A Blunted Sickle - Thread II

It will be interesting to see whether the USSR is more, or less paranoid ITTL. On the one hand they haven’t endured the brunt of the most brutal war in history but on the other they haven’t proved their mettle and are surrounded on literally all sides by hostile states. With the possible exception of China but they are hardly on good terms either.
 
The USSR not losing 27 million people will certainly radically change ittl demographics. I would expect the USSR's borders to have around at least nearly twice the population of otl. Ww2 absolutely wrecked the ussr's fertility.
 

Driftless

Donor
The USSR not losing 27 million people will certainly radically change ittl demographics. I would expect the USSR's borders to have around at least nearly twice the population of otl. Ww2 absolutely wrecked the ussr's fertility.

With a larger population, less destruction of the Ukraine and Belarus, but the shaky OTL centralized agricultural planning, would the Soviets be food self-sufficient, or net importers?
 

marathag

Banned
With a larger population, less destruction of the Ukraine and Belarus, but the shaky OTL centralized agricultural planning, would the Soviets be food self-sufficient, or net importers?
Not with Lysenko running their Ag sector, they would still export, as they did during the man made famine of the '30s
 
With a larger population, less destruction of the Ukraine and Belarus, but the shaky OTL centralized agricultural planning, would the Soviets be food self-sufficient, or net importers?
It kinda depends. From 1938 to 1959 despite ww2 the USSR ran a net surplus but kruschevs bungling with his agricultural bungling allowed the user to become a net importer of some goods. So It depends on the ones in charge.
 
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I think the whole concept of world wars might not be commonplace in this timeline, with just the one example of the "Great War" and then this.

Unless, of course, the Soviets come west.
"The German Wars" perhaps. France v Germany will be seen as the core struggle of the first half of the 20th century.
 
I think I pointed this out somewhere above, but news publications like Life magazine were already in 1939-40 referring to the war as the "second World War," it already being clear that it was Germany's attempt at a rematch of 1914-18. This is well before the war expanded to include Japan, the US, the USSR, or even Italy.
 
I think the whole concept of world wars might not be commonplace in this timeline, with just the one example of the "Great War" and then this.

Unless, of course, the Soviets come west.
Hard to imagine the Soviets going west in TL: they didn't risk attacking Germany even while it was obviously losing in the west against the Anglo-French alliance, I don't think they would risk attacking a victorious alliance. Plus Japan is not occupied against the US, so is still a potential a threat.
 
1945 is a long way away. At the rate I'm writing at the moment, decades ;)


Highly unlikely. However, the worst case is going to be vaguely similar to the 2002 Gujarat riots rather than the horrors that were seen during partition and subsequently (notably in Bangladesh in 1971).

Lol! Indeed a lot can happen between 1942 and 1945 for sure. I look forward to what you have in store. Take your time though. I'm sure everyone here is fine waiting as long as your health comes first.
 
Hard to imagine the Soviets going west in TL: they didn't risk attacking Germany even while it was obviously losing in the west against the Anglo-French alliance, I don't think they would risk attacking a victorious alliance. Plus Japan is not occupied against the US, so is still a potential a threat.
They were planning to but were pre-empted by the Entente blitz across Germany.
 
Also, given that one of the things the Entente intended to do over the winter was to improve access to oil supplies for their troops, how quickly would the Entente have been able to move across Nazi Germany if they had been able to wait until March/April
 
It will be interesting to see whether the USSR is more, or less paranoid ITTL. On the one hand they haven’t endured the brunt of the most brutal war in history but on the other they haven’t proved their mettle and are surrounded on literally all sides by hostile states. With the possible exception of China but they are hardly on good terms either.
Nope, not literally. Soviet Relations with the Mongolian People's Republic are good and its relationship with Afghanistan is OK. Persia is iffy.
 
Nope, not literally. Soviet Relations with the Mongolian People's Republic are good and its relationship with Afghanistan is OK. Persia is iffy.

In the late 1930s Stalin also had fairly decent relations with the KMT in China because he viewed Japan as a potential enemy (nothing would have changed in this TL in that regard) and he offered no help to the CCP and delivered guns, artillery pieces, aircraft (with pilots/trainers) tanks and advisors.

The fact that Japan is still a potential adversary to both the USSR and the Entente actually still leaves scope for some cooperation or least an modus vivendi down the road.
 
It will be interesting to see whether the USSR is more, or less paranoid ITTL. On the one hand they haven’t endured the brunt of the most brutal war in history but on the other they haven’t proved their mettle and are surrounded on literally all sides by hostile states. With the possible exception of China but they are hardly on good terms either.
So difficult to imagine the USSR without the Great Patriotic War, both in terms of the enormous casualties it suffered, and the ideological importance the regime attached to victory. Now the official view point might focus on the wisdom of party in keeping the Soviet (and some newly Soviet) people out of the second great European slaughter, unlike that Tsar.

Maybe we get a re-match against Japan? Especially if the Japanese do go decide to roll the really poor dice they have and try for their Great Prosperity Zone. The USSR could kill a few birds with one stone: expand power in Asia while building some bridges with England and France.

I would think that after Stalin dies the Soviet leadership will end up something similar to what happened in OTL, just because everyone at the top was heartily sick of one-man rule and constantly being in terror for their lives, but the cast of characters might end up quite different. And for that matter, does Stalin live longer without the war - I am the farthest thing from a doctor but I would think war time stress would not help one's health.
 

marathag

Banned
Un le Joe was happily running another purge on the Red Air Force, that was ongoing as the Panzers crossed the Molotov Line.
No war? He would keep finding internal enemies for Beria to take care of.
Only the Great Patriotic War temporary diverted his attention from the traitors and wreckers hiding in the USSR.
 
With the lack of a Great Patriotic war, I am most curious of the effects on Ukraine. I am no expert but my understanding was that the Great Patriotic War was a great way of distracting from and allowing the state to quietly deal with those drawing attention to the Holodomor by accusing them of Nazi collaboration.

However here the Holodomor is still very much in the living memory and there is no easy way to get rid of those drawing attention to it.

Without the Great Patriotic war, what effects will the Holodomor have on the Ukrainian people and its relations to the Soviets. Could it be the cause for a push for independence earlier?
 
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