How different would history be without Stalin?

Also, here's another reason Hitler is unlikely to come to power in TTL...

In OTL, Stalin forbade the German Communist Party from cooperating with the Social Democrats to stop the Nazis.

Trotsky or some other non-Stalinist leader might not be that shortsighted. In TTL, the KPD, SPD, and other non-Nazi parties might band together to keep Hitler out of power.

Undeniably Third Period Stalinism (the period when the Communists acted under the assumption that the "social fascists," i.e., the democratic socialists, were the main enemy, not the real fascists or Nazis) was a bad and stupid policy. But would an alliance of the Communists and Socialists have been able to stop Hitler from coming to power? The top people in Germany and a huge petty bourgeois and middle class pro-Nazi movement, with Nazis having thoroughly infiltrated the military and police, would have burgeoned even more rapidly if the Right had perceived a really effective and united left threatening to outflank them. And this united left might actually have been a paper threat: Look at what happened after the end of the Third Period, when the Communists adopted the Dimitrov policy of a united front and popular front against fascism. These "fronts" were completely ineffective anywhere. Leon Blum's France did nothing effective to stop Hitler or Mussolini or Franco or to prepare France for World War Two. So I would guess (nobody can really know) that a Communist-Socialist alliance would not have stopped Hitler from coming to power, and would have been crushed in the street. If the left had then tried a policy of armed civil war, the other side would have had the guns. And if the left began to get some guns (we're talking about 1931-33), following Trotsky's prescription to just steal the guns from the factories where they worked, or from railroad boxcars, then the British, French and Italians would have actually encourage the German military to crack down hard--and with what result? They crack down on the socialists and communists, but not on Hitler. He waltzes to power. Maybe.
 
Hm? Option two "2. A democratic revolution occurred, with success, overthrowing the monarchy and establishing a democratic republic;" could easily be taken as a Kernesky regime wins out scenario: remember, there were two revolutions in 1917.

Bruce

I took option two as assuming that there was nothing like this attempted in our timeline. Of course, even that state may not have remained democratic.
 

Typo

Banned
Undeniably Third Period Stalinism (the period when the Communists acted under the assumption that the "social fascists," i.e., the democratic socialists, were the main enemy, not the real fascists or Nazis) was a bad and stupid policy. But would an alliance of the Communists and Socialists have been able to stop Hitler from coming to power? The top people in Germany and a huge petty bourgeois and middle class pro-Nazi movement, with Nazis having thoroughly infiltrated the military and police, would have burgeoned even more rapidly if the Right had perceived a really effective and united left threatening to outflank them. And this united left might actually have been a paper threat: Look at what happened after the end of the Third Period, when the Communists adopted the Dimitrov policy of a united front and popular front against fascism. These "fronts" were completely ineffective anywhere.
Ultimately Hitler being appointed chancellor was a very close run thing, and there were several crucial votes in the Reichstag where the Communist swung things in the direction of the Nazis. At this point the Reichswehr was certainly not "infiltrated" by the Nazis, nor did they control the police at this point, in fact, the Reichswehr only became allies of the Nazis after the Night of the long Knives. A unified front might very well have being able to deny the Nazis control of the government until the worst of the depression ends.
 
It's already been mentioned that Stalin played a crucial part in Hitler's rise to power, but ultimately, Hitler would've never even been a contender if not for the October Revolution. His story about Germany's ills being the fault of a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy wouldn't have been as successful in an ATL without a Soviet Union. It would've been like trying to get US public opinion behind an invasion of Afghanistan in 1998.
 
An aspect of Hitler's rise to power we're not considering is the divisions among his foes. Without Comintern dictating policy, why must we assume that the German left don't get their elbows out of their arses? Hitler's rise was contingent on many factors.

Opes, ninja'd.



The titular character of Bulgakov's The White Guard is an educated professional who can speak Ukrainian, which should tell us something. The Whites weren't by any stretch of the imagination nice people, but they were not clueless reactionaries. They weren't even sure about restoring the monarchy - opinion was divided - and made a point of not being for the unchanged old regime.

The Russian officer corps was not a pack of aristocratic inbreds: even the 55,000 Russian officers of 1914 had been less homogenous than people think (Denikin came from a rather poorer background than Lenin), and come the revolution a lot of them, especially in the junior ranks, were dead. The 300,000 Russians officers of 1917 were drawn from all sorts of places and by no means all of them were Whites.

The Whites were not of course all after the same thing, but its much truer to say that they represented a sort of prototypical Russian fascism than that they were merely The Russia That Was.

True, but far all that the Whites were incompatent and had no real sense of unity or a post civil-war vision for the country. Nationlist uprisings, and the actions of the anarchists in Ukraine didnt help either.

I've always had the idea that ''White Russia'' would look like warlord-era China, not the Tsarist Empire or Mussolini's Italy.
 
How do you think the Second world war, Germany Occupation, Cold War period, Development of Ballistic Missiles and Space Race, technology today, would be if:
1. Vladimir Lenin never succeeded in the Russian Revolution, and the monarchy remained in power;
With a failed Russian Revolution,
much less people would support the nazi ascension. IOTL, many
did support the nazi for thinking them a "safer" alterntive to the
communists. With a failed RR, communism would be far less threatening,
so nazism might never ascend at all.
 
I've always had the idea that ''White Russia'' would look like warlord-era China, not the Tsarist Empire or Mussolini's Italy.

My thoughts incline the same way. You'll mind I didn't say they had a good shot at winning. :p But they weren't just a lot of seventy-year-old dukes with albatross-mustaches angry that the serfs had been emancipated, not that there weren't a few of them (because there's always a few of them).
 
I've always had the idea that ''White Russia'' would look like warlord-era China, not the Tsarist Empire or Mussolini's Italy.

And, like Warlord-era China, the Whites will gradually see peripheral areas of their occupied by or annexed to neighboring states.
 
My thoughts incline the same way. You'll mind I didn't say they had a good shot at winning. :p But they weren't just a lot of seventy-year-old dukes with albatross-mustaches angry that the serfs had been emancipated, not that there weren't a few of them (because there's always a few of them).

Ah, the good old League of Empire Loyalists every nation needs to one.

And, like Warlord-era China, the Whites will gradually see peripheral areas of their occupied by or annexed to neighboring states.

Depends, I see Turkey trying to take over some areas in the Caucasus, Finland might try for the rest of Karelia. More likely places like Ukraine will be at least de-facto independant or a puppet state to another power. And Central Asia would be a bit of a mess to say the least.
 
The first two options means that Russia remains a member of the victorious allied coalition in WW1 and might reap the expected rewards - which depending upon how weakened Russia is and what role it was able to play in the victory, could range from little more than honored membership in the League of Nations to virtually complete hegemony over many of the newly independent eastern and central European states. It might also mean no fully independent Poland - and certainly no independent Baltic Republics. The Allies were nothing if not hypocritical when they came to implementing Wilson's notions of self-determination.

As others have said, Stalin gets "credit" for industrializing a Russia that was already well on the way. Russia might not industrialize quite as quickly(or violently) as in OTL, but it would become a dominant power in Europe nonetheless - and also be smarter without all the purges of the army and landowning classes.

Defeated Germany would remain ripe for Communist revolution, as would Hungary and Austria. It's hard to say if "no USSR" would make successful revolutions in these places easier or harder. Allies might welcome Germany and the former A-H Empire being further weakened by revolution and civil war, or they might feel the need to intervene on the side of "Whites" (the same monarchist forces they supposedly opposed in WW1) or "Reds" (including socialists) to ensure the old forces did not reassume power. Either way, this could lead to a more thorough and long-lasting occupation of the former central powers as things get sorted out, which in the long run might not be a bad thing.

Completely impossible to project if there would be a WW2 anything like ours.
 
An aspect of Hitler's rise to power we're not considering is the divisions among his foes. Without Comintern dictating policy, why must we assume that the German left don't get their elbows out of their arses? Hitler's rise was contingent on many factors.

I will disagree here. While it's true that the Comintern opposed anything like a United Front, SPD-KPD relations were marred by the early history of the Weimar Republic, where the moderate socialists were happy to see the extremists crushed. Moreover, a lot of communists in Germany thought Hitler was the last gasp of capitalism, and would shortly be overthrown in any case. And if the SPD tried to ally with the Communists, I think you'd see a lot of the German right be even less willing to ally with the SPD.

Re the depression, Japan managed quite considerable growth during the 30s, as did Fascit Italy: being backwards has its advantages. Also, why should they be hit any harder than Germany (OTL one of the worst hit European countries).

The example, IMO, is not Germany or Italy, but Poland. A backwards state with a stagnant industrial sector, a cabal of generals bumbling everything imaginable except shooting dissidents...

In an incredibly wasteful, self-destructive manner. As I said before, why are you assuming that a White or left-democratic Russia would be -less- effective at industrialization than the one run by the inbred Romanovs, which was industrializing at a good clip before 1914?

The problem is, who is going to invest in White Russia? There is a huge albatross, Russian prewar and WW1 debt. The western powers will not want to invest until this is settled, and in OTL Western Europe was hardly flush with capital during this period. What capital was sent to Eastern Europe mostly went to financing government debt...

[1] Stalin wasn't magically perceptive: he was just paranoid. He would have started militarizing in the early 30s if Germany elected St. Francis of Assisi in Hitler's place: he just accelerated this when Hitler started building up his forces.

I actually disagree with this. Soviet rearmament increased enormously shortly after Hitler came to power, and Stalin's own speeches indicate the relationship.

Mind, I have suggested an alternative to Stalin in the past: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=91756&highlight=Bukharin
 
Russia doesn't need to settle its pre-war debts, it just needs to keep paying the interest and provide a decent rate of return upon outside investment - I have no idea if it did before the First World War, although I imagine so. However, whether it is able to continue paying interest depends an awful lot upon when the war ends and whether it has a violent revolution.
 
If Trotsky came to power instead of Stalin, the USSR would probably still be around today, only more developed and prosperous.

BTW, I am about to read the book "The Prophet Unarmed" about Leon.
 
If Trotsky came to power instead of Stalin, the USSR would probably still be around today, only more developed and prosperous.

BTW, I am about to read the book "The Prophet Unarmed" about Leon.

Assuming he didn't pick a war he couldn't win in the name of spreading the revolution...
 

Thande

Donor
Argh. Why does everyone presume he will? He was one of the advocates of moderation during the Polish-Soviet War!

I think people confuse spreading the revolution with Comintern etc with spreading the revolution with fire and the sword.
 

Typo

Banned
With a failed Russian Revolution,
much less people would support the nazi ascension. IOTL, many
did support the nazi for thinking them a "safer" alterntive to the
communists. With a failed RR, communism would be far less threatening,
so nazism might never ascend at all.
Whether the monarchy remains in power or not had nothing to do with Lenin, Lenin did not overthrow the monarchy.
 
I think people confuse spreading the revolution with Comintern etc with spreading the revolution with fire and the sword.

It's just interesting to me how some things get taken out of context. Take the old refrain "The capitalists will sell us the rope we use to hang them." Dire, dark, signs of a Commie plot, etc.

Except it was a quote from Lenin when he was trying to reassure Party members that it was fine for the USSR to seek capitalist investment.
 
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