Yes yes I know a Russia thread on the Post 1900 board, let's get all the jokes about the "absent man of Europe" out of the way now so we can actually discuss this topic seriously.
So most TLs and WIs pertaining to the Russian question deal with butterflying the 1917 revolution and the apocalyptic civil war that followed. However, until the peasants revolt of 1920, the conflict was a fairly "normal" civil war which the Bolsheviks seemed to have the upper hand in (at least that's what it seems from my reading of it, correct me if I'm wrong). The descent into total warlordism only occurred after Antonov failed to establish a government to replace the reds (again correct me if I'm wrong on that).
Since expecting an urban-industrial worker's faction to be in tune with the peasantry is perhaps asking too much, let's just say that the rebellion is more poorly organized and the Bolshevik response is swifter.
What's the shelf life for a Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic* that avoids the Tambov Revolution? Could they actually make a coherent government without shedding their ideology? How would such an unprecedented state** effect diplomacy in Europe?
*I'm actually kinda glad it collapsed just because that name is so clunky
**to clarify: by unprecedented I mean it being a communist state, not it being Russian polity with recognized borders and a cohesive government in the 20th century.
ooc: Basically the premise is that due to Russia not really recovering from the civil war (and presumably becoming something like warlord era China) the history of the Russian Civil War is a bit of a black hole of history (at least internationally) so feel free to say conflicting things regarding the events of the civil war (and that includes me and my assertion that the Tambov Rebellion is the watershed moment).