alternatehistory.com

As threads upon a presumed will by the Soviets to occupy all of Europe steamrolling over the Western Allies in 1945 continue to pop up here and there, I'd pose another question, which, in its implications, could be related.
What if a more competently but less ruthlessly ruled Soviet Russia sat on the receiving end of Barbarossa on June 22, 1941?

Let's imagine as a POD a Lenin surviving slightly longer and managing to get rid of Stalin as party secretary. Despite all his scheming, the Georgian never manages afterwards to regain full power, while remaining an important figure; in the subsequent ideological struggles Trosky has to accept an uneasy sharing of power as different factions, at least unofficially, from among the Bolsheviks, and also some players formerly liquidated during the civil war (Social-revolutionaries, Mensheviks etc.) find their way back into the "normalized" system.

Collectivization is tried some years before OTL and its failure and high cost, in both moral and material terms, being soon manifest, and no one being threatened with immediate execution for expressing his doubts, is quietly abandoned or mitigated into a lessened system centered upon a watered-down kolkhoz. Trotsky, discredited, is somewhat emarginated and dedicates himself to political theory; his bid for world revolution spent and defeated, the Soviet state from about 1929 works for international recognition and peaceful relations with its hostile and suspicious neighbours.

Stalin, while still kept accurately outside the machinery of the Party and strictly vigilated by the omnipresent GPU (controlled by the Kamenev-Zinovev combine), reenters from the window of the State and as minister for industry propels the first beginnings of a military-industrial complex; American industrial expertise is used abundantly in the civilian sector, and noit only there. Nonetheless, this SU is a bit less well armed than its counterpart from OTL; at least in sheer numbers. It has, though, even more manpower.

In time the politics of the Soviet Union see the emergence of a legitimate State structure aside the Party, which has no more absolute and total power, despite remaining the only legitimate source of political direction. So president Kalinin has a bit of real influence, while from 1936 it is Sergej Kirov to take over the secretariate of the Party, breaking a long stalemate.

Internal repression softens down somewhat, and while the political police can still be murderous and its foreign espionage operations are very active, the Gulag system as a mass slavery institution never gets to massive proportions, hosting mostly criminals, former White guards and nationalists.

The army is entrusted to a brilliant generation of ambitious officers, lead by Tukhachesky. Despite tensions with Kirov and recurrent rumours of "Napoleonic tendencies", he's not harmed, and no purges whatsoever occur.

When war breaks over, the situation is almost the same as OTL. The Franco-British, firmly anti-Communist, are wary of the Soviets and diplomatic talks turn to nothing. An equivalent of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, a non-aggression treaty, in the end is agreed a few days before Hitler's attack on Poland.
As the Nazis crush the Polish republic, the Soviets quickly occupy the country up to the Bug, but no friendly handshakes or joint parades happen, instead a tense standoff ensues from the beginning.

The Soviets, after interning the Polish officers (which will not be exterminated at Katyn), set free the common soldiery, welcome fleeing Poles and Jews from the Nazi-occupied Governatorate. Soviet-occupied Poland is only partly joined to Bielorussia and Ukraine (which gets Lviv/Lwow and little beyond), and maintained in state of military occupation, with a civilian administration in which old state structures and Socialist-Communist leaders now installed in "power" share an uneasy collaboration under the shade of the Soviet army. The GPU isn't allowed beyond the former border; there are no deportations of civilians or massive repressions, not even against the Catholic Church, while isolated cases of brutality by the occupying Red Army are obviously present.

In the Baltic, as for the accords, the Soviets armwrestle tiny Estonia into conceding military basing rights, de facto occupying the country and forcing a regime change into a more socialist-oriented government. There is no enforced collectivization, part some limited confiscation of industrial and information assets, and the country, while sullen, stays quiet.
Lithuania falls under Nazi "protection" and gets Vilnius/Wilno.
Latvia remains neutral and unoccupied as buffer.

The Soviets make no attempt to take Bessarabia back from Romania. If a honeymoon there was between Soviets and Nazis, it was limited to the sumemr of 1939. From the end of the years it is manifest that mistrust between the two parts is reciprocated. The Soviets stick rigidly to the non-aggresion pact and avoid carefully any provocation, but are adamant about their right to give refuge to fugitive anti-Nazis.
They refrain from attacking Finland, while insisting on a proposal for a territory echange. In June 1940 the Finns, after much posturing and demonstrations of force by the Soviets on land, sea and air, will agree to a demilitarization of the land between the Mannerheim Line forts and the border, between the Ladoga and Onega lakes and in the gulf of Leningrad; and that's all. The Karelian SSR created in 1939 will remain; the SU had already sees the creation, in the Thirties, beyond the OTL Central Asian and Transcaucasian republic, of the Tatar, Volga German, Mountain Peoples' (Northern Caucasus), Komi-Nenets (or Polar), Yakut, Buryat, Primorski and Siberian SSRs.

By June 22, 1941 the Soviet Union is ready foir the German onslaught. It is well informed on its coming, and quite frightened: to the last it will avoid provocation in hope of a last moment respite, losing, as will be lamented in the future by armchair generals and historians, the occasion for a destructive anticipated counterstrike. It will hover disperse its aircraft, though not in an obvious measure, in the last days. It will withdraw the most exposed units, and most of the armored forces on the western front (still theoretically some 6,000 strong, with some hundred of the new T-34) behind the Proletarian Line running from Narva to Odessa through Pskov, Minsk and Vinnica.

What kind of war could we expect?
Top