AHC: Trotsky takes over

The challenge, using a POD after the Oktober Revolution, is to end up with Trotsky in charge of the Soviet Union and Stalin removed from power. Bonus points if you can find a way to off the Man of Steel.
 
In my timeline Trotsky "adjusts" a speech from Lenin to fully attack Stalin, pushing himself into power. Stalin dies in 1943 in Ankara, Turkey during a Soviet artillery attack during the Third Balkans War.
 
In my timeline Trotsky "adjusts" a speech from Lenin to fully attack Stalin, pushing himself into power. Stalin dies in 1943 in Ankara, Turkey during a Soviet artillery attack during the Third Balkans War.

Is this a different speech from the Testament, or what? Cause the Testament did fully attack Stalin. And Bukharin. And Kamenev. And Zinoviev. And lauded Trotsky as the best possible leader for the party. To be honest, the best POD for Trotsky to gain power rather than Stalin is just have the Testament actually be published and not suppressed (you just need to get Trotsky to actually act rather than sitting on the sidelines drooling). Note, however, that it's unlikely that Trotsky would actually "take over" in a Stalinesque sense. While he would push for many of the policies that characterized Stalin's later rule (collectivization, crash industrialization), he certainly wouldn't have established a police state to the extent that Stalin did. In fact, I doubt he would be able to handle the pressure of being "leader" (in whatever form that would take; I doubt he would be GenSec) for very long.

My opinion on the matter is thus: Trotsky takes over as head theoretician and general consensusmaker in the party for a few years, but tires of it and eventually relegates himself to running the military. With most of the higher Old Bolsheviks out due to Lenin's testament, some combination of Kirov and two representatives of the left and right take over in a triumvirate for a while, possibly followed by political chaos. Or maybe they manage to stabilize their positions and rule uninterrupted. Hmm. Not sure on that count.
 
Trotsky's major problems ares that 1) he's a Jew, and 2) he was one of the internationalist Bolsheviks who wasn't in Russia for the ten year period between 1905 to 1917. Stalin was consistently supported by those Bolsheviks who stayed in Russia during that time and distrusted those who saw the outside world (Lenin was a notable exception to this, but Lenin was unique in many ways).

Getting rid of Stalin is comparatively easy if you start with an early enough POD. I agree with TheLordProtector that it's much harder to keep Trotsky in power on top. Perhaps as one of the more important Bolsheviks, or even at top for a specific period in time. But hard to keep him at top for any extended period of time.
 
AFAIK, Trotsky was also a poor politician, and would have had difficulties, to say the least, at holding his position should he gain it.
 
AFAIK, Trotsky was also a poor politician, and would have had difficulties, to say the least, at holding his position should he gain it.

Maybe he can try the old 'Short victorious war', an evergreen among dictatorships...and much more in appealing to Trotsky.
 
If Lenin was killed instantly when Fanny Kaplan shot him, the time to decide on a successor comes much earlier. Trotsky had far more prestige than any other candidate, and, unlike most of the other senior Bolsheviks, would not have been daunted by the challenge. My guess is that he would have been chosen unanimously, as the only candidate who might have had the ability to lead the Reds to victory in the Civil War.

Not sure how long he would last when the war was over.
 
Is this a different speech from the Testament, or what? Cause the Testament did fully attack Stalin. And Bukharin. And Kamenev. And Zinoviev. And lauded Trotsky as the best possible leader for the party. To be honest, the best POD for Trotsky to gain power rather than Stalin is just have the Testament actually be published and not suppressed (you just need to get Trotsky to actually act rather than sitting on the sidelines drooling). Note, however, that it's unlikely that Trotsky would actually "take over" in a Stalinesque sense. While he would push for many of the policies that characterized Stalin's later rule (collectivization, crash industrialization), he certainly wouldn't have established a police state to the extent that Stalin did. In fact, I doubt he would be able to handle the pressure of being "leader" (in whatever form that would take; I doubt he would be GenSec) for very long.

Yeah so basically the Testament. In fact in the timeline one of the major differences is that Trotsky is far less willing to suppress the Communists in China and as a result the Northern Expedition is a failure.
 
If Lenin was killed instantly when Fanny Kaplan shot him, the time to decide on a successor comes much earlier. Trotsky had far more prestige than any other candidate, and, unlike most of the other senior Bolsheviks, would not have been daunted by the challenge. My guess is that he would have been chosen unanimously, as the only candidate who might have had the ability to lead the Reds to victory in the Civil War.

Not sure how long he would last when the war was over.

How would he keep Stalin from filling the party apparatus with his cronies? That was a major element in Stalin's rise to power.
 
As someone very acquainted with Trotsky and his ideas, this is a good place for me to stop lurking...

Trotsky dealt with some fairly serious illness in 1924 and was disarmed politically in that year. So...you'd need to start by butterflying away the illness.

Stalin's base in the Communist Party was very strong in the "Lenin levy," the new members who came in after the revolution; Trotsky's was in the Red Army. For all practical purposes, you'd either need to break up the Stalin-Zinoviev-Kamenev troika or have Trotsky use the Red Army to coup Stalin. The former would've been hard to make work as Trotsky was extremely critical of Zinoviev, and wouldn't have looked to him as an ally, but Zinoviev's position as de facto leader of the Comintern gave him too much prestige to brush aside in 1924.

A Red Army coup would probably be the most realistic way of doing it, if Trotsky could claim that the Stalin-Zinoviev-Kamenev troika had basically done away with Soviet democracy (which hadn't really been operative since 1918 but who's counting?) or inner-party democracy. By 1926 Stalin had outmaneuvered the United Opposition, when Trotsky and Zinoviev finally did try to unite but to no avail.

The last attempt would be for Trotsky to use Lenin's Testament, but I'm not sure if it would've worked. It may have been a basis for using the Army to "enforce Lenin's last will" - but that's shaky and would probably lead to civil war or at least an early enactment of the purge fights (and not so one-sided).

Anyway, if Trotsky takes power - the national situation would've been very rough going. He would have had to "roll up" the New Economic Policy fairly early and institute collectivization of the farms; it would not likely have led to much by way of actual Soviet democracy. His international policy would have been one of support for foreign revolutions, possibly to the point when the USSR would for instance have supported the CP of China against the Guomindang in 1926/27 (Trotsky was a vociferous advocate of this) and the Comintern would have swung hard left in advance of the Depression. Assuming he could hold onto power, at the very least Trotsky's solution to the rise of Hitler to power was a socialist revolution in Germany, which would have meant he'd tell the KPD to start the revolution in January 1933 (if not earlier). Depending on how that went, you could see all kinds of butterflies - even if it was smashed, Trotsky would've been hardline in support of the Spanish revolutionaries, pushing for a revolutionary seizure of power right after Franco's rebellion. Likewise, he wanted the PCF to make a revolution in France in '36. His line of permanent revolution would've made Europe.... very interesting. A Trotsky wank of course would have one revolution lead to the next in succession, but you know.
 
@graymouser: do you think it would be possible for Trotsky to end up in charge as early as 1918 or late 1917? What impact would that have on the power struggles that followed, I know Lenin tried to convince Trotsky to accept the Chairmanship of the Soviet People's Commissars (I think that's the right term) but he declined because he felt his Judaism would have hurt the early government's legitimacy.

Do you think it is possible for him to completely nip Stalin in the bud while the Civil War is still raging?
 
@graymouser: do you think it would be possible for Trotsky to end up in charge as early as 1918 or late 1917? What impact would that have on the power struggles that followed, I know Lenin tried to convince Trotsky to accept the Chairmanship of the Soviet People's Commissars (I think that's the right term) but he declined because he felt his Judaism would have hurt the early government's legitimacy.
Lenin's prestige in 1917 was way too high for him to not be the chairman of Sovnarkom (Soviet of People's Commisars) and Trotsky was a Jew (bad for the Great Russian chauvinists) and had sided with the Mensheviks in 1903 (bad for the old Bolsheviks). Before July 1917 Trotsky was formally affiliated to the Mezhrayontsi or inter-district committees, a small left-wing socialist group in Petrograd. He possibly could've risen between 1918 and 1923, but he kept butting heads with Lenin over political issues, even though he'd end up deferring to Lenin in the end. Maybe you could've had Lenin retire after his first stroke in 1922 and directly name Trotsky his successor to the chair of Sovnarkom, but you've still got the same issues to contend with.

Do you think it is possible for him to completely nip Stalin in the bud while the Civil War is still raging?
Maybe, but more likely you'd have a similar power struggle without Stalin. Trotsky would still have Zinoviev/Kamenev and Bukharin to deal with - though Zinoviev, like Trotsky, has a Jewish background problem he was an old Bolshevik and would have been more likely to win the Party over than Trotsky. You'd need to see old L.D.'s[1] way through that fight although without the personality of Stalin involved.

[1] Lev Davidovich Bronstein, aka Trotsky
 
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