Had to do a little research on this, was unaware there was any Entente intervention in Murmansk until they went in somewhat later in support of the Whites. It seems like an act of opportunism on the British part, to secure Murmansk with the cooperation mainly of Red Finns. Lenin agreed to it at 1st but appears to have been skeptical from the start, probably believing (correctly) that the Entente would turn on the Reds as soon as the Germans were out of the picture, and throw their support to the Whites. I think most of the Finnish Reds wound up as Entente POW's...
The Socialist Fatherland is in Danger: WI no Brest-Litovsk Treaty
- Thread starter Julian
- Start date
Ludendorff had quite a lot of those. Probably why Kaiser Willy had enough sense to listen closer to Max Hoffman than to Ludendorff when it came to affairs in the East.
This here might be helpfull. It sums up some of the pro and anti-peace arguments, and paints a pretty dark picture of what would have happened, had there been no Brest-Litovsk esque treaty.
Actually they explicitly were there to fight the White Finns, German allies at the time, in case they made a break for Murmansk with the Germans. This was right after the Germans repudiated the armistice and started advancing again, in March. Trotsky approved the action without Lenin’s input after Murmansk wired Petrograd, and the local Soviet and military commanders worked out the local needs. The British and Americans were also deeply involved in trying to prevent Japan from being opportunistic in the Far East in early 1918, lest they piss off the Bolsheviks.
Entente policy in early 1918 was pretty ambivalent about who was running Russia as long as they stayed in the war. Their constant flip-flopping was more due to incompetence and confusion than intentional duplicity.
A thought: if the Bolsheviks kept Russia in the war on the side of the Entente, do you think if the British and the French would later support a Bolshevik bid to reconquer Finland and assert their rule in the Baltics, too?
On one hand, Red Russia would be their ally. On the other, it is also an explicitly revolutionary state, and certainly there would be many in Britain and France who would rather see a "cordon sanitaire" around the Bolsheviks, instead of them taking over all of the former Russian Empire, with the possibility that their expansion would not stop there after the Germans are beaten.
That would be practically the same thing, from a Finnish and Baltic POV. It would definitely encourage the *Soviet state to "take back" these areas if the Bolsheviks know that the western Entente powers would not oppose such a move in any concrete way.
The fear for the Entente was what contact with the Bolsheviks might do for their armies. There was no point securing the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia if they suddenly encountered Soviet-style uprisings in Glasgow and Paris. While you are correct in arguing the Entente wanted the Russians to go on fighting that didn't mean they wanted Bolshevik influence spreading west into Europe.
In OTL, they turned against the Reds once the Germans had collapsed - in the ATL, Trotsky's more aggressive stance might have won short-term support but no allied leader wanted a workers' army moving west through Poland into central Europe.
raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
They turned against the Reds well before the Germans collapsed, they turned against the Reds when the Reds peaced out with the Germans, released German PoWs, fought Czech Legionnaires, and other Russians took up arms against the Reds and the peace treaty.
BigBlueBox
Banned
During the OTL intervention in the Russian Civil War, French soldiers and sailors were mutinying and British dockworkers went on strike to prevent supplies from reaching Poland in the Polish-Soviet war. Forget about preventing domestic revolution, if Britain and France tried backstabbing the Bolsheviks in scenario in which the Bolsheviks kept fighting the Germans than they would cause a domestic revolution. Any attempt at preventing Bolsheviks from claiming all of Tsarist Russia's old territory or a desired chunk of Anatolia or East Galicia would be politically impossible. Out of all the nationalities in the Russian Empire seeking independence only the Poles have any sympathy from the west, and whether that sympathy is enough to matter is another question. Also, no Brest-Litovsk could mean Latvia remains pro-Bolshevik.
Yeah I think it’s fair to remember that the Entente only turned against the Bolsheviks after they effectively tried to throw their “allies” under the bus. Most saw the Bolsheviks as just another step on Russia’s road to modernization who would be naturally swept away like the radicals in 1790s France. The “internationalist” implication of their ideology was dismissed by most (Churchill excepted) as big talk that had no relevance in actual Bolshevik policymaking.
raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
Well let's not take it too far. There was contemporary worry, both by foreigners (especially more conservative ones) in the Entente, and Boleshevik rivals in Russia (including other Socialists) about Bolshevik-German potential collusion, potential chaos, the ill effects of defeatism, etc. But, the prioritization of the Entente, and Russian Democratic parties, was anti-German over anti-Bolshevik. And with any armistice, the priority of threats could change once again.
Well, there are three main strands of divergences which have to be considered, including their interplay:
1) The Bolsheviks keep on fighting and thus need the war-geared industry to keep on working
2) A much reduced civil war and possibly even reparations as dividends from 1919ff.
3) Trotsky favouring different economic policies than Lenin.
(3) has been discussed often: Trotsky favoured fast industrialisation and might never have even started the NEP. When food production and distribution would turn out to be a major problem, Trotsky is expected to push collectivisation earlier.
So far, so boring - but we have to combine this with (1) and (2) now.
(1) probably means reactivating the wartime dirigist administration inherited from the tsarist empire and sovietising it, at least for the remainder of the war. On the other hand, once the institution is established and running under communist control, then I don't see why one would create something like Gosplan from whole cloth when you already have an institution capable of doing pretty much the same thing. So, as far as industrial management is concerned, there's probably comparatively more personal continuity, which is not a bad thing. Then, there is the question of the tsarist debt and how to keep up the economic war effort. Trotsky was not exactly an able negotiator, so don't expect the maximum from him here (the maximum probably being international recognition and a serious haircut on the inherited debt plus new loans or even free materiel if only the Russians keep on fighting), but with industry tanking either way (it was collapsing all throughout 1917 already), Trotsky's war effort needs some foreign help, which has a lot of interesting implications and might mean that the nascent Soviet Union is not quite as economically isolated as it was IOTL.
(2) I don't think Trotsky would charge reparations from a socialist Germany, but if Germany develops roughly along OTL lines, the Soviets might want and get their share of reparations. Combined with much less civil war and more continuity in industrial management, this might mean that the food crisis which IOTL caused Lenin to turn to NEP and which might turn Trotsky to early collectivisation does not yet hit in 1920 or 1921.
So it is not exactly a given that Trotsky at the helm means early collectivisation, full stop, end of discussion. In this scenario, things might go differently.
The problem of very probable industrial mismanagement and a dawning scissors crisis can still come up, but when? That's not set in stone. Also, if there is more extrenal trade, then even a mismanaged industry might mean peasants who now have land could possibly sell and save for an American tractor... if there are no decent Russian ones around.
Trotsky's emphasis on fast industrialisation might mean that if the Soviet Union gets reparations, they go straight into railroad repair and industrial build-up. A five year plan already for reconstruction?
The industry won't work without workers, workers won't work without getting paid. Bolsheviks will need to reintroduce money as a universal means of exchange, which means the end of military communism and starting some kind of NEP.
No, not necessarily. Workers won't work without remuneration, unless forced at gunpoint or frightened into obedience, true. That could be classical money. Or other payment - stamps, rationing etc. all worked in all kinds of non-socialist contexts, too, so why wouldn't it in Soviet Russia?
because,in the medium period, it will become basically like money...just with a different name
Well, yes. I think we agree that Revolutionary Communism didn't work. But that's not saying NEP was inevitable or Trotsky would have done it.
Because it didn't work IOTL. Workers were going on strikes, and in 1921 it was a general strike. Hence NEP.