Democratic Russia Emerges From Russian Revolution

With a POD no earlier than the establishment of the Provisional Government on March 15th, 1917, have Russia emerge from the Revolution with some form of stable democratic or semi-Democratic government. I guess it helps if Lenin gets sick and dies on the train ride back to Russia.
 
With a POD no earlier than the establishment of the Provisional Government on March 15th, 1917, have Russia emerge from the Revolution with some form of stable democratic or semi-Democratic government. I guess it helps if Lenin gets sick and dies on the train ride back to Russia.

You need a democratic body to oversee the Gosplan.

The Soviet Union already had, well, Soviets. The problem that undermined the collective enterprises was rooted in the administrative body that was responsible for the allocation of resources; a feature that is a must in a system that has done away with the market.

It'll be difficult, but possible.

Honestly, it might help if they keep the collectivization of enterprises but institute market reforms upon which said enterprises operate. Just let the market do its wonders at creating wealth whilst gradually subsuming the market with a planned method of distribution. You have to get rid of the Five-Year-Plans, because they destroyed any semblance of workers democratically controlling the collective. When you have a body that requires that x be produced in y time, the workers have no say in the allocation of the surplus-value.

So, I guess the only way is to to use a market system. Workers own and operate the means of production, but in a system whereby resources are allocated by way of supply an demand. Workers can choose, democratically, how to invest the surplus value in their respective enterprises.

That isn't to say everything would be distributed by way of a market based system. You'd need a central authority, obviously democratic, that distributes social services, like healthcare and education, by need.

So yeah, that's my two cents.
 
You'd have to have the Provisional Government committed to ending the war and enacting land reform in order to stop rebellion and insurrection. Which, inevitably, would bring them into conflict with the right wing and the French and British.
 
You would need some time for democratic values to develop. With a POD before the October Revolution, it is clearly possible to see a development where Russia in 2016 is more democratic than in OTL 2016, but democracy or dictatorship is more a matter of degree than either/or. After all, OTL Russia 2016 do has elections, but hardly qualifies as a democracy.
 
If semi-democratic is accepted then my argument would be the Left SRs not walking out of coalition with the Bolsheviks. Give them the Commisariats of Agriculture and Food (they were included in the government at all on the justification they were a peasant party). This way you at least have the groundwork for an official two party system in the Soviet Union, and given how official peasant representation in government (by the party that the vast majority of peasants actually supported, kind of), you could also hopefully avoid Lenins ban on factions. All of which tied together would leave a Soviet Union with very limited inter party democracy but with the guarantee that different factions of the Communists could act as erstatz parties, alongside actually competitive elections in the rural regions of the country between Bolsheviks and SRs.

Also, a post civil war POD would be Lenin living a few more years and actually carrying out his final denunciation of the bureaucracy (which atleast according to Trotsky's memoirs, was a thing they were working on together). The only way to sustainably break the bureaucracy (and prevent a new military or civilian one from emerging) would be to broadly enable more democratic Soviets and democratically structured communist party. Restructuring the government so that the only popular elective level is the lowest level (Leninists would say the cellular level, but quantity creates a quality of its own), and instead higher level governmental bodies are also directly elected as delegates of the people rather than delegates of their immediately lower level of federal power, would certainly help.

The other major reform I would propose would be The Congress of The Soviets should operate as long as your average parliament with the SOVNARKOM repurposed as more of a proper executive council. With each office chosen for a term by the Congress of Soviets, and the holder of that office maintaining their place on the executive body by the consent of that body (so it functions as a sort of dual, executive and upper house).

I don't personally think the provisional government could have come to a healthy end. I think there's a lot of truth to the claim that it was either the Bolsheviks or Kornilov/Denikin/Kolchak. The provisional government was an unstable center with essentially no ability deal with the problems Russia was facing. And as that goes on and chaos reins across the country it's more and more likely that one of the military men of Russia will seize power and restore order by force of Cossacks.
 
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