A Russia without Stalin

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Dunno.
With Trotskyi there would have been moves towards collectivisation earlier, while with Bukharin there might be a chance NEP survives a bit longer.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Dunno.
With Trotskyi there would have been moves towards collectivisation earlier, while with Bukharin there might be a chance NEP survives a bit longer.
Again, I'd say we see both. The few years he's in power, Trotsky's going to try an push collectivization. It'll be much milder since, again, people are going to prove obstructionist for the sake of being obstructionist. A less-than-impressive collectivization campaign may very well be the excuse people need to boot the T-man out of power. Then Rykov and the Centrists introduce the NEP and things go better for the USSR.

Oh, and let me start defining the terminology I've been/will continue to use:

  • Leftists: Trotskyists (self-explanatory)
  • Centrists: Name says it all. Rykov-Tomsky-Bukharinist faction. Moderate, supports NEP, more open to semi-democratic governance (in the Politburo/State hierarchy), sympathetic towards both heavy industry and industrial goods, more conciliatory towards the wider world.
  • Rightists: Stalinists. In favor of hyper-centralization and hyper-bureaucracy and with a strong authoritarian streak. Favor crash industrialization in heavy industry. "Socialism in one Country," isolationist.
 
Stalin represented an apolitical (in the sense of not having a firm set of principles) power-seeking faction in the Soviet power structure. He was very good at pursuing his strategy of pitting the more policy-oriented Bolsheviks against each other while accumulating power in and around his hands, but the strategy was rather obvious. I'm guessing that if Stalin hadn't occupied that particular political niche someone else would have, though probably not as ruthlessly or successfully. The ruthless industrialization wasn't just Stalin's idea. It represented the preferred policy of a large faction of the party.
 
And why and how may I ask?


I think he means that while Kalinin had this "old and wise man" aspect going about him, he really didn't do much to save people from Stalin's Purges even thought he was aware of it all (I know that friends of his even sent him letters asking him to intervene).

Taken from Wikipedia ( yeah I know,so feel free to debunk it):

"Kalinin kept a low profile during the Great Purge of 1937. He was well aware of the repression; between 1937 and 1941 hundreds of people went to his dacha or sent petitions to him about asking help against the arrests.[7] Although he opposed the executions of personal friends like Avel Yenukidze, he remained submissive to Stalin, who under the pretext of protecting him had his apartment always watched by NKVD officers.[7]"


However, back to the topic, I think that without Stalin to purge to whole Red Army to hell, the USSR will definetly get a big boost during the Second World War. When Tukhachevsky was the military commander, the Red Army was very advanced (he was one of the first in the USSR to advocate the use of tanks) and indeed to be feared. With him alive during WW2, the Soviets definitely wont be caught off guard.

Also, I really wonder how the Polish Soviet war (the 1920 one) will roll out without Stalin. According to Tukhachevsky, the reason why the Soviets couldn't take Warsaw was because of Stalin refusing to send his troops to help out. Now I'm not exactly sure if this is real or simply nitpicking on Tukhachevsky's part but I really wonder if Stalin really had such a big impact on that.

What are your thoughts?
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
I think he means that while Kalinin had this "old and wise man" aspect going about him, he really didn't do much to save people from Stalin's Purges even thought he was aware of it all (I know that friends of his even sent him letters asking him to intervene).

Taken from Wikipedia ( yeah I know,so feel free to debunk it):

"Kalinin kept a low profile during the Great Purge of 1937. He was well aware of the repression; between 1937 and 1941 hundreds of people went to his dacha or sent petitions to him about asking help against the arrests.[7] Although he opposed the executions of personal friends like Avel Yenukidze, he remained submissive to Stalin, who under the pretext of protecting him had his apartment always watched by NKVD officers.[7]"
Well, apart from all of this (which is more or less correct), he had few qualms about taking the belongings of those purged for himself, and he was prone to whoring with very young women (he preferred ballerinas in the 16-20 range), which was strongly frowned upon by Stalin and his courtiers. The only major exceptions tended to be the NKVD chiefs, but even they were despised for it.

However, back to the topic, I think that without Stalin to purge to whole Red Army to hell, the USSR will definetly get a big boost during the Second World War. When Tukhachevsky was the military commander, the Red Army was very advanced (he was one of the first in the USSR to advocate the use of tanks) and indeed to be feared. With him alive during WW2, the Soviets definitely wont be caught off guard.
Agreed. Tukhachevsky and Triandafillov's theory of deep operations would greatly help the Red Army, but not as much as avoiding the Purges would. Thankfully, in a no-Stalin scenario, they can have both! :D
Also, I really wonder how the Polish Soviet war (the 1920 one) will roll out without Stalin. According to Tukhachevsky, the reason why the Soviets couldn't take Warsaw was because of Stalin refusing to send his troops to help out. Now I'm not exactly sure if this is real or simply nitpicking on Tukhachevsky's part but I really wonder if Stalin really had such a big impact on that.
Here's a cross-post of mine from a thread dealing with a similar situation;
I'll sum this up as best I can:

Poland is reintegrated into the Soviet Union and becomes an SSR. There's a possibility that the Baltics will fall. We can expect rather nasty insurgencies in all of these territories that could lead to some rather heavy-handed Soviet tactics.

Germany will not go Red, nor will any other part of Europe. In fact, we will likely see Germany play the role Poland did in OTL, that is, being the buffer between Western Europe and the "Asiatic Bolshevist Hordes." Versailles will likely be allowed to fall apart as Germany increases its armed forces with tacit support from the British and maybe even the French if enough pressure is brought to bear on them.

Germany will probably become some sort of military dictatorship or, at the very least, a hyper-militarized state in alliance with basically every other Western European power. Czechoslovakia and Romania will probably go down similar paths. A war between a larger Soviet Union and Western Europe is almost unavoidable, IMO.
Others have suggested--and I agree with them--that an Entente-backed German expedition into Poland is possible to throw the Bolsheviks back. I wouldn't be surprised if the Reds are pushed back to the Vistula, which would become the de facto border between the USSR and Germany, with the USSR perhaps gobbling up East Prussia (very difficult, but by no means impossible).

Depending on who takes over after Lenin, this could turn into a Korea-like situation with an armistice but no actual peace treaty, or perhaps if the moderates take over we'd see gradual attempts at rapprochement with the West.
 
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