Lenin's Strokes Delayed Five Years?

Let's say that, through some miracle of medicine, Vladimir Lenin's strokes are delayed for five years. He has his first stroke in May of 1927 instead of May of 1922, the second in December of 1927, and the third one in March of 1928. He dies in January of 1929.

How would this have changed the development of the Soviet Union? Was Lenin even an efficient administrator and politician who would have done better than Stalin? Or would having him in office for five years damage the Soviet Union even worse than OTL? Would he prove more tyrannical than Stalin? Less tyrannical?

This isn't a question of "alternate take over after Lenin", although who takes over after him will obviously probably change if he's in office for another five years.
 
Lenin's strokes delayed are bad for Trotsky and Stalin, Lenin's incapacity meant that Trotsky grew very close to him and dictated for him, he was the mouth of a man who no longer had one.

As for Papa Joe, he might find himself in trouble.
 
Well obviously.

I'm convinced a more moderate (Moderate for Soviet Russia, that is.) politician will take over after Lenin's death if he's given enough time in office.
 
Let's say that, through some miracle of medicine, Vladimir Lenin's strokes are delayed for five years. He has his first stroke in May of 1927 instead of May of 1922, the second in December of 1927, and the third one in March of 1928. He dies in January of 1929.

How would this have changed the development of the Soviet Union? Was Lenin even an efficient administrator and politician who would have done better than Stalin? Or would having him in office for five years damage the Soviet Union even worse than OTL? Would he prove more tyrannical than Stalin? Less tyrannical?

This isn't a question of "alternate take over after Lenin", although who takes over after him will obviously probably change if he's in office for another five years.
Just avoid Fanny Kaplan filling him full of lead, and he's very likely to be in much better health. The assassination attempt really made his bad health even worse.
 
Lenin thought Stalin was a danger and wanted to remove him. Would've been better for anyone involved.

Of course, there's still the question what happens after Lenin's death. IOTL, Stalin allied with Bucharin and that other guy to kick out the "left opposition" (Trotzky, Sinoviev, Kamenev), but without him, they may actually win.

Then there's the question what happens next. Will Trotzky start a war, as soon as the west is weakened by the Great Depression? Will the "right opposition" start an antisemitic uprising, because Trotzky is Jewish?
 
Just avoid Fanny Kaplan filling him full of lead, and he's very likely to be in much better health. The assassination attempt really made his bad health even worse.

This might be a good idea.

But his death mostly came from strokes. Do shootings commonly lead to an increased propensity for strokes?
 
This might be a good idea.

But his death mostly came from strokes. Do shootings commonly lead to an increased propensity for strokes?
It certainly did in his case. Lenin had a bullet in his neck for almost four years before a German surgeon removed it. Given his already workaholic habits, nearly dying did very little to help his blood pressure, and quite likely the strain greatly exacerbated his poor health.
 
It certainly did in his case. Lenin had a bullet in his neck for almost four years before a German surgeon removed it. Given his already workaholic habits, nearly dying did very little to help his blood pressure, and quite likely the strain greatly exacerbated his poor health.

Well jeez, in that case if we just get rid of that assassination attempt, or make it fail altogether, we could see Lenin live significantly longer than just five years more, couldn't we?

What would a USSR in the 30s still ruled by Lenin look like?
 
Hell, with a bit of luck Lenin might still be alive when World War II breaks out (if his continued rule hasn't somehow managed to butterfly away the rise of the Nazis, that is). Would Lenin consent to making a deal with Germany a'la Molotov-Ribbentrop? And how would he handle Barbarossa?

Interesting questions indeed.
 

poirot

Banned
Lenin is widely thought in Russia to have had syphilis.

Had he not died it is quite possible the syphilis would have made him act irrationally and have Stalin or Trotsky or both liquidated. The purges of the 1930's might therefore have happened in the 1920's.
 
Had he not died it is quite possible the syphilis would have made him act irrationally and have Stalin or Trotsky or both liquidated. The purges of the 1930's might therefore have happened in the 1920's.

Does advanced syphilis cause paranoid behavior and hence a tendency to order political purges, or does it just cause dementia? I don't know. I doubt otherwise Lenin would kill people on the scale that Stalin did. First, because he was not paranoid. And second because he was not a victim of horrific child abuse the way Stalin had been. Still, Lenin would have been quite brutal in furtherance of his utopian ideological goals.
 
As much as anything else, I'm curious how many more years the NEP might have endured. Could it have become the order of the day?
IIRC Stalin claimed to support it during the mid/late 1920's, but that was mostly to curry favor with influential party members.
 
As much as anything else, I'm curious how many more years the NEP might have endured. Could it have become the order of the day?
IIRC Stalin claimed to support it during the mid/late 1920's, but that was mostly to curry favor with influential party members.

That's a good point. This might be a way to create a "gentler" Russian Communism. Perhaps avert forced collectivism, even. One wonders how a stronger, more stable, Soviet Union in the '20s and '30s might have shaken things up in Europe. Perhaps they might have even been tempted into making another try at taking Poland in the '30s, if things were really going well.

Hm... leftist groups in Germany might also have been encouraged if the Soviets were doing well, so who knows where that might've gone.
 
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