A few Red Questions

So, after searching around a bit, I find concrete, NEARLY unbiased views on the Soviet Leadership hard to come by.

Basically I hear Stalin was the worst ever, but then there's always that one person saying he isn't bad, and that Trotsky/Lenin are overrated/just as bad...

Anyway, straight to my first question, would the USSR have been better off if Trotsky or Lenin had led instead of Stalin?

Second...
Was Gorbachev too little too late, or just one of the two?

Third...
Overall, if you could have made your Socialist Paradise exist in the USSR, who would run it and why?

Thanks for the time and answers everyone!
 

Kongzilla

Banned
Personally, Stalin was the only thing that kept the USSR from seriously falling apart. So he's good in my books.
 

katchen

Banned
Lenin knew when to retrench with his New Economic Plan--which would likely have continued indefinitely had Lenin lived longer. So given the number of USSR citizens who died because of Stalin's forced collectivizations/planned famines--especially in Ukraine--the USSR would definitely have been better off if Stalin had been caught and executed for his bank robberies back when he was plain old Joseph Dzugashvili. I have no idea how Kamenev or Zinoviev would have governed, so it's impossible to for me to say which of them might have been better for Russia.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Anyway, straight to my first question, would the USSR have been better off if Trotsky or Lenin had led instead of Stalin?

Trotsky, I think, would have been just about as bad as Stalin. Things might have been a bit better if Lenin had lived, but ultimately pretty rotten.

Was Gorbachev too little too late, or just one of the two?

The Soviet experiment was doomed by the mid-1980s. But then, it was also doomed by 1917, so it doesn't much matter.

Overall, if you could have made your Socialist Paradise exist in the USSR, who would run it and why?

This question would be better off in the Chat Forum. But if I had a Socialist Paradise I would immediately turn it over to Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. :cool:
 
With the NEP instead of collectivization, the famines don't happen. I don't know how long Lenin lasts, but if no Stalin there are not the purges in the 1930s and the Soviet military is better prepared to face the Germans.
 
1. I think Lenin would have done well. Trotsky not so sure, I dislike himpersonally but think he would have operated similar to Stalin with more of an Internationalist broadview.

2. Gorbachev was the prime cause of the fall of the USSR the Economy wasnt tht bad just not diverse or flexible enough with inefficiencies etc. He was a massively destructive force & festabilised a stable if slow economy.(the USSR could operate in Autarchy but his wrecking of infrastucture & logistics ensured that available resources, materials & food etc didnt get where it was supposed to, got delayed or redirected to corrupt hands or was left to rot. On top of which under his direction the Media & Propoganda arms of the USSR were handed to his affiliates & private lackies that then worked to attack the History & Foundations of the USSR & stir up strife.)

3. My favourite choice/utopian? Id have to think about that.
 
Trotsky, I think, would have been just about as bad as Stalin. Things might have been a bit better if Lenin had lived, but ultimately pretty rotten.

How is Trotsky just as bad as Stalin? I mean Trotsky was in the very least genuine and not a terrible monstrous sociopath willing to deliberately engineer famine to kill off his own people (he was ethnically Jewish Ukranian and spoke Ukranian in his youth).

The biggest problem I see for the soviet union in general though is the oft quoted fact they hadn't reached a level of development where a transition to marxism was feasible. They relied on capitalist nations to modernize and no matter who ruled them they would face this problem unless a revolution happened in a more modern country capable of giving them the advanced tools and machines they need to modernize.
 
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If I myself could make my own socialist paradise in Russia I'd probably hand it over to the American SLP and specifically Eugene V Debs as first president. Because frankly they where just better at things than the Bolsheviks.
 
Trotsky, I think, would have been just about as bad as Stalin. Things might have been a bit better if Lenin had lived, but ultimately pretty rotten.



The Soviet experiment was doomed by the mid-1980s. But then, it was also doomed by 1917, so it doesn't much matter.



This question would be better off in the Chat Forum. But if I had a Socialist Paradise I would immediately turn it over to Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. :cool:
1.) Trotsky wasn't even that likely to emerge as leader of the USSR, even in a scenario where Dzhugashvili got killed early. And if he somehow managed to do so, Soviet life would be even more militaristic, what with his idea of militarization of the unions and permanent revolution.

2.) No, the USSR was not pre-destined to failure, at least at the outset. In a scenario where a Red uprising in western Europe or America succeeds, the Soviets wouldn't have been nearly totally isolated from the world economy, which is one of the main reasons for their collapse IOTL. If, say, Germany had a revolution in 1919, the kinds of autarkic and ultimately unsuccessful policies which dominated Soviet planning would not emerge, due to the presence of a revolutionary beachhead in the industrialized west.

3.) ... And they'd subsequently get their asses kicked out of power faster than they can say the word privatize. :D
 
I always heard that the only reason Trotsky was still around was because Lenin liked him, even though the rest of the Bolsheviks hated him.

I've also always heard that if Imperial Russia couldn't reform Lenin was the best man to lead the newborn Revolution.

But hey, excuse my ignorance, it's something I've had limited contact with.
 
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