Could the Soviet Union under Lenin defeat Operation Barbarossa?

Much of Stalin's willingness to purge stemmed from a unreasoning paranoia that made him horrendously suspicious even of his closest supporters. Lenin didn't suffer from this... he could be paranoid, but not unreasoningly so like Stalin could. So by default, Lenin's gonna be less willing to purge because he lacks some of the personal impulses that drove Stalin to be so willing to purge. Of course, "less willing to purge" is not the same as "unwilling to purge" and undoubtedly there would still be purges, but they wouldn't be as harsh or widespread as under Stalin.

Stalin seems to have reasoned pretty well*.

(*Well for a fanatic with some notably bad starting assumptions, that is.)

Also, I suspect that the Bolshevik regime itself was paranoid. They're always looking for the next Capitalist threat, they're in a situation where losing control could happen quickly and be utterly catastrophic, they're surrounded by people who really do hate them, they have an over-powerful secret police feeding them concerning information and many of the decision makers have been part of an illegal political organization that spent most of its existence at that point being hunted by the Tsarist regime (and very successfully at that, would-be revolutionaries could never be sure who among them was an informant). Add on top of that Stalin giving himself such a large degree of power that I suspect power itself may have been a major part of what drove him mad.

And I suspect that the regime under Lenin wouldn't look too different, so even if Lenin doesn't go crazy from power, he's still got a paranoid regime feeding him the information he needs to logic himself into being paranoid.

Also, paranoia wasn't the only reason for purges - Stalin also seems to have purged in order to engineer society. Now here, Lenin may be very different, for example, he and Stalin had different outlooks on nationalities within the union - so maybe under Lenin the USSR avoids the Stalinist force population movements. Lenin may also come to a different conclusion about how to deal with the rising bureaucrat class.

Long story short, I think there is a very large chance that Lenin could be as bad as Stalin.

While Lenin certainly wouldn't be much more upset by the deaths that would occur under collectivization then Stalin, the reason millions died instead of hundreds of thousands had nothing to do with collectivizing during a "good year" or a "bad year" (that merely determined whether anyone died to begin with) and everything to do with Stalin's active malice in refusing to release food aid despite the fact it would have had no impact on the overall program. I find it hard to see that Lenin would be so needlessly murderous. He could be murderous, yes, that is not something I've claimed otherwise, but not pointlessly so like Stalin was.

I think that even if the rains had been more cooperative during collectivization, the violence used by the state would still mean hundreds of thousands of deaths.

And I really wonder if Stalin could have distributed food aid even if he had pushed for it in a timely fashion - the food distribution network was run by NEPmen who he'd just killed or sent to the Gulag... (Just to note, this would still the fault of Stalin and the bolsheviks, just in case people misread this as a defense of the man.)

fasquardon
 
Stalin seems to have reasoned pretty well*.

He tended to get suspicious towards his subordinates for failing to adequately maintain eye contact and then taking that to mean they were plotting against him. That isn't exactly

(*Well for a fanatic with some notably bad starting assumptions, that is.)

Also, I suspect that the Bolshevik regime itself was paranoid. They're always looking for the next Capitalist threat, they're in a situation where losing control could happen quickly and be utterly catastrophic, they're surrounded by people who really do hate them, they have an over-powerful secret police feeding them concerning information and many of the decision makers have been part of an illegal political organization that spent most of its existence at that point being hunted by the Tsarist regime (and very successfully at that, would-be revolutionaries could never be sure who among them was an informant). Add on top of that Stalin giving himself such a large degree of power that I suspect power itself may have been a major part of what drove him mad.

And I suspect that the regime under Lenin wouldn't look too different, so even if Lenin doesn't go crazy from power, he's still got a paranoid regime feeding him the information he needs to logic himself into being paranoid.

Also, paranoia wasn't the only reason for purges - Stalin also seems to have purged in order to engineer society. Now here, Lenin may be very different, for example, he and Stalin had different outlooks on nationalities within the union - so maybe under Lenin the USSR avoids the Stalinist force population movements. Lenin may also come to a different conclusion about how to deal with the rising bureaucrat class.

Long story short, I think there is a very large chance that Lenin could be as bad as Stalin.

I'm more dubious. While purges of the party's upper ranks is still highly likely, purging of the military and industry is a much more shaky affair without Stalin's paranoia driving thing on. I mean, yes. The Bolshevik regime did have it's own underlying paranoia but the scale of said paranoia was very much influenced by it's leadership... which after 1930 basically boiled down to Joseph Stalin.

I find it hard to believe that the '37-'38 purges were to engineer society (although some of the earlier purges I do buy and yeah, I can see at least some of that still happening). Many of the people who were removed from their positions and shot were already ardent communists and Stalin supporters and indeed ardently supported the purges... up until the NKVD wound up coming for them. Indeed, what's notable about the '37-'38 purges compared to the other ones is how they indiscriminately tore through what were otherwise some of the most pro-Soviet and pro-Stalin groups of the regime.

I think that even if the rains had been more cooperative during collectivization, the violence used by the state would still mean hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Mmm... plausible. Both the scale of violence and the poor harvests probably synergized with each other to help produce multi-million death tolls. Of course, even if Lenin making better decisions (or timing collectivization during a good harvest, whichever) leads to "only" hundreds of thousands of excess deaths, that still means the Bolshevik regime is responsible for hundreds of thousands of excess deaths.

And I really wonder if Stalin could have distributed food aid even if he had pushed for it in a timely fashion - the food distribution network was run by NEPmen who he'd just killed or sent to the Gulag... (Just to note, this would still the fault of Stalin and the bolsheviks, just in case people misread this as a defense of the man.)

Much of the food distribution apparatus had been shifted into the hands of central bureaucracies by the time the breaking point came but whether that apparatus would have been up to the task is indeed an interesting question. Most mainstream historians I've read seem to think so, but I haven't seen a concrete study on the subject that doesn't seem to reek of outright Tankyist apologia.
 
One might counter it by that Lenin was dumb enough to start Communism...

Lenin and Stalin were, without doubt, extraordinary intelligent persons, maybe too smart for their own good.
Comrades, who invented comunism? Communist or scientists?
Why but of course communist.
Thought so. Scientists would first try it on dogs. ;)
 
And I don't think the USSR produced rubber itself.
No, of course not - it was bought from third parties, which is why none was delivered before late 1940 - such things take time.

All the rubber? I'm sure the Germans got some from blockade runners.

No doubt, although the amount would be necessarily limited. Grain came from other sources too, e.g. France. The point is that as much or more rubber, and nearly as much grain, was consumed invading Russia than was imported from them in the months previous to Barbarossa, and there would have been a serious impact on the German ability to wage war in 1941 without these imports.
 
All the rubber? I'm sure the Germans got some from blockade runners. And I don't think the USSR produced rubber itself.
Well Soviets OTL had pretty decent synthetic rubber industry but organic was imported and reimported to Germany.
 
No doubt, although the amount would be necessarily limited.

I think about half of the rubber carried by blockade runners got through. Virtually all of it was prior to '43.

point is that as much or more rubber, and nearly as much grain, was consumed invading Russia than was imported from them in the months previous to Barbarossa, and there would have been a serious impact on the German ability to wage war in 1941 without these imports.

Another serious problem was loss of Russian oil imports, idling the German big ships.
 
I find it hard to believe that the '37-'38 purges were to engineer society (although some of the earlier purges I do buy and yeah, I can see at least some of that still happening). Many of the people who were removed from their positions and shot were already ardent communists and Stalin supporters and indeed ardently supported the purges... up until the NKVD wound up coming for them. Indeed, what's notable about the '37-'38 purges compared to the other ones is how they indiscriminately tore through what were otherwise some of the most pro-Soviet and pro-Stalin groups of the regime.

Stalin was attacking the boss class that had arisen under Bolshevik rule because he believed the working class should have power (at least, this is what Kotkin says about the purges). So for a few years, he is debating with himself and with the others in his inner circle about whether the boss class is part of the working class, a benign vanguard or a parasitic class. He ends up deciding they are a parasitic class and tries to destroy them.

If Kotkin isn't leading us on a merry chase here, it does lead one to wonder what would have happened if Stalin had decided the boss class was benign in some way and allowed them to flourish.

And of course, in this ATL where Lenin is in charge, if the purge was mainly the result of fanaticism and ideology, not madness, it means Lenin is more likely to come to the same conclusions and try to rip apart the class "taking over" his revolution. (Though of course, I'm not saying he will, or is even most likely to go the same way Stalin did on this, only that there is a higher chance than usually appreciated that he would make the same choices, because Lenin was a Communist too.)

Much of the food distribution apparatus had been shifted into the hands of central bureaucracies by the time the breaking point came but whether that apparatus would have been up to the task is indeed an interesting question. Most mainstream historians I've read seem to think so, but I haven't seen a concrete study on the subject that doesn't seem to reek of outright Tankyist apologia.

Yeah. I've read some sobering accounts of just how messed up the system was before Collectivization, and accounts of just how badly organized Collectivization itself was. I've never seen anyone make a serious analysis of whether the ramshackle state and party apparatus could have distributed food to the starving peasants if they'd wanted to.

It's gotta be one heck of a depressing question to study.

Lenin isn't dumb enough to trust Hitler
Case closed

Stalin wasn't dumb enough to trust Hitler either.

The guy didn't trust anyone. Why would some right wing German nutter be the exception? Stalin just felt he didn't have any better options. The British had shown themselves to be completely untrustworthy, and if anything, alarmingly pro-German. The French had shown themselves to be weak. The Americans had shown themselves to be uninterested. It was obvious inside the Soviet Union that they were next after the fall of France. But without any options that looked better, and for fear of provoking an Anglo-German alliance (which, based on information available before 1941, looked like a credible threat), the Soviets played for time as they desperately worked to strengthen themselves against a lone fight against Germany.

And if Lenin were in Stalin's place, what changes? He'd still be getting conflicting intelligence reports. He'd still have a rising Germany and a Britain that had at every point before September 1939 acted as the eager helper to German treaty violations. He'd still have a France that felt too weak to do anything without British support (though if France doesn't fall as per OTL when the Germans attack, that's a big change).

fasquardon
 
I think about half of the rubber carried by blockade runners got through. Virtually all of it was prior to '43.

Interesting. Even more so, if you have figures on how big of a "whole" this "half" is :)

Another serious problem was loss of Russian oil imports, idling the German big ships.
Absolutely. Also hard-to-get substances like manganese, nickel, chrome, even cotton (which is used for a lot more than clothing).
 
Often Stalin's brutal industrialization is seen as essential for survival - but that is kind of circular reasoning: first of all he did much to encourage the rise of Nazism in Germany and much to alienate the West. A slightly more inefficient Russia with strong Western allies would have likely not even seen this genocidal attack in the first place. Basically what doomed Russia to such horrors as the revolution, civil war, famine and systematic political terror, and, finally to meeting a crazy German dictatorship alone (and with troops in disastrous forward positions) was the very fact of the bolsheviks and ultimately Stalin getting to power, with their insane beliefs and their virtually limitless capability for terror and chaos.

THIS is a circular reasoning. YOURS is a circular reasoning.
 
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