working class. In Europe before the war the lives of these people were incredibly bad. The soviets proving that a system can exists that provides them with a much better life was a direct challenge to the Capitalist states - and a threat as well. If they keep treating their workers as shit said workers might rise up seeing that there is an alternative in the Soviet Union. The result was that in the 50's and 60's the capitalist states did themselves drastically raise the living standard of the working class. Thus those had money they could spend and it turned out that it was a great situation for the economy. But as soon as it became evident that the socialist way was a failure (the challenge disappeared) the capitalist cut back on these and we are living in a world were social inequality is already at an incredible level and on the rise.
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True, true and the Old Bolsheviks. There would have been some overlap on the death lists of Stalin and "White Stalin" if the latter ever existed.