Lifespan of the USSR in a no WW2 timeline

Wasn’t the DNVP less administratively competent? Much as the KAPD (whom I am soft for) were less administratively competent than the KPD. “Lite” May be enough to change lines internationally.
Most of the Junkers, Monarchists, and Big Business types were originally with the DNVP, and they had their own 'SA' in the Stahlhelm,a paramilitary ord thst started in 1918.

The biggest difference, was mostly the Mustache and his charisma over large crowds.
 
Without all of the Baltic states, Belarus, and Ukraine being so ravage by war and having their industries gutted both to Germany and Russia ... they might make the Soviet Union weaker just by being stronger. The Baltic States were especially no thrilled to be SSRs.
The Baltic states only became SSR's in the midst of WW2. Remove Hitler, and you not only butterfly away their OTL annexation, but also the destruction and partition of Poland, leaving a credible threat on the USSR's western border (which, if in coordination with the Japanese in the Orient, could force Stalin to dedicate a good portion of his efforts towards maintaining his country's military capabilities).
 
On one hand the demographic and economic cost to the USSR was immense, and the ensuing cold war put it in a no-win scenario.

On the other hand, the legacy of WWII did a lot to buttress the Soviet regime. Additionally it provided the only circumstances in which the USSR was able to expand its sphere of influence, as the pre-war arrangements arguably already had the USSR in a no-win scenario.
 

Nick P

Donor
The USSR was never popular with the west. It's a pretty common consensus that Stalin wasn't about to pick a fight with them, but is a there a guarantee no one would make this happen? A fully re-armed Britain seeks to hem in the Red Menace and finds a provocation. Poland supports rebels in the Baltic SSRs and forces a response from Moscow. China demands western assistance to stem the flow of Soviet materials to Mao.

The Great Game on the North-West Frontier is restarted. Quite probably a few clashes on the border, like the Chinese-Soviet border war in 1969.
 
But while WW2 was diasterious in term of human life lost for USSR, the positives are there, they gained new territory in the baltics and installed Communist puppet regimes all over Eastern Europe. Stalin also became a war hero for leading the USSR to defeating the nazis, without WW2 is Stalin ever seen in such a bright light? Does he stay in power aslong without WW2 boosting his cult of personality?

Honestly, I think all of these "positives" were long-term negatives.

The WarPac was a burden and if the system the USSR developed was an ill-fit for it, it was an even worse fit for other countries resulting in an erosion of political credibility in the USSR as satellites either did better or worse than the USSR.

Stalin being a "war-hero" is also an overall negative in my view since it tangles the legacy of Stalin with the legacy of the heroic struggle against German invasion... And to fight WW2, Stalin's cult of personality was greatly intensified.

The wars against Finland and the Baltics, direct reactions to German expansionism, made the world less safe for the Soviet Union in the long term and maybe even the short term (I think the Soviets would have done better in Barbarossa if Germany had started closer to Moscow but the Soviets had started on the Stalin Line fortifications but I could easily be wrong about that) even in a world where Germany DID invade.

And finally, WW2 confirmed for Stalin the crackpot Marxist theories that led Stalin to behave so provocatively after WW2 and started the cold war (since Capitalists inevitably must fall to infighting as in WW1 and WW2, Stalin was expecting WW3 between the US and UK imminently).

The Soviet Union is a much, much happier place without WW2 and much stronger and more prosperous. And yes, I think the Soviet regime could survive to the modern day. Though as with China OTL, we may not like to call it "Communist" any more.

fasquardon
 
The inane analysis of social democracy centres on the German experience, of which the rise of the NSDAP in Berlin is rather central. You don’t get social fascist conceptions without fascism.

Which, if not obvious to the non-expert, retarded the revolutionary situation in Germany.

I don't understand this. AFAIK, the "social fascism" construct applied only to social democrats and Second International socialists in other countries. It affected left politics in Germany, certainly. But how did it affect the internal development of the USSR?

Also, the OP did not postulate that the Nazis never exist or never become an important factor, only that they never achieve power.

Finally, the "social fascist" label was concocted to rationalize Communist refusal to ally with the German Social Democrats. If that remains the strategy of the Comintern, some other label might be coined, but the policy would be the same.
 
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