How would history change if Soviet Union never existed?

Would the world be better place if Soviet Union never existed?

  • Yes

    Votes: 36 52.9%
  • No

    Votes: 13 19.1%
  • Not sure

    Votes: 19 27.9%

  • Total voters
    68
Let's say either October Revolution doesn't happen or the Whites win Civil War, what would happen? What would've happened to former Russian Empire territories? What condition would Russia be after the end of it's empire? Would've Hitler rose to power? How would WW2 go? Would there be a different Cold War and would the Space Race exist in this timeline? Would the territories held by Russia seceded like they did in our timeline when 15 Republics got independence from Soviet Union? How would our modern day world be?
 
One way to prevent the October Revolution from happening is to have the Provisional Government of Russia make peace with the Central Powers sometime in the spring or summer of 1917. (This is proposed in this post.) This would make it harder for the French government to continue the war in the face of the mutinies that took place in May and June of 1917 and for the British Empire to overcome its manpower crisis. Thus, it is quite possible that the World War would end in a negotiated peace.

The Provisional Government would continue with its policy of granting considerable autonomy to nations on the periphery of Russia. While the larger of these, such as Ukraine and Poland might push for complete independence, the smaller nations, such as Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, might prefer to retain some connection with Russia, particularly where defense was concerned.

The Russian Republic would become an agricultural powerhouse. However, industry would develop slowly. Indeed, many of those who had been drawn to the cities to work in defense plants would return to the countryside, there to farm the plots given to them by the inevitable land reform. Thus, Russia would end up with the sort of land-owning peasantry that, in our time line, was so much in evidence in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.
 
If no powerful communist country arises the liberal democracies in the west will never be as willing to regard fascism as the lesser of two evils, be it in Italy, Germany, Spain, Asia or Latin America. There won't be the red scares and witch hunts of OTL. So yes, it would indeed be a better world.
 
The idea that Russia needed the Communists to industrialise is complete rubbish. Under the Tsars Russia was one of the two fastest growing economies in Europe and (even if you ignore the extreme shrinkage of the economy under War Communism) the economy did not develop as rapidly under the NEP under Lenin and no more rapidly under Stalin. If Russia during the 1919-39 interbellum period is an industrialising power significantly engaged in global trade (which the 1930s USSR wasn't) then the Great Depression either doesn't happen or isn't as severe and the Nazis are butterflied away. German revanche is more peaceful and probably stops at the Sudeten. If the Russians had been at Versailles I don't think that they would have supported the award of a Polish corridor either which would have significantly weakened German anti-Versailles sentiment.
 
The idea that Russia needed the Communists to industrialise is complete rubbish. Under the Tsars Russia was one of the two fastest growing economies in Europe and (even if you ignore the extreme shrinkage of the economy under War Communism) the economy did not develop as rapidly under the NEP under Lenin and no more rapidly under Stalin. If Russia during the 1919-39 interbellum period is an industrialising power significantly engaged in global trade (which the 1930s USSR wasn't) then the Great Depression either doesn't happen or isn't as severe and the Nazis are butterflied away. German revanche is more peaceful and probably stops at the Sudeten. If the Russians had been at Versailles I don't think that they would have supported the award of a Polish corridor either which would have significantly weakened German anti-Versailles sentiment.

If the Russians are at Versailles I doubt Poland exists.
 
If the Russians are at Versailles I doubt Poland exists.
I think that that ship had already sailed, all they could do would be to weaken it as an emerging power. Undertakings had been given by the Entente to the Polish Nationalist leadership and, while these could have been reneged upon, public opinion in the USA would have been alienated, their diplomatic standing tarnished and there would be practical military difficulties for Russia in facing a revanchist or revengeful Germany across a rebellious Poland. I think a weak Polish buffer state would have been their most practical objective by 1918.
 
Obviously a resounding yes. My best guess is that Russia makes peace with Germany, it may lose some of the more restless bits on its fringe, the Finns, the Lithuanians and the Poles are most poised to seek independence and get encouragement from Germany, but the Ukraine likely stays Russian. The loss of Poland is a blow because it was part of industrializing Russia yet I see no reason why the industrial heart of Russia does not shift to the Volga river. Like Germany the provisional government is going to convene a constitutional convention and draft a new government. It should, like Weimar, be influenced by the "radical" left and Socialists, likely seeing a lot of liberal, democratic and progressive ideals put to paper and like Weimar should have a right wing embittered by the loss of aristocracy and afraid of the ascendant power of the common man. The struggle will be between the old upper class and the new worker/peasant. If you get land reforms then you have created a huge land owning class of soon to be capitalist farmers. Russia will industrialize, it has the resources to do so and I would predict that France is displaced by Germany as the biggest investor/partner as the years progress. Germany will shift eastward in its outlook, Poland becomes the pivot between these two, the literal cross roads, and it should see prosperity as the sort of middle man. You have no civil war or dictatorship that seeks to cleanse Russia of state enemies. You have no revolutionary state at war with the world.

Now you might see the growth of both a radical revolutionary left and reactionary usurping right, a proto-communist and proto-fascist stand off not at all dissimilar to what went on inside Germany as the nation struggled to build a new state and forge its path forward. The global economy should be less depressed so that pressure is off but Russia still has a lot of poverty and economic woes to sort before it can become a prosperous democracy, all pitfalls to let the crazy out of the bag. In my own thinking with a surviving Imperial Germany I have no Mussolini or Hitler and no communist revolution, thus the only battleground for the right and left revolutions is Russia, again akin to Weimar. But unlike Nazis the Russian right should be more deeply Christian rather than some vague occult thing, it should be tied closer to restoring the Czar, and so forth, thus it would tend to act more like the French right, opposed to the Republic, conservative, patriotic, nationalist. Longer term Russia might look more like France in its fractured political parties ranged from far left to far right, moving on its own very Russian way. It is one of the things I think about yet fear makes any alternate world quite unfamiliar to what we think we know is history.
 

Deleted member 94680

I voted “no” purely because I doubt with the absence of communism and the inter-war ‘tri-polar’ World - and therefore the window of time where allies became enemies - that a comparable “alt-cold war” could develop. This, I think, would mean more major wars in the comparable time period and therefore a higher death toll
 
Soviet dictatorship killed 20-30 millions of people (not counting WW2 casualties)... But this country changed history for centuries far forward. World would be a different place.
 
It's all in the details of the POD. Why does the October Revolution not happen? How do the Whites win? Pick one and tell us the actual POD/reasons. Then we answer.

If no powerful communist country arises the liberal democracies in the west will never be as willing to regard fascism as the lesser of two evils, be it in Italy, Germany, Spain, Asia or Latin America. There won't be the red scares and witch hunts of OTL. So yes, it would indeed be a better world.

POD may very well butterfly away fascism altpgether.
 
It's all in the details of the POD. Why does the October Revolution not happen? How do the Whites win? Pick one and tell us the actual POD/reasons. Then we answer.



POD may very well butterfly away fascism altpgether.

I'm not one to say that Boulanger was a fascist, though he wasn't nice, but his example and ideals would likely be developed somewhere and I could see something very similar to fascism develop somewhere even if it doesn't call itself that.
 
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