lafollette
Banned
Let us suppose that Fanny Kaplan assassinates Lenin in August 1918, and Trotsky captured and executed by the Whites early in 1919, as he nearly was. Without Lenin's political or Trotsky's military leadership, the Red Army ends up losing the Russian Civil War.
How would the White Army have ruled Russia? The Whites would obviously have ruled dictatorially: free and fair Constituent Assembly elections would have produced SR/Green majorities, who the Whites regarded as being little better than the Bolsheviks. But who would have led White Russia? Yudenich? Denikin? Wrangel? Kolchak? Or Kornilov if he had survived the Civil War?
A Stolypin-style restriction of the suffrage would probably have produced a right-wing CA acceptable to the Whites. The Russian Prime Minister will likely be a Kadet for window-dressing purposes, such as Milyukov, or a Cossack such as Krasnov to award the Cossacks for their contribution to the White victory.
As for foreign policy, the Whites would have recognized the independence of Finland and a Poland restricted by military force to the Curzon Line. As for the question of national minorities, I doubt that they would have allowed Ukrainian indepedence at all: Kiev was simply too important as a symbol of Slavic power. However, how would the Whites have conducted economic policy? My own view is that the presence of a White Russia allied with France on the international stage would have at least mitigated the effects of the 1920s-1930s farm crisis due to the influx of Russian agricultural products into the markets of the UK and the USA.
How would the White Army have ruled Russia? The Whites would obviously have ruled dictatorially: free and fair Constituent Assembly elections would have produced SR/Green majorities, who the Whites regarded as being little better than the Bolsheviks. But who would have led White Russia? Yudenich? Denikin? Wrangel? Kolchak? Or Kornilov if he had survived the Civil War?
A Stolypin-style restriction of the suffrage would probably have produced a right-wing CA acceptable to the Whites. The Russian Prime Minister will likely be a Kadet for window-dressing purposes, such as Milyukov, or a Cossack such as Krasnov to award the Cossacks for their contribution to the White victory.
As for foreign policy, the Whites would have recognized the independence of Finland and a Poland restricted by military force to the Curzon Line. As for the question of national minorities, I doubt that they would have allowed Ukrainian indepedence at all: Kiev was simply too important as a symbol of Slavic power. However, how would the Whites have conducted economic policy? My own view is that the presence of a White Russia allied with France on the international stage would have at least mitigated the effects of the 1920s-1930s farm crisis due to the influx of Russian agricultural products into the markets of the UK and the USA.