Likely leaders of ATL Soviet satellite states
- Thread starter Meadow
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E.Ransom
Banned
Regarding Denmark, Aksel_Larsen is the obvious choice, if the POD is straight after WW2.
I don't see any realistic scenario in which Britain falls to the Evil Empire, though. Hitler couldn't take it at his prime, and the USSR certainly couldn't after 4 years of slaughter taking its heavy toll on the Red Army.
E.Ransom
Banned
I'm not sure that the USSR would WANT the entirety of Western Europe to become actual SSRs.
The states of the old Russian empire, maybe. That means "Polish SSR", probably, but Germany would be too populous, same with France. Maintaining an occupation of so much territory is going to be a deadweight on the Red Army.
Better to install puppet rulers in the various states, and have a Warsaw Pact wank.
But he was also fairly independent-minded before 1956. I think it can go both ways if he was the leader of a Communist Italy in 1945. However, I don't remember how solid was Togliatti's control over the PCI, so there probably are other alternatives to him if the USSR is feeling insecure.
Hence the OP's requirement that Europe falls to the Red Army's 112th Handwavian Rifles Division. This isn't about whether it could happen, but who might've been in charge if it did.
Thanks for the point about Larsen, he's a definite frontrunner. His name was a dirty word when my mother was a little girl.
I think probably Stafford Cripps in England, or maybe Mosley, depending on when. Perhaps James Maxton or Gallagher in Scotland. No idea in Wales - Bevan would be the obvious choice, but far too difficult to control, I would think, though almost certainly in the government. I think Pollitt would be out due to the circumstances of his expulsion from the Communists.
(I expect they would divide countries up into people's republics, or at least introduce federal systems)
Outside Britain, I assume Thorez in France, Companys in Catalonia, possibly MacBride in Ireland and don't know enough about elsewhere.
(I expect they would divide countries up into people's republics, or at least introduce federal systems)
Outside Britain, I assume Thorez in France, Companys in Catalonia, possibly MacBride in Ireland and don't know enough about elsewhere.
In France couldn't the Soviets essentially have their pick of any of the Communist leaders within the National Council of Resistance or the National Front resistance network itself? Anyone who participated in the Liberation of Paris would have a lot of credibility, so they could just choose the most compliant figure that wouldn't necessarily seem the most like a party lickspittle to the population at large.
Thande
Donor
I wonder about this question. People seem to be choosing a lot of people who in OTL were far-left intellectual thinkers and gadflies to the establishment in their respective countries: would these people really make the most suitable puppet rulers for the USSR, even if they were ideologically aligned with it? Too unpredictable, too independent. The Soviets would want boring, pliable bureaucrats.
I would bet that if you were to step into an ATL where the USSR had somehow Warsaw Pact'd the whole of Europe, you wouldn't recognise most of the names on the list of puppet leaders for the various countries. In the same way that the OTL names have largely been forgotten by even most historically informed people, with the exception of the occasional independent-minded eccentric dictator like Ceausescu. If we will find names of ATL Soviet puppet leaders anywhere in OTL, I'd bet it won't be on lists of prominent figures in minor western Communist Parties, it'll be on lists of long-serving but forgettable civil servants.
I would bet that if you were to step into an ATL where the USSR had somehow Warsaw Pact'd the whole of Europe, you wouldn't recognise most of the names on the list of puppet leaders for the various countries. In the same way that the OTL names have largely been forgotten by even most historically informed people, with the exception of the occasional independent-minded eccentric dictator like Ceausescu. If we will find names of ATL Soviet puppet leaders anywhere in OTL, I'd bet it won't be on lists of prominent figures in minor western Communist Parties, it'll be on lists of long-serving but forgettable civil servants.
I was thinking about that earlier today regarding the thread about possible US selected Russian puppet figures in an occupied Soviet Union, considering that in a nearby timeline to this one Ahmadinejad is just the head of traffic control in the Shah's Tehran; so who knows what the head of traffic control in Moscow, Paris, or London could have been had things gone differently somewhere in the past.
There are certainly less logical candidates for running your occupation government than the city engineer of the largest, most populous city; given that someone apolitical who won't ask questions and who will manage the little details of rebuilding things is probably what you would be looking for. Some Parisian city engineer or London traffic control administrator could have lived on in the history books in infamy.
There are certainly less logical candidates for running your occupation government than the city engineer of the largest, most populous city; given that someone apolitical who won't ask questions and who will manage the little details of rebuilding things is probably what you would be looking for. Some Parisian city engineer or London traffic control administrator could have lived on in the history books in infamy.
Thande
Donor
Good point, although with Ahmadinejad it is admittedly partly due to Iran's unique political system: it's easier for an unlikely person to rise to a high position when the establishment is allowed to veto the candidacy of anyone it considers a threat, which usually means well-known people.
Then you of couse have the Blockparteien as window dressing, though initally they would be in ostendibly prominent government positons, like all the agrarian PMs Hungary had after the war.
You have a point with OTL Communists often being too independent-minded, but there is also the question whether many of the boring, pliable bureaucrats really fit the bill of good subordinate leaders in many ways. In the early years, at least, putting people who seem like absolute nobodies in important positions might not inspire enough trust/loyalty/fervor in the segments of the population that should support the new regime. A cabinet of non-entities that ows its positions entirely to Moscow might be a safe bet, but it might not be one that would best govern the state or would make the best figurehead for the regime.
Thus, combinations of people for various "political niches" might be the way to go. As long as the key posts for holding the reins of power are in hands Moscow can trust, and there are people to oversee it all and report back to the Kremlin, the rest of the posts can be filled as appropriate for various specific goals in mind. Keep up the spirits of the local independent Communists? Pick an indigenous firebrand Communist (that has somehow compromised himself for easy control). Pacify the centre-right? Have an opportunist bourgeois turncoat. Keep the day-to-day stuff running smoothly? Get a boring, but highly competent and apolitical career bureaucrat. Facilitate the transition to a new "People's Army"? Go for a former military figure with a sudden (if somewhat forced) awakening to the joys of Communism. Keep tabs on the people listed so far? Send a Stalin-fearing emigré Bolshevik or dig up your old mole in the Social Democratic Party. Or better yet, do both.
But this is of course mostly relevant for the early years, until the mid-50s, say. You would be right in saying that later on, most names in the cabinet lists, etc, would probably became to most OTL observers. Or then they might be the same people we know for running the unglamorous but all-important posts for different OTL parties, organisations and companies - recognisable just to those who have in-depth knowledge about the countries and decades in question. Capable and discrete people will find their uses even in People's Republics, and then butterflies work in mysterious ways. OTL's favourite TV comedian-satirist might well become the Chairman of an ATL Communist Party with no need for ASB intervention, because of his social bravado, skills in oratory and a natural-born understanding of political processes.
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Thande
Donor
A good counterpoint. Really the problem here is the handwavium that Meadow invokes so we can ignore 'how we got here'; you face the question that if the hypothetical USSR is powerful enough to dominate all of Europe, it probably doesn't have to bother as much as OTL about putting a respectable face on its regimes. Ignoring this, though, you're correct.
How about Yves Farge for France?
A Stalinist-fellow-traveller but not a party member himself, a journalist turned FTP partisan (though to what degree building up resistance forces in a particular region was military officership and what degree it was civil administration, or tradecraft or something else, I don't know myself), who served as the Minister of Supplies in the Bidault administration during the French Provisional Government. His life shows one possible alternate spread of the Soviet line - by non-Communist Party members joining communist popular fronts and Soviet-backed initiatives like the World Peace movement after the war. Considering the weight this movement had with former resistance members throughout Europe, a continental-wide slip down into totalitarianism would be one avenue to explore.
Maybe a sort of stealth-Sovietization timeline where Western Europe still accepts the Marshall Plan, but the people in charge are non-sectarian sympathizers and technocrats who have the credibility to be given the money and materiel to begin with but then don't follow the Western agenda afterwards. Perhaps the democratic process and the inevitable return of political competition are subverted by extra-legal organizations, the same way Communist Parties ruled from within the state and beyond it, only with these organizations starting off ostensibly non-communist and then morphing as time goes on.
Plenipotentiary committees and peace organizations become integral into the provisional governments of non-occupied post-war countries like France, not administrated by either side of the Allies, and they lean and then ultimately slide into Soviet hands.
Or perhaps, instead of the Marshal Plan, a UN-administrated plan ends up, like the UN-backed peace organization, as a popular front between resistance vets, Christians, and communists that leads to the neutralization of Western Europe in preparation or lead up to Sovietization.
A Stalinist-fellow-traveller but not a party member himself, a journalist turned FTP partisan (though to what degree building up resistance forces in a particular region was military officership and what degree it was civil administration, or tradecraft or something else, I don't know myself), who served as the Minister of Supplies in the Bidault administration during the French Provisional Government. His life shows one possible alternate spread of the Soviet line - by non-Communist Party members joining communist popular fronts and Soviet-backed initiatives like the World Peace movement after the war. Considering the weight this movement had with former resistance members throughout Europe, a continental-wide slip down into totalitarianism would be one avenue to explore.
Maybe a sort of stealth-Sovietization timeline where Western Europe still accepts the Marshall Plan, but the people in charge are non-sectarian sympathizers and technocrats who have the credibility to be given the money and materiel to begin with but then don't follow the Western agenda afterwards. Perhaps the democratic process and the inevitable return of political competition are subverted by extra-legal organizations, the same way Communist Parties ruled from within the state and beyond it, only with these organizations starting off ostensibly non-communist and then morphing as time goes on.
Plenipotentiary committees and peace organizations become integral into the provisional governments of non-occupied post-war countries like France, not administrated by either side of the Allies, and they lean and then ultimately slide into Soviet hands.
Or perhaps, instead of the Marshal Plan, a UN-administrated plan ends up, like the UN-backed peace organization, as a popular front between resistance vets, Christians, and communists that leads to the neutralization of Western Europe in preparation or lead up to Sovietization.
For those purposes, assume the Soviet Union took control of all these nations in the same way it took control of OTL's Eastern Bloc - 'liberation' from the Germans, after a long and bloody war.