Kamenev's Russia (brainstorming)

I'd say traditional historical narrative, but I'd separate it from the Weberverse and let the butterfly's really fly. As much as I love the Veterinarian Totalitarian, it is a little restrictive in how it's hitting the same beats as OTL but just slightly askew.

Ditto. I want to see Kamenev deal with the butterflies, not with Weber.
 
Hmm, quite the bit of consternation about this. While the PoD isn't early enough to stop some form of Nazi ascendancy, it's probably more fun to put Kamenev against rabid genocidal Hitler and co. instead of calmly psychopathic Weber. If I still have energy after that, Kamenev v Weber: Dawn of Tyranny* will be the sequel to both sagas.
*Man, that's going to become dated fast.

That's the plan for now, anyway. Thanks for all your feedback! :D
 
Hmm, quite the bit of consternation about this. While the PoD isn't early enough to stop some form of Nazi ascendancy, it's probably more fun to put Kamenev against rabid genocidal Hitler and co. instead of calmly psychopathic Weber. If I still have energy after that, Kamenev v Weber: Dawn of Tyranny* will be the sequel to both sagas.
*Man, that's going to become dated fast.

That's the plan for now, anyway. Thanks for all your feedback! :D

Now I need to read that immediately...
 

cpip

Gone Fishin'
Indeed; if you're up to it, I'd love to see Kamenev independently because I know very little about him to begin with, and so I'd better appreciate the butterflies he's causing; then if you're still up to Kamenev v. Weber that would probably be a lovely capstone showing the synthesis of all the research and creativity you put in.
 
Is "Kamenev's Russia" going to be a spiritual sequel to "Weber's Germany", in that it's an attempt to do "Rational Russians" with Kamenev functioning more as a cipher to explore that premise?

Also, I wouldn't limit yourself to just "Alt-USSR vs. OTL's Nazi's", unless the POD is Kamenev taking power after Hitler's ascension. Maybe a less outwardly crazy man at the helm of the Soviet Union has Europe less (or more?) scared of communism. Maybe Germany or France goes Red, and WW2 is a global anti-communist struggle?
 
Is "Kamenev's Russia" going to be a spiritual sequel to "Weber's Germany", in that it's an attempt to do "Rational Russians" with Kamenev functioning more as a cipher to explore that premise?
Drat, you've figured out my modus operandi! :mad: :p

Yup, the basic premise is "What if the leader of the Soviet Union wasn't as rabidly paranoid", much like "What if the leader of Nazi Germany wasn't as rabidly megalomaniacal". If the central quote of "Weber's Germany" was:
Charles Baudelaire said:
The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.
The central theme of "Kamenev's Russia" is probably going to be:
St. Bernard of Clairvaux said:
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
So yeah, not all wine and roses then. One of these days I should write something that turns out just fine for everybody...but today isn't that day. :( ;)

Of course, a little but more is known about Kamenev than Weber, so I shall strive to keep it "in-character" as far as possible.

Also, I wouldn't limit yourself to just "Alt-USSR vs. OTL's Nazi's", unless the POD is Kamenev taking power after Hitler's ascension. Maybe a less outwardly crazy man at the helm of the Soviet Union has Europe less (or more?) scared of communism. Maybe Germany or France goes Red, and WW2 is a global anti-communist struggle?
The PoD I have in mind is probably too late to stop the Nazis, but that won't stop the butterflies, which will fly a little more freely in this TL than "Weber's Germany". :)

Thanks for the interest, you all! :D
 
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
To be honest, I think Stalin at one point genuinely believed in the ideas of the revolution, and still did to some extent considering the spartan lifestyle he lived in, but the entire process the Bolsheviks had to go through in order to cling on to existence (let alone to cling on to their position of power) virtually laid the essential groundwork for the bureaucratisation and the degeneration of the workers' regime. The failures of the Russian Revolution don't lie in the leadership (which were very much put into their positions by the mass support of the working class) or the conditions of Russia itself (which, particularly in Petrograd and the eastern cities, were just as proletarianised as Western Europe) but in the failure of the revolution to spread. Or, as Rosa Luxemburg wrote in a letter to Luise Kautsky, the wife of Karl Kautsky:

"Are you happy about the Russians? Of course they will not be able to maintain themselves in this witches’ sabbath, not because statistics show economic development in Russia to be too backward, as your clever husband has figured out, but because social democracy in the highly developed West consists of miserable and wretched cowards who will look quietly on and let the Russians bleed to death."
 
Okay, so the consensus seems to be on the following points:

Format: Historical narrative, similar to Weber's Germany, narrated by Prof. Thomas Colton and H. N. Chernenko.
Continuity: Independent of Weber's Germany, although the POD (Early '30s) is probably too late to stop some form of Nazis. The change of leadership in the Soviet Union will have some very immediate consequences.

Thanks for all the feedback! See you in several months, which is probably when Weber's Germany will wrap up (if not later :eek:). Hopefully I haven't drummed up too much hype now to disappoint you all later. :eek:

Following hot on the heels of that, assuming I still have interest/energy to do so will be the official sequel to both sagas, i.e.

8KhsVXN.png

(The posing was a little influenced by this.)

See you then. ;)

(The next update to Weber's Germany will either be today or tomorrow.)
 
To be honest, I think Stalin at one point genuinely believed in the ideas of the revolution, and still did to some extent considering the spartan lifestyle he lived in ...
I second that, adding to it that IMHO Stalin wouldn't have been Stalin as we know him if the paternalistic system created under Lenin hadn't been a factor in Stalin's rise to power.

The GPU, gulags, purges (not all of them negative, if the revisionist historiographer R.W. Davies is to be believed) were all there under Lenin and were simply carried over by Stalin.

but the entire process the Bolsheviks had to go through in order to cling on to existence (let alone to cling on to their position of power) virtually laid the essential groundwork for the bureaucratisation and the degeneration of the workers' regime. The failures of the Russian Revolution don't lie in the leadership (which were very much put into their positions by the mass support of the working class) or the conditions of Russia itself (which, particularly in Petrograd and the eastern cities, were just as proletarianised as Western Europe) but in the failure of the revolution to spread.
I partially agree.

The revolution was bureaucratized and "degenerated" from the very start.

Here's a quote taken from Lenin's The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky

But Kautsky’s argument which I have just quoted in full represents the crux of the whole question of the Soviets. The crux is: should the Soviets aspire to become state organisations (in April 1917 the Bolsheviks put forward the slogan: “All Power to the Soviets!” and at the Bolshevik Party Conference held in the same month they declared they were not satisfied with a bourgeois parliamentary republic but demanded a workers’ and peasants’ republic of the Paris Commune or Soviet type); or should the Soviets not strive for this, refrain from taking power into their hands, refrain from becoming state organisations and remain the “combat organisations” of one “class” (as Martov expressed it, embellishing by this innocent wish the fact that under Menshevik leadership the Soviets were an instrument for the subjection of the workers to the bourgeoisie)
The soviets, in taking power, had to assume a whole host of municipal duties, not to mention take up defense of the revolution itself, both of which required an immense amount of manpower and resources which one would inevitably need a highly organized bureaucracy for.

I would recommend The Bolsheviks in Power by Alexander Rabinowitch for an excellent, full account of the early Bolshevik-led Soviet government's rapid bureaucratization.

I disagree that the revolution's failure to spread led to it becoming "degenerated" or "deformed."

The early Chinese Soviet Republic, after all, bore the stamp of the rigid party-state model (I highly suggest E.H. Carr's Twilight of the Comintern, 1930-1935 for a good, very rare account of the Chinese Revolution as it developed under Bolshevik influence) without sacrificing proletarian democracy - in fact, by 1948, a good number of years after the theory of New Democracy had been worked out, the Chinese Revolution shifted gears over to multiparty rule.

IMHO the 1936 Soviet Constitution was a serious (failed) attempt by Stalin to make the government accountable to its electorate (see "State and Society Under Stalin: Constitutions and Elections in the 1930s" by J. Arch Getty over on JSTOR), which had begun to atrophy in the absence of competitive elections.

The East European people's democracies were a bold attempt, IMHO, to shift away from the flawed concept of the council republic - something which Mao realized likewise in China in his 1940 piece On New Democracy.

Personally, I have serious disagreements with Trotskyism as a means to explain the complex development of the USSR (I'm assuming that you are taking a Trotskyist approach, correct?), while also disagreeing heavily with anti-revisionism which seeks to explain the Soviet Union by means of suggesting that "revisionists" distorted an already perfected system of proletarian rule created by Stalin after his death.

As a Marxist, I try to take a realist approach to Russia's revolution.

And as to not derail this thread, I'd like to add that I strongly agree that the OP should go with a historical narrative approach to his AH.

As for the butterfly effect, I would suggest taking a liberal approach to how it affects your world.

You neither need too much or too little changes to OTL; that is, you should strike a balance between the two extremes.
 
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