How would the Soviet Union have fared under Leon Trotsky?

In a world where Leon Trotsky reads out Lenin's will and testament, which recommended against Stalin being named Lenin's successor, to the 12th Party Congress in 1923 and as a result, becomes the leader of the Soviet Union, how would the Soviet Union as a whole have fared under Trotsky's leadership?
 

CaliGuy

Banned
In a world where Leon Trotsky reads out Lenin's will and testament, which recommended against Stalin being named Lenin's successor, to the 12th Party Congress in 1923 and as a result, becomes the leader of the Soviet Union, how would the Soviet Union as a whole have fared under Trotsky's leadership?
Probably worse. Indeed, Trotsky being in power and advocating world revolution could result in more fear and thus more support for Hitler in the West.
 

Deleted member 97083

Probably worse. Indeed, Trotsky being in power and advocating world revolution could result in more fear and thus more support for Hitler in the West.
Would Trotsky be able to contain himself and avoid war until 1933? Hitler may never take power if old conservative or traditional social democrats are in power and actively at war with communists.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Would Trotsky be able to contain himself and avoid war until 1933?

It probably depends on how much of a moron he is.

Hitler may never take power if old conservative or traditional social democrats are in power and actively at war with communists.

I'm not so sure about that. After all, if Germany goes to war against the Communists and then has its economy crash after the end of the war and not recover quickly enough, there could be a potential opening for Hitler to rise to power in Germany based on bread-and-butter issues.
 
More like how Germany did under Hitler; on the warpath after a period time of which would serve as a buildup of military strength to accomplish the goal of spreading the "revolution". In other words, a coming disaster for not only the USSR of which have its economy wrecked but to the world that would be facing the red menace.

As much as I hate Stalin and communism entirely, I often remind myself in discussions like these that we ought to be somewhat pleased that Trotsky never got to rule the USSR.
 
In a world where Leon Trotsky reads out Lenin's will and testament, which recommended against Stalin being named Lenin's successor, to the 12th Party Congress in 1923 and as a result, becomes the leader of the Soviet Union, how would the Soviet Union as a whole have fared under Trotsky's leadership?

The idea that Trotsky could become leader by using Lenin's "Testament" in 1923 is IMO completely wrong. If anything, it will make the Bolshevik leaders angrier at him for "washing the Party's dirty laundry in public." They might feel compelled to remove Stalin as General Secretary--but if anyone will benefit it will be more likely to be Zinoviev. (One thing that is often forgotten btw is that the Testament contained criticism of *all* the Bolshevik leaders--Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin-not just Stalin. See my post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/TOgYt5YAQss/DF7ml8agzqkJ for some specifics...)

I am not saying that there is no possibility of Trotsky becoming leader of the Soviet Union, but using the Testament will not do it. A better POD is for him not to anger Lenin with the "trade union dispute" back in the days when Trotsky's ally Krestinsky was "responsible secretary" of the Bolshevik party. https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/R8y9UR6NylI/Vy6EPVvx7_MJ
 
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Probably worse. Indeed, Trotsky being in power and advocating world revolution could result in more fear and thus more support for Hitler in the West.
More like how Germany did under Hitler; on the warpath after a period time of which would serve as a buildup of military strength to accomplish the goal of spreading the "revolution". In other words, a coming disaster for not only the USSR of which have its economy wrecked but to the world that would be facing the red menace.

As much as I hate Stalin and communism entirely, I often remind myself in discussions like these that we ought to be somewhat pleased that Trotsky never got to rule the USSR.

People keep saying things like this. Have either of you actually read what Trotsky wrote or looked closely at his actions though?

From what I've read, I very much doubt that Trotsky would act at all in this sort of way.

Why?

1) Any leader of the Soviet Union has, as their first priority, the defense of the cradle of the revolution. The Bolsheviks were not raving loonies, but intelligent people whose deep belief in their cause made them willing to make sacrifices and accept compromises in the interests of furthering their cause. People forget that even Stalin was a true believer in Marxist-Leninism. Willfully gambling with the only successful worker's state when the Bolsheviks knew their opponents were clever, determined and well-resourced was not something even Trotsky was going to do. I am not aware of a single Bolshevik leader who didn't believe that the Capitalists wouldn't unite and crush the Soviet state if they were provoked.

2) In a sense, Trotsky's belief in world revolution made him less militaristic than Stalin. The failure of the revolution to take hold outside Russia and Mongolia did not discourage Trotsky as deeply as it discouraged Stalin. Trotsky had much more faith in the ability of the workers in the capitalist countries to throw off their own chains, without Soviet bayonets to "protect" against counter-revolution.

3) Trotsky was more of an internationalist - that extended beyond his faith in the workers of other countries - it also meant he believed more in keeping the Soviet Union open to trade and travel. That would be of enormous help to Soviet diplomacy and the Soviet sciences (which were deeply damaged by the Stalinist travel bans).

4) Trotsky was too abrasive to wield power in the way Stalin could. Other Bolshevik leaders might accept Trotsky as a weak "first among equals" leader if Lenin had really thrown his weight behind Trotsky (almost certainly this requires Lenin to be healthier and live longer and for Trotsky and Lenin to have a better relationship for Lenin's last years). As such, Trotsky backing any provocative foreign policy moves would provoke a strong reaction from people who didn't like him much and who he was temperamentally incapable of eliminating in the cold-blooded way Stalin operated.

5) Trotsky put more faith in democratic institutions than Stalin (indeed, strong worker/soldier Soviets are probably necessary for Trotsky to gain power, since they are the only likely power base that he could gain that he could and would use - his belief in the Soviets meant they reciprocated by believing in him, and unlike the army, they have legitimacy in the Bolshevik system). I have difficulty for a strong Soviet democracy being keen on exporting revolution when they are still feeling the wounds of WW1 and the Civil War so deeply and when many members of the Soviets, like Trotsky, will believe that Marxist revolutions will occur naturally in their own time and that the main job of the Soviet Union is to survive and prosper so it is in position to aid those revolutions when they arrive.

In a world where Leon Trotsky reads out Lenin's will and testament, which recommended against Stalin being named Lenin's successor, to the 12th Party Congress in 1923 and as a result, becomes the leader of the Soviet Union, how would the Soviet Union as a whole have fared under Trotsky's leadership?

As David T says, this PoD isn't enough to get Trotsky into the top job. You need a better Trotsky-Lenin relationship, probably a longer lived Lenin and probably more hands in the workers and soldiers Soviets when Lenin dies and the succession struggle breaks out.

What would Trotsky look like if he did gain power?

He'd be a weaker leader (not necessarily a bad thing) than Stalin, there'd be no cult of personality, there'd be more debate within the Party, likely that means Moscow is less able to keep foreign Communist Parties on such a tight leash, Soviet science would do better, trade with the West would be more, Collectivization would happen as soon as possible (which may mean no Holodomor, since the massive deaths were a result of Collectivization happening just as drought was ravaging the country) and the NEP would be ended as soon as possible (also probably a good thing, while centralized planning was bad for the Soviets in the long run, it was the most effective path to getting the Soviets ready to resist the German invasion). Almost certainly there is less in the way of purges and while the Bolsheviks were always going to become more conservative during the late 1920s (most of the very liberal reforms rolled back during the Stalinist years were seen by most Bolsheviks as having gone too far even before Stalin consolidated power due to the way they aggravated the ordinary people of the Soviet Union), likely they don't become as conservative as they did under Stalin. Likely, there isn't such persecution of people on the basis of nationality and the smothering of non-Russian culture is largely avoided.

Also, I don't think Trotsky would last in the top job anywhere near as long as Stalin did.

So hardly a rose garden, but I think generally a better Soviet Union for the people inside it and for the neighbours.

But again, it is very, very difficult to get Trotsky into the top job. Zinoviev is a far more likely successor to Lenin.

fasquardon
 
In a world where Leon Trotsky reads out Lenin's will and testament, which recommended against Stalin being named Lenin's successor, to the 12th Party Congress in 1923 and as a result, becomes the leader of the Soviet Union, how would the Soviet Union as a whole have fared under Trotsky's leadership?
Say what you can regarding Stalin, but at least he recognized that the USSR was too weak in a position to carry out the "world revolution" via covert support or overt military action, unlike Trotsky, who would have put the USSR on a path to war with his foreign policy of "Permanent Revolution".
 
Say what you can regarding Stalin, but at least he recognized that the USSR was too weak in a position to carry out the "world revolution" via covert support or overt military action, unlike Trotsky, who would have put the USSR on a path to war with his foreign policy of "Permanent Revolution".

I just posted right before you about how Trotsky didn't actually believe anything remotely like this...

Let's get it straight, Trotsky was a guy who did some really nasty stuff for his revolution. He wasn't cursed with an idiot ball however.

fasquardon
 
Seeing as he wasn't even a Bolshevik until after the February revolution, and owed most of his power
to Lenin's patronage, so the chances of him coming out on top in the first place are negligible IMHO.
 

Redbeard

Banned
I doubt Trotsky could or would have focused as much on industrialisation as Stalin did. That might put the SU in a much weaker position if/when someone like Hitler attacks.

Trotsky probably will put more effort in "spreading the revolution" however. If that succeeds say during the depression we have an entirely new situation and a world we will hardly recognise. If it doesn't, anyone, incl. a Hitler type, will find it easier to find allies vs. the SU.

And please don't say it wouldn't be possible to spread the Trotskist ideas - we've just had Corbyn, a Trotskist, almost win a general election in UK - anything can happen!!!! :eek:
 

Deleted member 97083

What would Trotsky look like if he did gain power?
Probably like this:
cZarwJZm.jpg
 
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but just wanted to address this part of the argument because it was easy to be flipped against what you said -
1) Any leader of the Soviet Union has, as their first priority, the defense of the cradle of the revolution. The Bolsheviks were not raving loonies, but intelligent people whose deep belief in their cause made them willing to make sacrifices and accept compromises in the interests of furthering their cause. People forget that even Stalin was a true believer in Marxist-Leninism. Willfully gambling with the only successful worker's state when the Bolsheviks knew their opponents were clever, determined and well-resourced was not something even Trotsky was going to do. I am not aware of a single Bolshevik leader who didn't believe that the Capitalists wouldn't unite and crush the Soviet state if they were provoked.
couldn't this also work for the Nazis and other fascists? They were also headed by visionary leaders and a vast army of intelligent bureaucrats who deeply believed in what they were doing. It just seemed that if this is assumed for everyone then war and overexpansion shouldn't have happened, for either the imagined USSR or OTL's fascist states.
 
I doubt Trotsky could or would have focused as much on industrialisation as Stalin did. That might put the SU in a much weaker position if/when someone like Hitler attacks.
Trotsky and the Left Opposition were derided as 'super industrialisers' by the Stalinists before they were expelled and the Stalinists poached whatever policies they thought might be successful. This was because as early as 1922, Trotsky was highlighting the need for the Soviet State to encourage industrialisation, particularly electrification, the railway network and heavy industry such as steel, coal mining and such. In the wake of the NEP, Trotsky saw taxation as a particularly useful method to facilitate this: "Special emphasis must be laid on the taxation policy of the workers’ state and the concentration of all the credit institutions in the hands of the state. These are two powerful mediums for securing the ascendancy of state forms of economy, that is, of forms socialist in their tendency, over private capitalist forms. The taxation policy provides the opportunity for siphoning off increasingly greater portions of private capital incomes for the purposes of state economy, not only in the sphere of agriculture (taxes in kind) but also in the sphere of commerce and industry." - https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/ffyci-2/21.htm

"By state economy we mean of course transportation, foreign and domestic trade, and finance, in addition to industry. This whole "combine" in its totality as well as in its parts adapts itself to the peasant market and to the individual peasant as a taxpayer. But this adaptation has as its fundamental aim to raise, consolidate, and develop state industry as the keystone of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the basis of socialism. It is radically false to think that it is possible to develop and perfect certain parts of this “combine” in isolation: be it transportation or finances or anything else. Their progress and retrogression are in close interdependence. That is the source of the immense importance in principle of Gosplan, whose role it is so hard to make understood among us." - https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/newcourse/ch07.htm

"Only in proportion as industry makes real progress and as the heavy industries – which form the only firm basis of the proletarian dictatorship – are restored, and in proportion as the work of electrification is completed will it become both possible and, indeed, inevitable to alter the relative significance in our economic life of agriculture and industry and to shift the centre of gravity from the former to the latter. The Party must work systematically and perseveringly, whatever the sacrifice or labour, to accelerate this process, especially as regards the rapid restoration of heavy industry." - https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/04/industry.htm

Suffice to say, in regards to the OP and a lot of the responses in this thread: while I think it important to take into account Trotsky's positions that arose in the face of Stalinist accumulation of power, people should also be looking at his positions and ideas during the 1921-1924 period. He was very much aware of the necessity for the Soviet State to develop its industry and stabilise the agricultural sector. He was aware of the necessities of international trade and even international investment. He advocated what some people in modern times would just consider 'progressive taxes' in order to facilitate development of industry that would in turn work to influence and improve agricultural production and rural integration. He was already advocating an increased democracy within the party, increasing the working class character of the party and a reduction of the power of the bureaucrats. He wouldn't just suicidally send the Red Army into the bayonets of Europe.

And please don't say it wouldn't be possible to spread the Trotskist ideas - we've just had Corbyn, a Trotskist, almost win a general election in UK - anything can happen!!!! :eek:
Corbyn isn't a trot, although he's moved in similar circles.
 
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but just wanted to address this part of the argument because it was easy to be flipped against what you said - couldn't this also work for the Nazis and other fascists? They were also headed by visionary leaders and a vast army of intelligent bureaucrats who deeply believed in what they were doing. It just seemed that if this is assumed for everyone then war and overexpansion shouldn't have happened, for either the imagined USSR or OTL's fascist states.

Hitler really believed that Germany had to expand or die. As did the Japanese militarists.

Other fascists, like Franco and Mussolini, not so much. Franco wanted to keep what he had and to "cleanse" Spanish society. Mussolini saw territorial gains as good enough to gamble outrageously for, which added up to much the same thing in the end, but his beliefs really were different.

And then you had the small fascists in Croatia, Romania etc., who viewed expansion to their "rightful" borders as simple justice and destiny.

So for most of these regimes, expansion from their pre-war borders was seen as desirable in and of itself. In the case of Germany and Japan, it was seen as so desirable that without expansion the state would pretty much cease to exist without expansion - Germany would be "subsumed and de-Germanized by Jew-capitalism" and Japan would become either a satellite state of the US or of China. That meant that the visionary leaders and intelligent bureaucrats were driven to further the expansionist agenda and to ignore any evidence that this agenda was in fact detrimental to the interests of their state and to rationalize away any risks as "well, if we don't take these risks, the result will be even worse and our children will be slaves to the Jew/Bolshevik/Chinese/Americans".

The Soviets, however, didn't have an ideology that embraced expansionism. Nor did their ideology promise the extinction of all they thought was good if they didn't expand. In Marxism, the victory of the working class is inevitable, their actions in the Soviet Union might retard that revolution or speed it up, but there was no parallel to the Nazi "if we don't ram our tanks down Russia's throat our entire culture will be destroyed!" So as they saw it, the stakes they were playing for were smaller.

Plenty of Bolsheviks were willing to indulge in expansionist behaviors if, as they saw it, it improved the position of the Worker's State. But that was expansion to meet an end goal. The survival of the Revolution itself. And the survival of the Revolution in Russia itself had a goal - the existence of a base of support, a refuge, where the working classes of the world could seek safety during hard times and draw support from when their own revolutions were on the cusp of success. The Marxist-Leninists were certainly the enemies of capitalism everywhere in the world, but they were confident that the Capitalists would kill themselves off without their needing to help the process along particularly and they believed that these Capitalists would be replaced by their own workers rising to power. The quasi-colonial way the Russians dealt with Eastern Europe was a kludge the Bolsheviks adopted in the face of circumstances (and one that they seem to really have believed would be temporary - Stalin really seems to have believed that once he got the Communists into sole power in Czechoslovakia, Poland and the other states that the Communists would then be able to build these states into healthy revolutionary comrades for the Soviet Union, despite the flawed manner in which their revolutions were begun).

During the post WW1 years, there were some Bolsheviks who believed that they had a duty to send armed aid to their revolutionary brothers, but the Bolsheviks weren't actually too keen on this sort of thing. They intervened in Mongolia. They sent material aid to the Turkish Nationalists and the Finnish Reds and one of their goals in the war with Poland was to link up with Germany so they could support a German revolution potentially. However, they did not aid the Hungarian revolution, they encouraged the Chinese Communists to help the Chinese Nationalists to bring about a Bourgeois revolution in China and as soon as it became clear that the post WW1 convulsions weren't harbinger of the day of world revolution (or Communist Rapture Day), the Bolsheviks switched to buttressing the revolution in the former Russian Empire and those Bolsheviks who had advocated non-intervention all along said "I told you so".

I doubt Trotsky could or would have focused as much on industrialisation as Stalin did. That might put the SU in a much weaker position if/when someone like Hitler attacks.

Trotsky probably will put more effort in "spreading the revolution" however. If that succeeds say during the depression we have an entirely new situation and a world we will hardly recognise. If it doesn't, anyone, incl. a Hitler type, will find it easier to find allies vs. the SU.

And please don't say it wouldn't be possible to spread the Trotskist ideas - we've just had Corbyn, a Trotskist, almost win a general election in UK - anything can happen!!!! :eek:

Those words, "Trotsky", "Trotskist" and "Corbyn", I do not think they mean what you think they mean...

Either that or you are posting from a very strange alternate universe and a wormhole has opened up between our dimensions.

If you want to see the sort of dangerous left-wing society Corbyn wants to foster in the UK, look to Sweden. Now, I agree that the Swedes are evil and their vile political ideologies and love for potatoes are a threat to all free peoples. But they aren't a Trotskist threat.

fasquardon
 
Those words, "Trotsky", "Trotskist" and "Corbyn", I do not think they mean what you think they mean...

Either that or you are posting from a very strange alternate universe and a wormhole has opened up between our dimensions.

If you want to see the sort of dangerous left-wing society Corbyn wants to foster in the UK, look to Sweden. Now, I agree that the Swedes are evil and their vile political ideologies and love for potatoes are a threat to all free peoples. But they aren't a Trotskist threat.

fasquardon
Um can we not bring current day politics in here? While I'm not fond of what's going on in Sweden and that Corbyn guy, I do not feel it's necessary to mention them here.
 
Trotsky starts the Cold War early. By that I mean he expends Soviet capital supporting numerous groups, largely in Europe and China, aimed at revolution. The International is actually what it is perceived to be.

Now does he work with Weimar? Of course, he needs capital and support and maybe sees such an alliance as a means to influence German politics. What happens to NEP? Didn't Trotsky support it insomuch that the capital could be reinvested into the state?

Trotsky seems less likely to go full despite.

Just an idea.
 
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