AHC: Create A More Benevolent Soviet State

Sometime prior to or after Vladimir Lenin's death, have the Soviet state be "softened" by any means necessary.

Perquisites:

-Stalin cannot rise to power under any circumstances
-Trotsky cannot rise to power under any circumstances, either
-The Bolsheviks cannot stay allied with other parties, chiefly the Left SR Party

Reforming the Soviet state is okay, but Lenin cannot live longer to see his reforms take place.

Major figures in the Russian Revolution, save Lenin, can be killed off. Stalin, Trotsky, etc. are fair game.


Mainly, what I'm looking for is a less authoritarian Bolshevik Party-led regime set up in Russia post-civil war.

Try to make the Soviet state as "free" as possible, specifically as to prevent the rise of Stalin or any Stalin-like figure to power.

Have fun, comrades! :D
 
If you kill Stalin and Trotsky, what happens to the Soviet leadership doesn't collapse or implode upon itself. If this POD was earlier so that Stalin and Trosky don't gain as much power I could see it working, but who would lead the Red Army effectively during the Civil War? Stalin was just a secretary who you could easily butterfly away.
 
Stalin really wasn't that important. In fact, aside from Lenin, there was no real centrally important figures; the Bolsheviks for all their faults disdained personality regimes, and favored collective leadership. Indeed, that's how Stalin made himself topdog and outmanuevered Trotsky.

Trotsky was the charismatic figure with strong ties to the military. It was easy to fear that he'd become a Red Bonaparte. That's why so many sided with Stalin over Trotsky.

It's also why they had to be done away with in the Great Purge.
 
Brutal repression was a key component of the Bolshevik regime from the moment of it's seizure of power. Once the Chekists got underway there really was no way of halting the system. Especially when segments of society were viewed as class enemies that needed to be eliminated.
 
My knowledge of Bolshevik history is pretty sparse, but maybe a less brutal civil war? If they come to power largely peacefully, or at least without a total state of siege and a war effort necessitating "war communism" the institutional violent repression of any dissent might not develop as thoroughly as it did.
 
Somehow get Classical Liberals to win the Civil War? That might prevent any sort of Soviet state as we now it but if you can get post-Revolution Russia to be a free, capitalist, democratic state you can avoid all the horrors of Soviet history from the famines caused by collectivization on.
 
Somehow get Classical Liberals to win the Civil War? That might prevent any sort of Soviet state as we now it but if you can get post-Revolution Russia to be a free, capitalist, democratic state you can avoid all the horrors of Soviet history from the famines caused by collectivization on.

Kinda misses the point of the thread...

Bruce
 
Repression is a necessary consequence of an ideological revolution with positively eschatalogical ends: at some point the emperor will be found lacking clothes and an example must be made of the little boy. But the level is pretty variable: Stalin's level of enormities are uncessary to keep the ideological state afloat, although they might be necessary to keep the insane cannibal state he created ticking along (and it was notably failing to work by the later years of his reign. One reason Kruschev and those in agreement with him were ready to change things was that they were facing problems that could not be solved by throwing a few more Kulaks onto the fire). Less repressive? Sure. Able to easily transition to a more democratic system, without, like OTL, breaking up, economically hitting the skids, or bursting into flames and having all wheels fly off simultaneously? Trickier.

Bruce
 
Somehow get Classical Liberals to win the Civil War? That might prevent any sort of Soviet state as we now it but if you can get post-Revolution Russia to be a free, capitalist, democratic state you can avoid all the horrors of Soviet history from the famines caused by collectivization on.
The Jacobins were classical liberals, and that in no way prevented le grand terreur.
 
The Jacobins were classical liberals, and that in no way prevented le grand terreur.

To be fair, they were new at it, and hadn't quite cottoned onto the importance of confining that sort of thing to poor people and foreigners and the usefulness of a neutered nobility.


Bruce
 
Best way, while meeting the criteria of the thread, is to have the NEP actually take. It would be difficult without Lenin around to make sure it stayed and/or grew in power and scope, but it's the best shot of having a kinder, gentler Soviet Union early on.
 
Best way, while meeting the criteria of the thread, is to have the NEP actually take. It would be difficult without Lenin around to make sure it stayed and/or grew in power and scope, but it's the best shot of having a kinder, gentler Soviet Union early on.

Yes, but it wasn't just Lenin who didn't like it: most of the Old Bolsheviks looked at it as an unfortunate reversion to capitalism and a temporary measure.

Bruce
 
I think many readers are of the confused view point that a planned economy always results in an authoritarian state.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=6385599

Not so, IMHO. Scroll down to the very bottom of the linked thread to view my (long) opinion on the matter:

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=248872

Brutal repression was a key component of the Bolshevik regime from the moment of it's seizure of power.

Yet, even during the Bolshevik-led regime's existence at least up until 1919 grassroots democracy amongst party organizations and soviets prevailed for a time.

Proponents of centralization argued that grassroots democracy would be inefficient to meet the demands of the growing civil war. Many of these organizations met for one last time and voluntarily dissolved themselves or centralized themselves completely.

Had there been no civil war, sure there wold be repression against class enemies, perceived or real, but at the same time I don't see Bolshevik participation in the soviets, or their commitment to grassroots democracy wavering.

the civil war historically sapped the Bolsheviks of manpower, which had been forced to take up positions in the growing bureaucracy or the Red Army. These cadre, many of them experienced revolutionaries, would have gone off to the soviets or to lead grassroots Bolshevik Party organizations, which partly led to their centralization.

As for the bureaucracy, had there been no civil war, I highly doubt the bureaucrats could have risen to power so quickly or even at all. The chaos caused by the civil war, when combined with the party losing touch with the masses through their grassroots organizations, accounted for it's rapid growth and eventual grab for power.

Lenin actually attempted to make the party accountable at a popular level during the 1920's(by then I'd argue it was too late) through a workers' and peasants' Inspection, a central control commission, etc. But this only created more bureaucrats in the absence of popular, bottom-up democracy that had accounted for the Bolsheviks success before and slightly after the October Revolution.

The only way that I can see the Soviet state being made more accountable to the people, and thus "softer" assuming the civil war still occurs, is for Lenin's reforms to be put into action following his death.

That and Stalin has to be knocked down a peg by being removed from his powerful position as general-secretary.

Thoughts?
 
1936 purgeist lives

What about Zinovev? He seemed to have a sort of paternalism which sought to enlighten not merely coerese.
 
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