As we all know, after the Russian Revolution came the civil war which would decide the course of Russian history. Despite setbacks the white army prevailed over the red and a new period in Russian history began, but what if it had happened otherwise. What would a Bolshevik run Russia even look like?
DBWI: What if the Bolsheviks had won the Russian civil war?
- Thread starter VictorVanBakker
- Start date
Well one of the main ideological points that the Bolsheviks supported was national and cultural self-determination, so I suspect ethnic minorities would be much better off than IOTL. They were also staunchly anti-imperialist, so Russia would probably be much less interventionist. I could definitely see a formal separation of church and state.
With the failure of the other post-war revolutions they'll probably liberalise. The whole point of the October Revolution was a holding action until the rest of Europe went red. If that doesn't go as planned I suspect that the stagist view of Marxism would ultimately prevail, leading to a more moderate approach.
All-in-all, a recipe for a progressive liberal democracy, unlike the corrupt racist oligarchy we have today.
It would be interesting to see how the Soviets develop with actual power though, given that that was one of the Bolsheviks' key policies.
With the failure of the other post-war revolutions they'll probably liberalise. The whole point of the October Revolution was a holding action until the rest of Europe went red. If that doesn't go as planned I suspect that the stagist view of Marxism would ultimately prevail, leading to a more moderate approach.
All-in-all, a recipe for a progressive liberal democracy, unlike the corrupt racist oligarchy we have today.
It would be interesting to see how the Soviets develop with actual power though, given that that was one of the Bolsheviks' key policies.
My favorite way of getting a Red victory is just to have Lev Bronstein (Trotsky) join the Bolsheviks. I realize he was a Menshevik, but as a Jew and a supposed leftist he really had no business joining the Whites. I still can't figure out what he was thinking. But given his work organizing the motley Siberian forces into an army that could capture Moscow, he probably could have done amazing things with the Bolshevik forces. They had a central position and came very close to winning as it is.
Ironically, Bronstein might not have been sent into exile so quickly if he was a leader on a victorious Red side.
But as for the development of Bolshevik Russia, I think the other posters are too optimistic. Such a state would be an international pariah, and they would have (justifiable) paranoia about attempts from pro-capitalist forces inside and outside Russia to overthrow them. Russia doesn't have a tradition of liberalism and democracy, and foreign policy interests of great nations remain remarkably stable throughout changes of regime. So I think you would see some sort of centralizing dictatorship disguised as a really progressive democracy.
Ironically, Bronstein might not have been sent into exile so quickly if he was a leader on a victorious Red side.
But as for the development of Bolshevik Russia, I think the other posters are too optimistic. Such a state would be an international pariah, and they would have (justifiable) paranoia about attempts from pro-capitalist forces inside and outside Russia to overthrow them. Russia doesn't have a tradition of liberalism and democracy, and foreign policy interests of great nations remain remarkably stable throughout changes of regime. So I think you would see some sort of centralizing dictatorship disguised as a really progressive democracy.
The germans would've probably went after them first instead of the French, which wouldn't be such a bad thing for the Allies.
I wonder what would've happened to Stalin, the old wily bastard held out for twelve years and raised hell for years afterwards.
I wonder what would've happened to Stalin, the old wily bastard held out for twelve years and raised hell for years afterwards.
Yeah. Jugashvili was a pretty powerful bandit. I remember reading a book in which the Bolsheviks won and Jugashvili became its leader. It was pretty disgusting and bleak, really.
Thank god the Mensheviks and the Constitutional-Democratic Party won! Thank god Paul Milyukov was our President. Thanks to him, Russia is one of the most industrialized and strongest states in the world!
Thank god the Mensheviks and the Constitutional-Democratic Party won! Thank god Paul Milyukov was our President. Thanks to him, Russia is one of the most industrialized and strongest states in the world!
Konrad Sartorius
Banned
That's non-sense. The Bolsheviks were monsters who were worse than the radical French revolutionaries. Just look up the atrocities they committed against the Church and the anti-communists during the civil war. Sure White Russia was a bad place post civil war, but it ultimately reformed into the pluralistic democracy we have today. The communists would have probably started a Second Great War or established a terror state that lasts all the way to the present.
There probally isn't an attempt to invade poland the bolshevicks were pretty big on international couperation. The whites wern't and it took 3 failed invasions to get them to accept that no poland wasn't going to rejoin russia, and it took the poles getting nukes for the russians to stop threating a 4th invasion.
Emperor RyRy
Banned
Why is that? The only socialist states that have ever occurred OTL are tiny out of the way former American puppets and former colonies, and even then they were quickly destabilized by the US and Europe. If the Bolsheviks had formed their little soviets and made a socialist state they'd be powerful enough not to be destabilized by the rest of the industrial world.
Therefore there would be no need for the totalitarianism of OTL's socialist states.
I doubt that Poles would have survived the 3rd intervention were it not for the Entente's threats of declaring war on Russia if their troops are to set their feet past the Curzon line. And after the 3rd settlement one of the main reason for the invasion disappeared, as Poland was left with no ethnic russian lands. The following population transfer helped with it too.
Another thing I wanted to mention, would Ataturk still be crushed ITTL? As I understand he tried to set up a secular Turkish republic in the former Ottoman territory, would Bolsheviks try to help him? I mean, Russia didn't go past Georgia in the Caucasus due to American guarantees on Armenia, so they settled on having a favorable buffer, but with Lenin already running a pariah state, would he try to reincorporate it, or at least push the revolution here?
You guys do realize that there are already at least four conflicting timelines posted in the responses, right?
It's wouldn't be pretty, but probably no worse than what happened under Tsars Mikhail and Alexander between 1930-41, and afterwards; really, the April Coup happened, because people were growing weary of ever-increasing repression, the appeasing of the Goring regime in Germany, and yes, even the anti-Jewish pogroms(which often were used as an excuse for the former two), too: as many as 16 million people are known to have died in those 11 years, and it took the return of Alexander Kolchak from his Chinese exile just to hold the place together, and right in time for World War II, too(And even with that, Russia needed lots of help from both Britain and France just to stay together)-and, for that matter, Kolchak's death in 1948 sparked 40 years' worth of a Cold War, with *two* near misses with nuclear war(one in '63 over Poland's nuclear program and the Korean student protests,, and the other one in '84 over the Iranian crisis).
I'm just glad that Pavel Dimitrevich Milyukov, grandson of the famed historian and liberal reformer, was given the chance to steer the country towards a better path in 1989-without the November 1988 Geneva Accords, who knows? Maybe if the Russian Premier Romanenko hadn't survived his assassination attempt by Victor Putin that August, Russia could well have gone to hell, and taken the rest of us with 'em!
OOC: Okay, so I did the best I could to reconcile some of the conflicts that developed in this DBWI thread.
OOC: I wonder if people ITTL refer to things being interesting in the Russian sense?
What? That racist bigot? I think a Bolshevik victory would have saved - and not cost - millions of lives. However, of course this is not true if Bandit Jugashvili comes into power - but who would let him?
Well, Jugashvili was a pretty cunning guy - he held out in Caucasus for years - so who knows?
And besides, Milyukov being racist were just rumors spread by Polish and Circassian nationalists. Yes, Russia may not have been too friendly towards Jews and Caucasians, but we have moved past that.
Yeah let's just overlook the brutal Russification programs against Native Siberians that were official state policy up until the mid 70s, the heavy systemic discrimination and police brutality against non-Russians, and the Turkic Lives Matter movement. But you know, Russia isn't racist anymore guys.