How would a Red Army Junta have worked?

In my timeline, I have the Red Army taking power from an inept Trotsky, but as happens quite a bit, I find my knowledge of Soviet military severly lacking, so heres the question, how would a Red Army Junta have performed?
 
The Soviets were always monstrously scared of 'Bonpartism' (as they called it), which makes a military coup tough... but not impossible.

As to how a post-coup Junta would work? I don't know. Mybe the Junta would turn the Politburo into what the Politburo made the Supreme Soviet: a rubber stamp for the policy decisions made by other people.
 
A Junta is likely to be based on a staff committee in finest Soviet fashion, so you'd probably see a coalition of Stavka generals forming the core of a military version of the Politburo. The generals will claim as a pretext probably that there was internal upheaval at the top and the initial putsch is necessary for order and stability. The NKVD's leadership and the Commissars are the obvious first targets of any purge as Trotsky is extremely unlikely to develop either as much as Stalin did, so both are both the first, obvious targets of the generals and their removal means the Party has the Andrew Jackson problem: they can make any decree they want but they have no power to enforce them.

The Junta is likely to give lip service to Marxist ideology but in practice the USSR winds up very solidly influenced by its core of ex-Tsarist officials, militarily and economically in all probability stronger in a sense of being more balanced in both sectors without the Stalinist legacies of purges and ham-handed industrialization, and such a USSR will if there is a Nazi Germany be able to springboard from that into control of at least the OTL WarPac with overall less upheaval due to this. Of course such a stronger USSR is unlikely to create geopolitics remotely resembling those of OTL in the first place.
 
A Junta is likely to be based on a staff committee in finest Soviet fashion, so you'd probably see a coalition of Stavka generals forming the core of a military version of the Politburo. The generals will claim as a pretext probably that there was internal upheaval at the top and the initial putsch is necessary for order and stability. The NKVD's leadership and the Commissars are the obvious first targets of any purge as Trotsky is extremely unlikely to develop either as much as Stalin did, so both are both the first, obvious targets of the generals and their removal means the Party has the Andrew Jackson problem: they can make any decree they want but they have no power to enforce them.

The Junta is likely to give lip service to Marxist ideology but in practice the USSR winds up very solidly influenced by its core of ex-Tsarist officials, militarily and economically in all probability stronger in a sense of being more balanced in both sectors without the Stalinist legacies of purges and ham-handed industrialization, and such a USSR will if there is a Nazi Germany be able to springboard from that into control of at least the OTL WarPac with overall less upheaval due to this. Of course such a stronger USSR is unlikely to create geopolitics remotely resembling those of OTL in the first place.

Thanks for the response. There is no Nazi Germany in this scenario. Part of the butterflies.
 
Thanks for the response. There is no Nazi Germany in this scenario. Part of the butterflies.

In that case the Junta-ruled USSR may well last into the 21st Century although after a few generations of rule by the Junta it will be less USSR and more quasi-Tsarist Russia. The democracies will fear less a USSR run on these lines than they did the OTL one.
 
Like any other junta.

Not exactly. There are complicating factors in the hostility to Marxism of anything smacking of military rule and the presence of the NVKD, which juntas in Latin America almost never had to face. In most military dictatorships there's the civilians and there's the army. In the USSR there was the civilians, the NVKD, and the army. Defeating the Party would be just part of what the Red Army would have to do to maintain a hold on power, and defeating the Party also means booting out the Commissars.
 
In that case the Junta-ruled USSR may well last into the 21st Century although after a few generations of rule by the Junta it will be less USSR and more quasi-Tsarist Russia. The democracies will fear less a USSR run on these lines than they did the OTL one.

Well it does invade Finland, The Baltic States, Poland and Romania around 1958 so it won't last to long. The Soviets in this timeline are very different.
 
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