AH Question: Soviet Leaders Without World War II.

Assuming for whatever reason in the mid to late 1930's that a war dies not break out in Europe which later envelops the continent and later still most of the world. The precise POD does not matter; there simply is no World War II. Who are the leaders of the USSR after 1940, and why? Could Stalinism have endured without the Second World War? Who (or what group of people) would be running this alternate USSR by 1990?
 
If there was a prolonged period of peace, it seems likely that Stalin would have disposed of Beria early, which throws a spanner in the works - his place as spymaster being taken by someone we know relatively little about. Perhaps Viktor Semyonevich Abakumov?

Say Stalin still dies in 1953. Having been in power only a few years and with his rise dependent on Stalin, VSA (or whomever) does not attempt to swagger around, pick the new Party Chairman and puppetize him. He's going to be playing defensive to avoid being liquidated, but at the same time his liquidation won't be the priority that Beria's was. Kliment Voroshilov hasn't been embarassed by losing some battles and getting demoted to Cultural Affairs, so he's the obvious immediate candidate - but Kaganovich wants Khruschev, and Kaganovich has a lot of pull. The question becomes whether Malenkov, Molotov and VSA prefer to stick with Voroshilov or try what's behind door #2 (Khruschev. Without Beria, Malenkov is in a poor position to assume power immediately).

And I think it comes down to our unknown spymaster. Malenkov, Khruschev and Kaganovich are going to try and replace Voroshilov with Khruschev; whether they succeed or fail depends on which side VSA has chosen, I think.

Stalinism can absolutely survive the lack of WWII; worst case scenario, Stalin points to his crash programs in heavy industry having successfully deterred the capitalist-imperialists from invading.

Mikoyan and Molotov are not the power players they might have been. Mikoyan still sticks his neck out, relatively speaking, about the engineered famines and ethnic "relocations", so that he's percieved as too soft for the top job. Even if Molotov had a lot to do with preserving the peace as the Soviet Foreign Minister, he won't get the credit - putting together military alliances and negotiating peaces is unfortunately more glamorous work for a Foreign Minister than avoiding war altogether, so Molotov doesn't get his chance to shine. Unless Voroshilov rehabilitates him post-Stalin.

Bulganin is not accounted for here, but in my opinion Bulganin lacks initiative compared to some of these other chaps.
 
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Japhy

Banned
I think that without the War Stalin can survive in power, but I question if anyone else has much of a chance of surviving. Without the War, Stalin is free to keep on Purging so men like Beria and Khrushchev are bound to vanish, as it seems based on the 1930's and the last years of his reign Stalin seemed determined to keep his chief aides a constant batch of replacements, least anyone grow powerful enough to stop him. That is with the exception of Molotov.

So by the time he dies in 1953 we're a few rotations ahead of OTL with the actual batch of leaders who were there now dead, Gulag'd or dead. Perhaps thanks to the lack of more powerful opponents or the Doctors Plot Purge Molotov is still alive and in favor with Stalin, he can easily be the heir apparent. If he has fallen out of favor though, it can literally be anyone that we know only as a mid level figure in the Soviet Regime of the 1950s-1960s, its really anyones guess.
 
From what I gather, Stalin sought to push forward younger leaders for the Soviet governement in his latter days.

I think that without the War Stalin can survive in power, but I question if anyone else has much of a chance of surviving. Without the War, Stalin is free to keep on Purging so men like Beria and Khrushchev are bound to vanish, as it seems based on the 1930's and the last years of his reign Stalin seemed determined to keep his chief aides a constant batch of replacements, least anyone grow powerful enough to stop him. That is with the exception of Molotov.

Beria was on Stalin´s personal team so to state. Krushnev and kaganovich would likely be send a one way trip to Siberia, which would be far too kind for them.
 
The thing to remember here is that Stalin was still only General Secretary of the Party in 1940. A powerful position, yes, but still one more limited than he held later in his career. In 1940, Molotov was Premier.
 

Typo

Banned
The thing to remember here is that Stalin was still only General Secretary of the Party in 1940. A powerful position, yes, but still one more limited than he held later in his career. In 1940, Molotov was Premier.

In 1940 the GS was already the defacto leader of the Soviet Union, and has being since the purges at the latest, Molotov was clearly his subordinate.
 
Quite. Also, Stalin was easing up on the killin's by 1940: he had pretty much broken both the party and the army to the yoke by that time, and with no Hitlerite menace, there would be less incentive for forced labor and ultra-high-tempo industrialization: even without WWII, I see less in the way of mass murder in his later years, although there would probably still be a fairly steady tempo of people being cycled through the camps: unpredictable terror and death, after all, help make you seem more of a God.

True "high" Stalinism didn't outlive him OTL, after all: things eased up considerably under Kruschev, although the censorship tightened up again under Brezhnev IIRC. Kruschev's secret speech, the end of mass deportations and terror-famines and a greatly shrunken gulag population (to be replaced for dissidents by internal exile, harassment or "psychological care" under Brezhnev), etc. I'd expect more of his heritage to be dismantled after his death than OTL, really - deterring Imperialist threats which largely exist only as propaganda (is the atom bomb developed before 1953?) really isn't going to impress people that much.

I don't think the USSR collapses after his death - people are probably too scared to revolt for a while - but I can see a much more extensive effort to "reinvent" communism in the USSR. Think China after Mao, although I doubt the new leaderships' first impulse will be to restore capitalism. :)

Question: what happens in east Asia in this no-WW-II scenario? Do the Japanese still invade China?

Bruce
 
Quite. Also, Stalin was easing up on the killin's by 1940: he had pretty much broken both the party and the army to the yoke by that time, and with no Hitlerite menace, there would be less incentive for forced labor and ultra-high-tempo industrialization: even without WWII, I see less in the way of mass murder in his later years, although there would probably still be a fairly steady tempo of people being cycled through the camps: unpredictable terror and death, after all, help make you seem more of a God.
So things are slightly better for the average Soviet citizen, atleast briefly.
True "high" Stalinism didn't outlive him OTL, after all: things eased up considerably under Kruschev, although the censorship tightened up again under Brezhnev IIRC. Kruschev's secret speech, the end of mass deportations and terror-famines and a greatly shrunken gulag population (to be replaced for dissidents by internal exile, harassment or "psychological care" under Brezhnev), etc. I'd expect more of his heritage to be dismantled after his death than OTL, really - deterring Imperialist threats which largely exist only as propaganda (is the atom bomb developed before 1953?) really isn't going to impress people that much.

I don't think the USSR collapses after his death - people are probably too scared to revolt for a while - but I can see a much more extensive effort to "reinvent" communism in the USSR. Think China after Mao, although I doubt the new leaderships' first impulse will be to restore capitalism. :)

Question: what happens in east Asia in this no-WW-II scenario? Do the Japanese still invade China?

Bruce

Good question about the bomb. My thought there was that atomic programs start slou.wer but still commence because the Soviets make a few land grabs, and the U.S. wants to assure its own security, but Stalin still has his spies and gets the bomb too.

As for Asia, the war in China started in 1937. I suspect that it might not end until all of East Asia is Communist.

In 1940 the GS was already the defacto leader of the Soviet Union, and has being since the purges at the latest, Molotov was clearly his subordinate.

True, but I suspect without the war that Stalin will be slower to formally take on other positions if he does so at all.
 
Good question about the bomb. My thought there was that atomic programs start slou.wer but still commence because the Soviets make a few land grabs, and the U.S. wants to assure its own security, but Stalin still has his spies and gets the bomb too.

As for Asia, the war in China started in 1937. I suspect that it might not end until all of East Asia is Communist.

Hm. Is there ever a Japanese-Soviet war, or does the USSR just keep the China war "hot" with military supplies, secure refuges, and advisors until the last Japanese officers are helicoptered out of Peking?

OTL experience would seem to argue that at some point the Japanese leadership will be able to argue itself into believing that with their new anti-tank weapons and superior air force, they will be able to cut off the trans-Siberian, destroy Soviet forces in the east, and force the Soviets to stop aiding the Chinese. Who knows, perhaps we'll even get Vladivostok in the peace...(That, of course, would be the "Soviet land grab" scenario. :) )

On the other hand, perhaps the leadership turns on itself in another period of assassinations, and after the radicals are bloodily purged, the Yamamoto government faces the music and pulls out of China...

Not sure that the US would necessarily be the first to develop the bomb - in a no-WWI world, the Brits still have a lot of commitments to worry about, and OTL Tube Alloys is contemporaneous with the Manhattan project. Perhaps they develop the bomb as a side effect of trying to develop nuclear power for their navy (IIRC, building a nuclear reactor is fairly cheaper than building an atom bomb for the first time)

Bruce
 
Hm. Is there ever a Japanese-Soviet war, or does the USSR just keep the China war "hot" with military supplies, secure refuges, and advisors until the last Japanese officers are helicoptered out of Peking?

OTL experience would seem to argue that at some point the Japanese leadership will be able to argue itself into believing that with their new anti-tank weapons and superior air force, they will be able to cut off the trans-Siberian, destroy Soviet forces in the east, and force the Soviets to stop aiding the Chinese. Who knows, perhaps we'll even get Vladivostok in the peace...(That, of course, would be the "Soviet land grab" scenario. :) )

On the other hand, perhaps the leadership turns on itself in another period of assassinations, and after the radicals are bloodily purged, the Yamamoto government faces the music and pulls out of China...

Not sure that the US would necessarily be the first to develop the bomb - in a no-WWI world, the Brits still have a lot of commitments to worry about, and OTL Tube Alloys is contemporaneous with the Manhattan project. Perhaps they develop the bomb as a side effect of trying to develop nuclear power for their navy (IIRC, building a nuclear reactor is fairly cheaper than building an atom bomb for the first time)

Bruce

You make some very good points here. I had not considered most of them. My assumptions regarding Soviet expansionism mainly revolved around the Baltic region to secure better ports during the winter, and to settle revanchist aims with little external interference.
 
You make some very good points here. I had not considered most of them. My assumptions regarding Soviet expansionism mainly revolved around the Baltic region to secure better ports during the winter, and to settle revanchist aims with little external interference.

Latvia and Estonia at maximum: besides having to take a sharp left at Riga to get there, Lithuania has little in the way of a Baltic coast, and would give the USSR a land border with Germany and surround the Polish "tailfin", which might actually lead to a Polish-German alliance with a way for Germans to invade without marching through the Polish heartland.

Or perhaps instead a short sharp war with Poland to push the borders west to closer to the Curzon line: regains territories which can be argued belong together with their "ethnic brethren" in the Ukraine and Belorussia, some excuses about Polish opression of their minorities should be easy to work up (and there actually was some, if nowhere near the scale the Soviets were imposing) and nobody really likes the Polish dictatorship, so it might be possible to get away with it without creating new anti-Soviet combinations.

Bruce
 
For sure Stalinism will still survive without WWII but I could see Stalin purging more leaders that may succeed him. Molotov will have more favorable to succeed Stalin had WWII never happened. Beria and Khrushchev might be purged.
 
Still uncertain, and one must ask why they waited so long... :)

Bruce
I wouldn't call it a coincidence that Beria had a falling out with Stalin earlier that year, and he knew that Stalin was in close communication with some of his subordinates within the MVD.

Beria wasn't a fool. Beria himself had come to power by arresting the previous Narkom of Internal Affairs, Yezkhov. And Yezkhov before him had done the same for his predecessor, Yagoda.
 

Thande

Donor
Beria wasn't a fool. Beria himself had come to power by arresting the previous Narkom of Internal Affairs, Yezkhov. And Yezkhov before him had done the same for his predecessor, Yagoda.

It's Yezhov not Yezkhov isn't it? Mind you, I've seen nearly as many ways of transliterating his name as Gaddafi's.
 
Latvia and Estonia at maximum: besides having to take a sharp left at Riga to get there, Lithuania has little in the way of a Baltic coast, and would give the USSR a land border with Germany and surround the Polish "tailfin", which might actually lead to a Polish-German alliance with a way for Germans to invade without marching through the Polish heartland.

Or perhaps instead a short sharp war with Poland to push the borders west to closer to the Curzon line: regains territories which can be argued belong together with their "ethnic brethren" in the Ukraine and Belorussia, some excuses about Polish opression of their minorities should be easy to work up (and there actually was some, if nowhere near the scale the Soviets were imposing) and nobody really likes the Polish dictatorship, so it might be possible to get away with it without creating new anti-Soviet combinations.

Bruce

The latter scenario is what I had in mind because it would seem to allow for a subsequent Soviet conquest of the Baltic States, and maybe the Soviets offer Germany Memelland to stay out of the war.
 
For sure Stalinism will still survive without WWII but I could see Stalin purging more leaders that may succeed him. Molotov will have more favorable to succeed Stalin had WWII never happened. Beria and Khrushchev might be purged.

I'm thinking that Molotov stays on as Premier until 1946 at which point he semi-retires by succeeding Kalinin as Chairman of the Presidium.
 
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