AH Challenge: A female leader of a Communist country

Your challenge is to create a scenario where a Communist country chooses a woman to become the secretary-general of its party and therefore having the real power.

Bonus points if you get the USSR or the PRC to do this.
 
Jiang Qing (if the memoirs of Mao's doctor are to be believed, she did indeed believe she could succeed Mao and thus tried to get rid of Deng Xiaoping and Hua Guofeng, though everyone hated her and thus naturally she failed).

Then there is Elena Ceausescu of Romania - if we believe the words of the former Securitate general Pacepa (whose writings naturally are dubious as they say nothing of his involvement in the vile doings of the regime) she thought she was second-in-line to the throne.

Would it count if India under Indira Gandhi's reign decides to fully embrace Marxism?
 
If the communists win out in the Spanish Civil War, Dolores Ibárruri (known as La Pasionaria), who was historically secretary-general from 1944 to 1960, could eventually take over.
 
What about Margot Honecker, Erichs wife? She could have taken over after Erich retired.

Genosse Erich vill never retire. He vorks tirelessly for ze victory of Socialism till his death!

On a more serious note, no. The GDR was more a technocracy of social engineers and bureaucrats than a dynastic system, and Margot Honecker's credentials are simply too thin to convince anyone in that environment. Some ranking official would be promoted and the string-pulling will begin behind the scenes to see if he can make himself ruler or if he will become a puppet.
 

sprite

Donor
Monthly Donor
well, i'm sure you could wedge a female into the oldie musical chairs the ussr was playing in the early 80s.

i could see the ussr doing it as a propaganda coup, the leader wouldn't have any power

a longer lived lyudmila pavlichenko, aleksandra artyukhina or maybe valentina tereshkova.

i think it'd have to be the ussr (maybe gdr but i couldn't think of anyone, a commie angela merkel would be funny, but no very plausible :)
 
Romania's Ana Pauker served as foreign minister in the Communist government during the late 1940s, and was also the de facto leader of the Party. If she hadn't been purged in 1952 she could easily have ascended to its formal leadership.
 
Romania's Ana Pauker served as foreign minister in the Communist government during the late 1940s, and was also the de facto leader of the Party. If she hadn't been purged in 1952 she could easily have ascended to its formal leadership.

Darn it, you just beat me.

Yes, Ana Pauker is probably the most plausible althistorical candidate. She came very close to it OTL, and really she /should/ have taken the prize -- she was a "Muscovite", a Communist who'd spent the war years in Moscow, while rival Ghirghiu Dej was a local Communist less beholden to Stalin.

In every other Eastern European satellite state, the Muscovites who arrived in the baggage train of the Red Army pretty quickly outmaneuvered the local Communists who'd survived the war. Excluding Albania and Yugoslavia, Romania was the sole exception. Dej should have lost the power struggle; as it was, it took several years to resolve.

What seems to have killed Pauker is not that she was female, but that she was Jewish.


Doug M.
 
How about Svetlana Stalin succeeding her father in 1953? She could have built a political career during her father's reign and then succeeded him after his death, a path similar to that of Indira Ghandi who succeeded her father Nehru. Svetlana would also have made an ideal puppet leader for certain CC members who could run the country behind the scenes, using Svetlana as a figurehead leader. Svetlana led a sheltered and protected existence as a child and adoloescent, which made her somewhat naive and easy to manipulate. So it is not implausible to imagine her becoming integrated into some Machiavellian scheme.
 
Thanks to handwaving, the Spartakist uprising succeeds, Rosa Luxemburg is made secretary general of the Supreme Council of the German Council Republic.
Everyone rejoices.
 
"Thanks to handwaving, the Spartakist uprising succeeds, Rosa Luxemburg is made secretary general of the Supreme Council of the German Council Republic."

Until the Freikorps and the legions of Colonel General Hans von Seeckt storm the Reichskanzlei and Rosa Luxemburg is put up against the wall, along with the other Spartakist leaders.
 
Enver Hoxha's wife, Nexhmije Hoxha (what a mouthful) was the de jure leader of Albania from 1985, following his death. She was a fanatic 'Hoxhaist' (read: Maoism with a different a personality cult) and I dont think its much of a stretch that she might rally die-hards to gain real power, before the changing winds in the early 1990s see a violent overthrow. So a short reign but certainly possibly.
 
Enver Hoxha's wife, Nexhmije Hoxha (what a mouthful) was the de jure leader of Albania from 1985, following his death. She was a fanatic 'Hoxhaist' (read: Maoism with a different a personality cult) and I dont think its much of a stretch that she might rally die-hards to gain real power, before the changing winds in the early 1990s see a violent overthrow. So a short reign but certainly possibly.

So the challenge isn't any because there's an OTL example?
 
"Thanks to handwaving, the Spartakist uprising succeeds, Rosa Luxemburg is made secretary general of the Supreme Council of the German Council Republic."

Until the Freikorps and the legions of Colonel General Hans von Seeckt storm the Reichskanzlei and Rosa Luxemburg is put up against the wall, along with the other Spartakist leaders.
Handwaving, damnit! :mad:
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
Well, had Ruth Fischer taken a straight Stalinistic line and managed to survive both the NS and the Stalinist terror, she would have made a good candidate for general secretary of the east german SED (probably even KPD presidential candidate in 1925 and/or 1932).
 
Mao's wife and the Gang of Four is a good shot, but earlier Rosa Luxemburg is your gal. Now no way is Germany's revolt going to work, so look else where. Soviet Union seems out given a German, and a woman no less seeking power in a strange land. So we come to Hungary which could work if you get Bela Kun to accept her into his circle.

So just a rough idea...

Rosa Luxemburg after deciding that despite the conditions a revolt would not work given how quickly soldiers, and not people rallied to defend the nation after the sailor revolt, and the government reactions to revolution in November 1918, called for a movement to Russia to help her brothers create a Communist Utopia, despite critizing the October Revolution. So she and a 1/3 of the Spartacus League started their journey to Russia. Due to travel issues they had to go to the Black Sea nad then get a boat and go into Russia itself instea dof just a train through Poland.

They found themselves in Hungary around March 1919 and just in time for the Hungarian Soviet Republic to be formed. Quickly changing plans Rosa decided to stay in hungary and work with the Kun government. Kun accepted Rosa into his ranks for she was a good speaker, had a sharp mind, and he felt he could easily sway her to his thinking as a good propaganda tool. Rosa however quickly had a following with her calls for a moderate transition working to make the people happy as the government formed. When Kun discovered she had invited various of her German counterparts into the antion he was somewhat angry.

Rosa oversaw German and Hungarian communists build up the frame work of a government and more often then not publically disagree with what Kun said. In May Bela Kun wanted to invade southern Czechoslovakia and set up a new Soviet state, however Rosa forced him to take the matter to the Revolutionary Governing Council and demanded such war plans end. Kun refused and much to his shock found the council voting against his actions. His mobile police force "The Lenin Boys" did not follow his call to rid the nation of Rosa Luxemburg as they had been trained by ex-Germans, and much of the Red Guard had a German influence in it.

So by June 1919 Rosa Luxemburg was named the Chairman of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. By making treaties with Yugoslovia, and Czechoslovakia Rosa was able to ease the tension for the nation. This spread out to Poland, and the only nation against it was Romania which tried a direct invasion in September, but found it had struck too late and the Red Guard had almost five months of training under their belt, and many veterans willing to fight for the nation.

In 1920 Rosa arrested all former former political party members, and many former military leaders after failed anti-communist coup. Hungary was getting moderate aid from the Soviet Union and seemed to be safe in its position in Europe but the coup seeme dto frighten Rosa who did not see people agaisnt communism, but outside influences. So her own version of Red Terror came down on Hungary ending with mass arrests, forced labor on many of the state improvement projects she desired, and a few thousand murders. She died at the age of 54 in 1924 leaving the Hungarian Soviet Republic with a vacuum for leadership.
 
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