AH Challenge: Maoist Russia

Your challenge, should you accept it, is to have either Russia or the Soviet Union develop into a Maoist state, similar to China under the rule of Mao Zedong. The POD cannot be earlier than the death of Stalin, 5 March 1953. Anything after that is your playing field.

What can you come up with?
 
I can't, short of an ultra-uber-fuck up happening in Russia...

Russian communism (Leninism) was based around the industrial lower classes.
 
Can't see it, as least with an obvious POD.

Before 1953:

Russian peasantry wasn't quite Communist enough, many of them were SRs, and many of them were Right SRs (nationalistically-inclined socialists). Also, Maoism certainly got at least a little inspiration from the Russian experience, no?

Would "Maoism" even exist in a world where Russia went "Maoist" before China?

After '53:

Why would they consider China as a model? Russia was recovering from war devastation, trying to lead the world as a military and scientific powerhouse, and try to increase agricultural productivity (yes, ironic) to free people for industrial needs. Meanwhile, the population was growing steadily, so they didn't need to plan for measures to increase that growth any further.

So sending everyone to work in tiny farms seems like an unlikely step to take.

Meanwhile China cannot win a war with the USSR. So how can it happen?

I don't know.
 
I can't, short of an ultra-uber-fuck up happening in Russia...

Russian communism (Leninism) was based around the industrial lower classes.

No it wasn't.
Leninism was based around the Agricultural Working Classes being made Socialist without the experiance of Capitalism. That's the thing about the soviet union, it is seen by Marxists as an artificial 'Dictatorship of the Proleteriat' because Lenin organised the skipping of a phase of the Industrial Revolution. It also made use of Propaganda and The Party.

Maoism isn't particularly different only it's change of the party from a Ruling Class to a Bureaucracy that was encouraged to be constantly challanged by those below them, this is the 'Cultural Revolution' or the 'Constant Revolution'. It was basically abandoned after Mao.
The only difference between the two then is to have the Communist Party in Russia be constantly challenged lack that in China during the Cultural Revolution. How you do this is quite difficult, the Chinese situation was completely dependant on Mao, and would require a Russian man at the top who wants to emulate the cultural revolution to do so.
However, the Cultural Revolution was completely disruptive, so why anyone would want to emulate it is above me. Plus it would probably echo too much of Stalin's purges.
 
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