The whole topic of Trotsky as Lenin's successor has been pretty much done to death here https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-trotsky-instead-of-stalin.498545/#post-21184735 But anyway on Trotsky and war, I'll quote an old post of mine:
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Really, "socialism in one country" has...
He beat Messinger by 17.2 points. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_New_York_City_mayoral_election He beat her in Queens, Brooklyn, and even Manhatttan, losing only in the Bronx. He beat her by 136,541 votes in OTL; he beat her by 34,382 votes on Staten Island. So wiithout SI, he would...
To recycle an old post of mine:
"Albert Eisele and others have contended that had their positions been reversed in 1964, Hubert Humphrey and Gene McCarthy would have found themselves in similarly reversed positions in 1968. McCarthy was one of the most likely choices for Lyndon Johnson's...
Stevenson took the unusual step of allowing the convention to choose his running mate beecause he had to gamble--Ike seemed almost unbeatable, so Stevenson had to do something to shake the race up. If Ike were not the candidate, Stevenson would have acted more conventionally, which almost...
No reason both Chiang and Mao couldn't be there. Chiang was of course officially recognized by Stalin (and everyone else) as president of China, Mao as head of a "fraternal party" would also be welcome as would Togliatii and Thorez. It is true that Mao was sometimes hot-headed (he wanted to...
There's a legal problem whether this can be done without the consent of New York City: https://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/05/nyregion/home-rule-factor-may-block-si-secession.html And remember, even after the 1994 elections, the Democrats easily dominated the Assembly...
This is incredibly unlikely. Zhukov listed his greatest accomplishment in life *not* any battle of the Great Patriotic War--but his role in the arrest of Beria!
Honestly, there has been a strange obsession with Zhukov in this forum. The idea that he wanted to seize power in a coup is unlikely...
See https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/smolensk-and-bryansk-are-ours-maximum-belarus.421882/#post-15243983
It is probably unrealstic, though, to expect the BSSR to expand any futher east than it had already done in 1924 and 1926 (in 1921 the eastern border of the BSSR was not far...
Soviet Belorussia was quite small before 1939. Much Belorussian territory was controlled by Poland and some arguably Belorussian territory had been given to the RSFSR. Moreover, part of the very point of establishing Birobidzhan in OTL was to get Soviet Jews away from Belarus and Ukraine where...
Johnson was too controversial in the South because he openly lived with an enslaved African American woman, insisted that their daughters be treated as white, ettc. "Openly" was of course the key here. "If Col. Johnson had the decency and decorum to seek to hide his ignominy from the world, we...
No, Van Buren never became an abolitionist, He was cautious about the annexation of Texas, fearing it might stir up sectional tensions, and this helped lead to his defeat for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1844. This in turn embittered him against the southerners and "doughfaces"...
To quote an old post of mine:
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IMO the real founder of the Democratic Party was not Andrew Jackson but Martin Van Buren.
Van Buren thought that the disappearance of the Federalists and Monroe's policy of "amalgamation"--adopting many old Federalist policies, appointing some ex-Federalists...
Adam Ulam wrote in Understanding the Cold War: A Historian's Personal Reflections, "One must agree with the hapless [August] conspirators on one thing: there was no earthly chance that the proposed new constitution could hold the country together. It was at once vague and too specific, vague in...
I don't think it will be democratic or even semi-democratic; as in the east Eurppean "peoples democracies" (and as in the PRC itself in the early and mid- 1950s) the minor parties will basically be auxiliaires to attract non-Communist support for a Communist-led government. What I do see is a...
Not for the Soviet Union. But he was actually a force for moderation vis-a-vis Mao; see Michael H. Sheng, *Battling Western Imperialism: Mao, Stalin, and the United States*
"Here , an old pattern in Mao - Stalin relations manifested itself again : Mao was more of a radical revolutionary...