Challenge : a greater Soviet union ?

In OTL , the soviet union composed of 15 republics , the challenge here is to make the USSR as big as possible with the annexation of more countries into the empire , either a communist elected governement decides to join the soviet union or a military intervention , this can happen after the second world war because i think it was the best time for it
 
The only possibilities I can think of (and they're a stretch) are Finland, Mongolia and Manchuria (at a stretch).

The problem is that incorporation of Mongolia a la Tannu Tuva is going to make sure that Nationalist China is an enemy, and the Soviets were definitely prepared to work with the Nationalists in the event that the Communists lost, which probably appeared more likely to Stalin at least.

Whilst I doubt this would happen for a number of reasons, it's possible that Finland would be incorporated as an SSR if the Winter War went extremely well for the Soviets. It wouldn't be pretty, and would probably generate more international I'll will than consuming the Baltic states. Not to mention the potential to drive Sweden and Norway into Hitler's arms.

Manchuria could possibly happen if the Nationalists are much stronger than the Communists in China and essentially wipe them out. They could be dumped in favour of a local administration. If they don't do this and the KMT wins the CCW, North Korea is basically a write-off. Plus it had good agricultural land and resources for heavy industry.
 
WI the Red Army won the Soviet-Polish War? Poland could have ended up an SSR.

I once had a soc.history.what-if post on this:


Here's another question: does Red Poland join what will soon be the USSR
or does it remain an (at least nominally) independent soviet republic?

As Robert Service notes in his *Stalin: A Biography* (pp. 179-80) this
question was being debated in the summer of 1920--not only for Poland but
for Germany as well--by Lenin and Stalin:


"Stalin and Lenin also undertook preliminary planning for the kind of
Europe they expected to organise when socialist seizures of power took
place. Their grandiose visions take the breath away. Before the Second
Comintern Congress, Lenin urged the need for a general federation
including Germany, and he made clear that he wanted the economy of such a
federation to be 'administered from a single organ.' Stalin rejected this
as impractical:


'If you think you'd ever get Germany to enter a federation with the same
rights as Ukraine, you are mistaken. If you think that even Poland, which
has been constituted as a bourgeois state with all its attributes, would
enter the Union with the same rights as Ukraine you are mistaken.'


"Lenin was angry. The implications of Stalin's comment was that
considerations of national pride would impel Russia and Germany to remain
separate states for the foreseeable future. Lenin sent him a 'threatening
letter' which charged him with chauvinism. It was Lenin's objective to
set up a Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia. His vision of
'European socialist revolution' was unchanged since 1917. But Stalin held
his ground. The Politburo had to acknowledge the realities of nationhood
if the spread of socialism in Europe was to be a success.


"These discussions were hypothetical since the Red Army had not yet
reached Poland, far less set up a revolutionary government in Warsaw..."


So suppose it had succeeded in doing so. Whose views would prevail--
Lenin's or Stalin's? In what I regard as the unlikely event of a
successful German revolution, I have very litle doubt that Stalin's view
would prevail--integrating as huge a state as Germany into a union with
Russia was just not practical. Poland is a closer case, but my guess is
that Stalin and the rest of the Politburo would prevail on Lenin to
"delay" the full integration of Poland into the Soviet Union--and that
after Lenin's death that integration would never come about.


Does it matter? I would say Yes. Even if the leaders of the new Poland
were selected in Moscow and dependent on Red Army bayonets, even if they
were people whose careers had been primarily in the all-Russian Bolshevik
movement and who for a long time had little contact with the Polish
working class--even granted all these things, still, being an even
nominally independent nation has important psychological effects,
especially for a country that already had as strong a nationalist tradtion
as Poland.
 

Deleted member 1487

In OTL , the soviet union composed of 15 republics , the challenge here is to make the USSR as big as possible with the annexation of more countries into the empire , either a communist elected governement decides to join the soviet union or a military intervention , this can happen after the second world war because i think it was the best time for it
Actually you could probably do it better during WW2. Have the Nazis bungle the war early on and have Stalin successfully invade Nazi dominated Europe without ever having suffered invasion the USSR has a lot of extra strength to spread communism to Europe, plus no US support for the Allies to drive their Cold War efforts. With Stalin building up his economic base with half of Europe, no major losses from WW2, and a weakened West without the US it is not inconceivable that Europe might end up Red. That won't mean the USSR annexes all of those countries, but it would pretty much mean it effectively controls Europe and probably is able to spread it's system/power block all over the Eurasian landmass and really challenge the Capitalism West far more than it ever did IOTL.
 
On the question of a Mongolian SSR: the idea does indeed seem to have been floated from time to time--more by Mongolians than by the Soviets:

"Given Mongolia's profound dependence on the Soviet Union, Mongolians had several times proposed that Mongolia join the Soviet Union, yet Soviet leaders, wary of accusations from China, were not supportive. In the late 1920s, radical western Mongols...resented Khalkha domination and proposed that western Mongolia and Tuva together join the Soviet Union. In the 1940s and early 1950s the Soviet-trained technocrats under Choibalsang repeatedly qustioned whether socialism could be built in Mongolia without joining the Soviet Union. The procurator B. Jambaldorj raised the possibility in 1944, when Tuva joined the Soviet Union, and Daramyn Tomorochir and Yumjaagin Tsedenbal raised it again late in Choibalsang's life. Choibalsang himself violently opposed such ideas, but after his death the Mongolian Politburo in 1953 approved unification, only to be rebuked by V. M. Molotov for their 'simple-minded error.' In the mid-1970s the Soviet ruler Leonid Brezhnev sounded out his Mongolian counterpart Tsedenbal about this issue. By then, however, the very success of Mongolian industrialization with Soviet aid had decreased Mongolia's perceived need for unification, and the issue was dropped." Article "Soviet Union and Mongolia," p. 515 in Christopher P. Atwoood, *Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire* (New York: Facts on File, 2004)

I doubt the Soviets would do it, because it was unnecessary and would be resented by the Chinese--both Nationalist and Communist. What difference would it make if they did it, though, since Mongolia was so closely connected with the USSR in OTL, and as an SSR would still presumably win its independence in 1991? Some years ago, in soc.history.what-if, I suggested one possible difference:

"Had he [Stalin] done so, might he or a successor have transferred the Buryat ASSR from the Russian to the new Mongolian SSR? (Note how Khrushchev transferred Crimea from the RSFSR to Ukraine. Sometimes the Soviets liked to humor non-Russian nationalities that way. No harm done, since the important decisions were made in Moscow anyway.) And then, with Outer Mongolia presumably gaining its independence in 1991, it would take the Buryat ASSR with it (though some Russians would protest, just as they have protested Ukraine's taking Crimea with it)."

As a Mongolian contributor to the newsgroup noted in reply:

"They sure would! Transsiberian railroad would run through Mongol territory then. And Russians will have to pay nice transit duties for everything that goes to and from Chita, Khabarovsk and Vladivostok." http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/145ed8c4d6624a37

He also noted that, leaving aside possible territorial changes, becoming part of the USSR would probably mean a considerably larger migration of Russians and other non-Mongols into Mongolia.
 
9 times out of 10 it just made more sense to facilitate the establishment a socialist government instead of annexing the territory. Annexation was reserved for areas of the former Russian Empire (with exceptions like Finland, which stayed independent and East Prussia, which was annexed). The only area not mentioned in this thread that the Soviets would have wanted to annex was parts of Anatolia. Annexing Manchuria is beyond ASB with a post-1900 PoD. Far too many Chinese people were living there, and it would just piss off the Chinese government.
 
Re: Finnland. The USSR's best opportunity was in 1919, during the Finnish Civil war.
Over the centuries Finnland has only enjoyed self-rule for short periods. Depending upon which monarch was stronger, Finnland was variously ruled by the Swedish King or the Russian Czar.

For example, General Mannheim was of Swedish noble ancestry, but learned his military skills leading Czarist Russian troops during WW1. After WW1, Mannheim led traditional, conservative Finnish forces. Traditional Swedish-speaking Finnish nobility fought socialist, Finnish-speaking small farmers over what form of gov't would rule the recently-independent country.
The decision was made hundreds of miles away when White Russian armies inflicted casualties on the Red Army, ergo the Red Army could never spare enough troops to properly support Finnish Communists. Eventually Finnish communists were forced to retreat all the way to Saint Petersburg.

IOW communist Russia lost Finnland in 1919 because the Red Army was too busy fighting on other fronts

As for Germany, WI only a few German states (e.g. Bavaria) turned communist after WW1 and soon found themselves in tax-unions with the Skviet Union?
How many Soviet commissars would be sent to Germany to "assist" in re-building the German economy?
How much could Soviet central-planners influence German industry without bayonets enforcing new policies?
 
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