How would no Soviet Union affect decolonisation?

In our timeline, most of the rebel groups against European colonial empires were provided huge amounts of support by the USSR. Money, guns, military training, coaching on spreading a political movement among the disenfranchised poor, etc.

But what if the Soviet Union never came to be, and some conservative government was in charge of the Russian Empire? How much weaker would the rebel powers be? Would countries like France and Portugal that really wanted to dig in be able to hold on to their colonies?
 
In our timeline, most of the rebel groups against European colonial empires were provided huge amounts of support by the USSR. Money, guns, military training, coaching on spreading a political movement among the disenfranchised poor, etc.

But what if the Soviet Union never came to be, and some conservative government was in charge of the Russian Empire? How much weaker would the rebel powers be? Would countries like France and Portugal that really wanted to dig in be able to hold on to their colonies?

In this world, does Russia still achieve the same levels of industrial advancement that it did in OTL, and is there still a Cold War in which Russia has de facto ownership of Eastern Europe, and the West is trying to limit her global influence?
 
I'd place less emphasis on the Soviet Union and more on the Second World War. It was really a fantastic combination for decolonisation, like rolling all sixes. Simultaneously it

  • bankrupted the major European colonial powers
  • wrecked and severely weakened them with the huge damage of the war
  • killed lots of their people
  • made them thoroughly war-weary
  • strengthened the ability of their domestic left-wing movements to make demands because of the huge sacrifices of the people during the war
  • largely discredited old-fashioned imperialist racism by association with the more extreme racism of the National Socialists whose horrors were shoved in the world's face to the point that it was hard to look away
  • weakened belief in their invincibility with humiliating defeats (especially France losing its homeland to Germany and the United Kingdom losing much of its Asian empire such as Singapore, to Japan, in both cases embarrassingly quickly)
  • rendered them dependent on the goodwill of an anti-imperialist power, the United States, against the Soviet Union, and
  • vindicated the anti-colonialist Soviet Union and United States and gave them a huge boost in prestige due to their roles in the war
Get rid of that and imperialism probably survives a lot longer, perhaps indefinitely.

If the OP wants the Russian Empire (which the OP mentioned specifically) to survive with a PoD after 1900, it's probably best to avoid any major disturbance, so I think we probably do need to avoid the First World War, let alone anything like the Second. Therefore yes I think they probably would hold on to their colonies for the most part. (And I don't think that it's impossible to avoid the First World War; its allegedly predetermined nature is frequently exaggerated. Nevertheless, the OP assumes that the Russian Empire survives and takes it from there, rather than asking how it survives, so for the most part that's what I'll do.)

The imperialist powers were pretty good at keeping imperialism going; it's not like that foolish stereotype where the oppressed colonised people would easily gain independence if only they were brave enough to stand up against their European overlords, so of course they would still become independent in the '50s-'60s even if not for the war.

Without a whole group of factors conspiring to weaken the imperialist powers that occurred in OTL and wouldn't have done if not for the war, imperialism is going to be much harder to get rid of, if it can even be got rid of at all. And I certainly don't mean the sort of thing as the OTL Commonwealth, an ego-saving gesture of symbolic links thrown in as a last-resort concession to save the imperialists' pride; I mean genuine, full-hearted, fully exploitative, virulently racist imperialism.

In general I think that people nowadays are prone to grossly overestimating what guerrillas can do against occupying powers because of the failures of modern Western powers in suppressing insurgencies. It's extremely obvious that safe havens and sources of money, weapons and supplies are very important, but that's not all. One should also remember two tactics which were crucial to the British Empire's success in crushing the Malayan rebels: (1) mass reprisals, including mass detention, torture and even murder, against any population centres—including small villages full of unarmed civilians—where resistance had taken place, in order to terrify enemies of the state into submission, and (2) association of the communists with the ethnic Chinese minority rather than the ethnic Malay majority and thus 'otherising' the rebellion by manipulating majority mislike for an ethnic minority, as per the traditional imperialist policy of 'divide and rule'. By these means the British succeeded in Malaya at far lower price and effort than the United States put in its failure in Vietnam.

The lesson of history is that mass brutality, demonisation of ethnic minorities to 'divide and rule' and tactics which would nowadays be called 'war crimes' are much more effective than friendly, one-hand-behind-the-back, human-rights-compliant strategies.

There have been plenty of occasions in history when occupying powers have faced guerrilla opposition and won. It would be a mistake to judge the likely success of such interventions from the success of such interventions as carried out by modern Western powers that use vastly different and vastly less effective methodology than past imperial powers. In addition, the attitudes to casualties of modern Western great powers is hugely different to what such attitudes were in the past; the very idea that even with 1:10 kill ratios a few hundred military deaths make a great tragedy would have sounded bizarre to people not so very long ago. The liberalisation of society, the turn against bellicose nationalism and militarism, that would create this change in attitude is not something I think was inevitable.

In summary, I think that OTL was the improbably lucky outcome, really; if one rolled the dice a dozen dozen times, only once or twice would one get an outcome with the confluence of factors that was so favourable to decolonisation as we got in OTL.

Because I have been (ludicrously) accused of being pro-imperialist for expressing similar sentiments in the past, let me make absolutely clear that this post is not a defence of imperialism. It is quite possible to say that something could have been much more successful than it was in OTL while not at all liking that thing. Similarly, I can hold that Marxism-Leninism was evil and simultaneously hold that it wasn't inevitable for Marxism-Leninism to fall in the Soviet Union, and I can hold that slavery is utterly wrong and simultaneously hold that the situation in the modern world, where the government of every major power agrees with this, was not inevitable.
 
But in Malaya didn't the British also promise to grant independence, thus neutralising nationalist opinion? I don't think that would happen if they were trying to directly hang onto the place. Do we have any other examples of imperial powers snuffing out major insurgencies post-1950?
 
But in Malaya didn't the British also promise to grant independence, thus neutralising nationalist opinion? I don't think that would happen if they were trying to directly hang onto the place. Do we have any other examples of imperial powers snuffing out major insurgencies post-1950?

Post OTL 1950 is also after the colonial powers generally couldn't be as brutal because it was after the nazis and anything that reminded anyone of them would quickly get leaders out of office or support dropped quickly. There also wouldn't be masses of weapons provided because of ideological reasons to these insurgencies from either the USSR or the USA ITTL without the USSR.
 
In our timeline, most of the rebel groups against European colonial empires were provided huge amounts of support by the USSR.

Not really true. The USSR did champion "anti-colonialism", and got involved on occasion, but its involvement was never as importat as claimed by them or feared by anti-Communists.

The USSR had essentially nothing to do with the decolonization of South Asia, or the East Indies, nor with the Algerian rebellion against France.

The Communist insurrection in Malaya was not "anti-colonial"; it was supported almost exclusively by the ethnic Chinese community, not the Malays.

The Italian colonies were all released as a consequence of WW II.

Britain gave up all its mandates in the Middle East partly through fatigue, partly from US pressure, and partly because the minor Arab states became too advanced to be dominated in the old ways. There was an insurrection in Aden, but it was supported by Egypt, not the USSR.

In the Caribbean: Britain granted independence to most of its colonies peacefully (it kept a few); France and the Netherlands kept theirs. Soviet propaganda had an effect, but there was no direct involvement, even after Cuba went Communist.

That leaves Indochina and sub-Saharan Africa. I don't recall any Soviet involvement in the Mau Mau insurrection, nor any important Soviet backing on figures such as Senghor in Senegal, Nkrumah in Ghana, or Nyerere in Tanganyika - none of whom were insurrectionists.

France decided to grant nominal independence to its colonies while retaining economic domination and intervening as needed to keep them in line. This policy was decided on without any military pressure from Soviet-aided rebels.

The Soviets meddled in the Congo, but mostly what that did was create panic over Lumumba's alleged Communist connections.

Soviet involvement was important only in the Portuguese colonies (Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique). Even there, insurrection flourished with very limited Soviet support. The major involvement of the USSR was in Angola after independence, backing the MPLA against rival insurrectionists UNITA.

But what if the Soviet Union never came to be, and some conservative government was in charge of the Russian Empire? How much weaker would the rebel powers be? Would countries like France and Portugal that really wanted to dig in be able to hold on to their colonies?

France, as noted, decided to convert its formal colonial rule into informal domination (or not give up at all - France still has many colonies). The big fight was in Algeria, and the USSR wasn't involved.

As to Portugal - it was a small, poor country, and by 1974 was worn out. The "revolution" against Salazar was in part a repudiation of the colonial war.

There was Communist involvement in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, but it never amounted to major armed aid. The international pressure from non-Communist nations was also a big factor, and the final success came after the USSR was gone.

ISTM that if anything, the absence of the USSR and a perceived danger from Communism, decolonization would proceed faster, as there would be less suspicion and opposition from anti-Communists in the U.S.
 
Without communist dogma, what other motivation is there to support revolution?

Which Eastern European mining company would support Angolan and Congo rebels to gain access to their minerals?


Which other rubber company would help Ho Chi Min evict Michelin from Indochina?

In Sudan, Communist China supported Arab militias to gain access to oil.

Which other Mafia would help Fidel Castro evict Battista's American Mafia backers?

Which giant agro-business would help Robert Mugabe oust white plantation owners from Rhodesia/Zimbabwe's fertile farmland?
 
Post OTL 1950 is also after the colonial powers generally couldn't be as brutal because it was after the nazis and anything that reminded anyone of them would quickly get leaders out of office or support dropped quickly. There also wouldn't be masses of weapons provided because of ideological reasons to these insurgencies from either the USSR or the USA ITTL without the USSR.

Was the inability to be brutal due to the Nazis or due to rising standards of human rights for natives combined with increased international media? The humanitarian protests against the Congo Free State happened a long time before.
 
But in Malaya didn't the British also promise to grant independence, thus neutralising nationalist opinion? I don't think that would happen if they were trying to directly hang onto the place. Do we have any other examples of imperial powers snuffing out major insurgencies post-1950?

The Americans didn't want to make Vietnam a colony, and said it would be independent, and would presumably have kept their word, though in practice South Vietnam would obviously be under heavy American influence. Similarly the British said Malaya would be independent, though obviously a Malaya made independent by elites cooperating with the imperialists would be far less independent of the imperialists in fact than a Malaya made independent by a successful rebellion against the British Empire. Yet the Americans failed in Vietnam in spite of spending far more money and lives than the British did in Malaya. There was a clear superiority in strategy.

I'd agree with Legofan4 in that after 1950 the imperialist powers were heavily declining in both their ability and their willingness to suppress colonial uprisings, so it's difficult to find examples. The British in particular generally didn't have the stomach for colonial wars after the end of the Second World War; but Malaya shows that when they did have the stomach to suppress colonial uprisings as they were accustomed, customary imperialist brutality proved much more effective than human-rights-compliant strategies, as it did in suppressing the Boer insurgency earlier. If the population is the sea in which the guerrillas swim, drain the sea and the guerrillas aren't going to be happy.

It may be more convenient to liberal sensibilities (and I say this as a liberal) to imagine that liberal methods are more effective as well as more moral, but the bloodstained book of history doesn't seem to agree.

Was the inability to be brutal due to the Nazis or due to rising standards of human rights for natives combined with increased international media? The humanitarian protests against the Congo Free State happened a long time before.

Mmhmm. Those protests certainly didn't result in Congolese independence, they resulted in the transfer from an oddity (personal/corporate ownership) to a more standard imperialist administration, thus increasing rather than decreasing the amount of land under standard imperialist control and arguably strengthening the hold of imperialism in Africa by making it less vulnerable.

Count me distinctly sceptical of the idea that the imperialist powers would give up their hard-won empires just because of negative press reports. Outside the United States I'm uncertain that there would even be many negative press reports; certainly the public in France, the United Kingdom et cetera were perfectly willing to condone mass atrocities against colonial uprisings before, even long after the advent of democracy. Even openly socialist governments in the United Kingdom and France didn't go for instant decolonisation.

Modern liberal sensibilities make it pleasant to think that imperialism fell as democracy rose because 'the people' are naturally good and all problems can be blamed on un-democratic 'elites', but that's either a mistake or a lie. In fact, the worst of imperialism, controlling ever-greater swathes of the African interior rather than merely a few trading posts for commercial gain, came after major steps in democratisation of the societies of the two most important imperialist powers. Just as with how the most vicious expansion and crimes against Native Americans came with the rise of universal suffrage in the United States, the same sort of thing occurred in Europe: 'the people' proved much more bloodthirsty, nationalistic and hungry for land and national prestige than elites who were more pragmatic and, though still cruel, likelier to be motivated in their cruelty only by self-interest rather than by belligerent expansionist nationalism. In Germany, too, ordinary nationalists proved more interested in colonisation, settlement and genocide in Africa than the reactionary Prussian aristocracy. Even in Imperial Russia the Emperor apologised to foreign ambassadors on account of the belligerent nationalistic character of the press, whose nationalistic and expansionist influence on the imperial government and distaste for compromise between great powers was the direct cause of the Bosnian crisis and thus played an important role in causing the First World War.

Imperialism exploited the colonised peoples for the benefit of the peoples of the imperial powers. As long as those people still benefited, and without the truly extreme atrocities of the National Socialists serving to discredit them and without the war removing their ability to hold on indefinitely, I think imperialism could continue.

It's why one can plausibly argue that avoiding the world wars and even the National Socialists might not actually make a TL better than OTL. Obviously it would be far better than OTL for Europeans, but probably not for Asians and Africans.

This isn't a very pleasant thought, is it? That the West was so determined to hold on to the rest of the world that the only way to make the rest of the world free of the West was to make the West suffer badly? Ah well; what's done is done.
 
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Yet the Americans failed in Vietnam in spite of spending far more money and lives than the British did in Malaya. There was a clear superiority in strategy.

Or maybe the different geography had something to do with it: that there was an adjacent Communist state pouring hundreds of thousands of troops into South Vietnam? Also supplying vast amounts of arms to the local insurgents?

It's really hard to put out a fire when someone is next to you pouring fuel on it.

(US strategy in Vietnam was wrongheaded, but that's another whole kettle of fish.)
 
Or maybe the different geography had something to do with it: that there was an adjacent Communist state pouring hundreds of thousands of troops into South Vietnam? Also supplying vast amounts of arms to the local insurgents?

It's really hard to put out a fire when someone is next to you pouring fuel on it.

(US strategy in Vietnam was wrongheaded, but that's another whole kettle of fish.)

Obviously when dealing with real-life examples it is very unlikely to be possible to say "Oh, so the only difference between the two scenarios is X and all control variables are controlled, now let's observe the dependent variable". There are always multiple things that are different.

Yes, I'm aware of the importance of those factors. In fact I said:

me said:
It's extremely obvious that safe havens and sources of money, weapons and supplies are very important, but that's not all. [description of different strategies starting from here]

(formatting changed since it evidently wasn't obvious enough before)

Your implication that I was ignoring North Vietnam is a mistake at best or deceitful at worst.
 
The advent of the Cold War certainly had a major impact on decolonization, particularly a psychological one.

The United States wanted to paint a picture of the Soviet Union and its Communist allies as oppressors of freedom and democracy. However, in the postwar period this seemed nothing short of hypocritical when it was the NATO countries who possessed colonies and were "oppressing" colonial peoples around the world. The Soviet Union (at least on paper) on the other hand championed the equality of peoples, regardless of race, ethnicity and religion. It claimed that all people should work together to construct a socialist utopia. This message appealed broadly to nationalists in the European colonies as economic inequalities were often rife there.

To counter the Soviet ideological threat, he United States, particularly during the Kennedy years often championed itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy, and condemned colonialism, championing self-determination. This was not new, as it harkened back to Woodrow Wilson's championing of self-determination in 1917. With the advent of the United Nations in 1945, both sides attempted to gain support amongst the newly independent nations, however the Soviet Union seemed to have the upper hand for a while.

If the Soviet Union had never existed and Russia remained ideologically in step with the rest of Europe (let us say a right-wing monarchy or dictatorship), it probably would have not bothered giving aid to countries like Guinea, Congo, Egypt etc, in effect propping up the anti-colonial anti-Western movement in the "third world". Without the Soviets (and later the Chinese), most anti-Western third world regimes would have never lasted or have been established in the first place. This could have had a few effects on decolonisation. Firstly, there wouldn't be as much pressure to decolonise. On the other hand, European countries may not be fearful of handing over power to natives as the new countries would more than likely remain dependent on the former metropolis, and one wouldn't have to worry about the countries becoming pro-Soviet puppets and nationalising European economic assets.
 
In our timeline, most of the rebel groups against European colonial empires were provided huge amounts of support by the USSR. Money, guns, military training, coaching on spreading a political movement among the disenfranchised poor, etc.

But what if the Soviet Union never came to be, and some conservative government was in charge of the Russian Empire? How much weaker would the rebel powers be? Would countries like France and Portugal that really wanted to dig in be able to hold on to their colonies?

For Portugal the guerilla movements like UPA (later FNLA) received indirect Soviet and Chinese aid early on through Tunisia and Ghana, including the bulk of its weaponry from Tunisia. From Tunisia they received 1,500 weapons (rifles, machine guns, pistols and ammunition). In September 1960, Lumumba's government in the newly independent Congo allowed Holden Roberto make make radio broadcasts from Leopoldville. The U.S. thinking that Portuguese colonialism would collapse had the CIA place Holden Roberto on its payroll, giving him $10,000 per year in 1962 and supplied some light arms. This was winded down during the Johnson and Nixon administration. However, the Americans clearly wanted to have a backup plan should Portugal leave.

The Soviets were far more lavish with their aid, assisting the MPLA founded in 1956 with $67.5 million until 1974. The Soviets and their allies provided the MPLA with almost all of their armaments and military training. They also gave aid to the Republic of Congo (ex French) and Zambia, where the MPLA was able to launch its attacks from.

The most successful guerilla group against the Portuguese was the PAIGC in Portuguese Guinea. It too was dependent on aid from the Soviet Bloc, receiving an estimated $40-$60 billion in direct aid from the USSR alone. It also received military training and humanitarian aid from the Soviets. The principal base for its guerrillas was the Republic of Guinea (ex French), that country was also a huge beneficiary of Soviet aid, after it gained independence from the French in 1958. FRELIMO in Mozambique too received Soviet aid, some $40 million before 1974, but it also received aid from the People's Republic of China, most of it funnelled through Tanzania. The Soviets were training some 300 members of FRELIMO per year by 1974 and China another 50. Keep in mind that by 1970 Tanzania itself was completely dependent on foreign aid to run its economy, as it accounted for the majority of its budget. Without Soviet aid and assistance to guerilla movements and hostile African states, these movements probably would have been crushed with ease. As things were after 1972 guerilla actions in Angola were almost non-existent.

Without Soviet aid, these nationalist movements would have been highly limited, as their ability to gain arms and armament would have been curtailed. As things stood, guerilla operations in all three theatres was in the lease economically developed parts of the colonies, the exception being the UPA incursions into Northwest Angola's coffee-producing region in 1961-1962. None of the movements managed to attack or threaten any of the major cities or towns during the 1961-1974 period either. Essentially, they would have been unable to survive without funds, or anything to pillage. Finally, hampering the creation of nationalist movements were the complex ethno-linguistic and religious divisions. Portugal had woefully neglected African education with literacy rates of the African population standing at 2-3% of Guinea-Bissau in 1974, 5% in Mozambique and 10% in Angola. However, these were an improvement from 1959 when they stood at around 1-2% for Angola's Africans. Contrast this with Kenya or Southern Rhodesia in 1960 where around 25% of Africans were literate.
 
Obviously when dealing with real-life examples it is very unlikely to be possible to say "Oh, so the only difference between the two scenarios is X and all control variables are controlled, now let's observe the dependent variable". There are always multiple things that are different.

Yes, I'm aware of the importance of those factors. In fact I said:
me said:
It's extremely obvious that safe havens and sources of money, weapons and supplies are very important, but that's not all. [description of different strategies starting from here]

(formatting changed since it evidently wasn't obvious enough before)

Not in the post I responded to.

Your implication that I was ignoring North Vietnam is a mistake at best or deceitful at worst.
There was a long paragraph comparing US failure in Vietnam with British success in Malaya, with no mention of North Vietnam. Nor in the rest of the post. Nor in the paragraph in the other post that sentence is quoted from; only a passing reference to "United States... failure in Vietnam", separated by a 95-word sentence.

But I guess I must be really stupid to miss something so obvious.
 
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