Long Live Lenin

...

Not every country was as bad as India. That’s something I can be proud of. Morocco, Honduras, Egypt – all democratic successes, all thanks to us.
One interesting thing that happened before the end of Hoover’s second term was the introduction of Amphibious Entry Vehicles. Those were my baby. I didn’t design them, but I kept hovering over the people who did. They needed to be perfect. They had to be able to get one of our guys from a drop-off point miles off the coast and to his target, keep going once they got on land, and still be easy to conceal. I was going to call them AEVs, but the men had another name for them. I didn’t have the heart to refuse. They wanted to call them Hoovercrafts.


-J. Edgar Hoover, The Invisible War.

...
Um... I think you mean Truman's second term :p:D

I like the idea of a one-man Hoovercraft though! Just like the Commando in Command and Conquer...
 
EARL WARREN!?! PRESIDENT!?! :D:D:D:D

I love this TL...

Now, on a somewhat more serious note...

This TL is shaping up really well. I am somewhat skeptical of the initial POD with Lenin surviving for 20 more years, but it has more that made up for it. I especially like the parts from Hoover. They add a touch of dark humor to it. I would love to live ITTL as it is shaping up. Earl Warren as President, much lesser Holocaust, much less oppressive USSR...

I'm very curious to see the reaction in the rest of the US to the crackdown on South Carolina. OTL, when Ike sent troops into Little Rock, he took a big PR hit because he was seen as overreacting. The situation is very different ITTL, of course, but I still would expect Warren to take a big drop in popularity. Sending in the Army to occupy a whole state because of one word? It will seem very excessive.
 
EARL WARREN!?! PRESIDENT!?! :D:D:D:D

I love this TL...

Now, on a somewhat more serious note...

This TL is shaping up really well. I am somewhat skeptical of the initial POD with Lenin surviving for 20 more years, but it has more that made up for it. I especially like the parts from Hoover. They add a touch of dark humor to it. I would love to live ITTL as it is shaping up. Earl Warren as President, much lesser Holocaust, much less oppressive USSR...

I'm very curious to see the reaction in the rest of the US to the crackdown on South Carolina. OTL, when Ike sent troops into Little Rock, he took a big PR hit because he was seen as overreacting. The situation is very different ITTL, of course, but I still would expect Warren to take a big drop in popularity. Sending in the Army to occupy a whole state because of one word? It will seem very excessive.
One very important word.

And remember, we only have Cabot Lodge's word for it that this was the only reason. Although, since he was VP, he ought to have some iea what was going on...
 
Um... I think you mean Truman's second term :p:D
Thanks for catching that.

EARL WARREN!?! PRESIDENT!?! :D:D:D:D

I love this TL...

Now, on a somewhat more serious note...

This TL is shaping up really well. I am somewhat skeptical of the initial POD with Lenin surviving for 20 more years, but it has more that made up for it. I especially like the parts from Hoover. They add a touch of dark humor to it. I would love to live ITTL as it is shaping up. Earl Warren as President, much lesser Holocaust, much less oppressive USSR...

I'm very curious to see the reaction in the rest of the US to the crackdown on South Carolina. OTL, when Ike sent troops into Little Rock, he took a big PR hit because he was seen as overreacting. The situation is very different ITTL, of course, but I still would expect Warren to take a big drop in popularity. Sending in the Army to occupy a whole state because of one word? It will seem very excessive.
Oh, there will be a reaction. The IOTL thing with the Fifties being a quiet time of normalization? That's gone.
 
By the order of the President, all South Carolina National Guard forces are to stand down and report to base effective immediately.


-Executive Order, February 4th, 1953





I wasn’t particularly happy with the loyalty enforcement. From one perspective it looked like McCarthy all over again. But as long as they weren’t asking about Communism, it was none of my business. Whatever they may wish, white supremacists and states-rights activists don’t have the power to destroy a city.


-J. Edgar Hoover, The Invisible War.




I [insert name here] hereby reaffirm the following:
That my first loyalty is to the United States of America and its people and to the whole of the United States rather than any part of it.
That the Constitution is the Supreme law of this country, from which all government derives its authority.
That any law that conflicts with the Constitution will not and should not be enforced and I will not attempt to enforce it.
That as the servant of the people it is my responsibility to protect all people, regardless of race, creed, gender, or age.
That I will not let my personal prejudices influence my work or prevent me from protecting people.
Finally, that I will serve honestly and faithfully and obey my superiors.


-the Loyalty Oath, given in the Fifties to most members of military, National Guard, and police forces.




The tanks? Nah, there is no way they would have ever fired. Heck, we weren’t even issued ammunition. Our job was to speed through the hills menacingly, just to make sure the Southerners understood: the supremacy of the Federal Government is a Big Deal.


-John Slately, sergeant, Pacification of the South.




It wasn’t as bad in Virginia as it was in South Carolina, of course, because our government hadn’t made any secession noises. We learned our lesson the last time. Still, they were going over the policemen with a fine comb, and a lot of them ended up fired when they said they wouldn’t support integration. Instead, they sent in a lot of Northerners.


-anonymous woman, Pacification of the South.




It was a strange time. We’d been fighting for change for so long, but we’ve always been warned that change would take time. Instead it came overnight, charging in like Paul Revere. Suddenly we had equal rights, or so the President said, and he was willing to enforce it. We still didn’t expect it when they came to us. Mr. Daniels came and told us that with so many policemen in Montgomery refusing to serve, the police department would be shorthanded for a while. And then he told us that since the government wanted to make sure everyone’s rights would be protected, he was wondering whether we would be able to point out some likely boys, ones who would be willing to serve, but wouldn’t try to take revenge. Let me tell you, he told us he wanted “some of you people in the Force”, and for the first time ever I was glad to hear ‘you people’.


-Rosa Parks, Civil Rights activist, Pacification of the South.




Honestly? Every moment I was there, I was afraid. What we were doing was unprecedented, and it always seemed as though a riot might break out at any moment. Hell, once we had a crowd of protesters twenty feet from a hardware store. That store had chainsaws in it. I mean, Jesus, can you imagine? I thank God every day for getting us through that one peacefully.
The closest call is probably the most famous one. Let me tell you, no matter what some people say today, we did what had to be done. South Carolina was a powder keg, and anything could set off a spark. So I got really upset when I found a Klan meeting in full daylight. They were all chanting ‘death to the darkies!’ Waving around their guns, too. Now, it doesn’t take a genius to see where things were going to go next. So I came and asked them to disperse. They weren’t having any of it, though. They heckled me, threw vegetables; some of them even pointed their guns at me.
Well, I went away, and called for reinforcements. I wasn’t about to take that kind of thing, and it scared me half to death. Now, it would take more force than we had to threaten them into submission, so we just did the best thing we could under the circumstances: hollered a warning through a loudspeaker, and when they didn’t disperse right away, we started chucking gas over the wall.


-Jack Orris, retired policeman, Pacification of the South.




I think that was the record for how soon the Supreme Court took up a case. Normally it takes a good, long while to go through the appeals system. Not that the Klan ever stood a chance on that one – they’d threatened a policeman with violence. This did not come under the definition of ‘peaceful assembly.’ But there was a principle at stake, and that principle had to be settled.


-Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr, White Bastion: Amidst the Chaos




It has always been known that though the speech in this country may be free, some specific expressions of it are not and cannot be completely unrestrained. In particular, any speech that incites violence, repression, or sabotage cannot be protected. Because as one man’s rights end where another man’s rights begin, the right of a citizen to free speech ends whenever it interferes with another citizen’s right to live his life at peace, without the threat of violence looming over him and his family.


[FONT=&quot]-Supreme Court of the United States, in a 10-5 majority ruling.[/FONT]
 
Look, this whole debate is pointless. There was no way President Warren could have avoided the crackdown. Between the right-wing Republicans and the Dixiecrats, Integration would never get enforced otherwise. Instead you’d have racist cops beating on blacks trying to claim what was rightfully theirs. In the worst-case scenario, where Warren tried enforcing his order in a half-assed way, power would have gone to Secessionists, and we’d have had another Civil War on our hands. Anyone could see that was the likely outcome. Especially Warren.


-response to “WI No Pacification of the South” on alternatehistory.com




Before the fifties hit, blues was getting popular. But suddenly, the atmosphere was all wrong. The black community was feeling hopeful, and songs about the darker aspects of life no longer appealed. Blues was forced to transform, speed up, become cheerier. To reflect the spirit of the new era.
This was the birth of Rock and Roll.


-Don Aters, The Crucible of Music




DNA wasn’t just the greatest biological discovery we could have imagined – it was also a game changer for scientific morale as a whole. For a long while, many of the American scientists were feeling like we were being left behind. The Soviets were far ahead of us in atomic science and rocketry – the exciting science. In just about everything else they had always seemed at least a step ahead, whether or not they actually were – we were never quite sure. But this – this was something America did that Soviets had not. It gave us back our self-esteem.


-James D. Watson, The Double Helix




Russia has been lost to us. Once, the Soviet Union seemed to be the red dawn that signaled the beginning of the end for Capitalism, and the arrival of Communism into every country in the world. But that light has dimmed to little more than an ember. The Kremlin is steeped in corruption. The Soviets cater to capitalist pigs and fawn all over America and Britain, dragging other countries in with them. What they have isn’t Communism in any way, shape, or form. It is at most dressed-up Capitalism, with red stars pinned over the dollar signs.
No, if we are to succeed in rekindling the flame of Communism, then it must be lit outside of the dying leviathan that is the USSR. It must come about from a zeal and passion shown in every free country of the world. From Salvador to Uganda; From Afganistan to Laos; everywhere, the Communist people must stand up and call for the end of America and the end of Capitalism.


-Lavrentiy Beria, The International Communist Call to Arms




I never really thought of it as a racial struggle, you know? We were just finally being given the rights we’ve always deserved. I was proud to be called to serve. It was a new time.
Not everyone felt that way. Some people saw the open door and decided that the thing to do was to run in and shove the people who opened it. In one incident, Malory and I were walking down the street, and found a large gathering of blacks. In the center was a preacher, and he must have been the angriest person I’ve ever seen. I mean, he saw us, I know it, but he must have assumed that just because we were black too, we must be in his twisted little club. So he just kept on ranting about the “white devils” and generally inciting violence. So I told him to shut up. He wouldn’t. Well, Malory and I waded through the crowd, which was thinning by then, and dragged him off the podium. He fought like a rabid dog, but we got him into handcuffs. Because what he didn’t seem to understand was that as police officers our job was to protect everyone, black, white, or green. And that means that we can’t tolerate racist bigots on the streets, no matter which race they themselves happen to be.


-Officer George Strong, Pacification of the South.




The big problem with trying to fight a war without alerting the general population is that the general population isn’t alert. I know it sounds stupid when I say it out loud, but it’s the truth. With all the cultural exchanges between USSR and US, it was a nightmare to try to keep the important things apart while letting the little things keep going to help maintain the façade of friendship. Well, maybe not really a façade. I mean, we didn’t want the world to fall to Communism, but we didn’t want it to fall to cockroaches either. But how do you explain to a guy like Roosenberg that while we may be happy to sell our shoes to USSR, we would prefer to keep anything we find out about the atom private? His damn “knowledge-sharing opportunity” almost made us blow our cover.


[FONT=&quot]-J. Edgar Hoover, The Invisible War.

[/FONT]
 
The arrival of Alexei Letov into the Culture office was like the arrival of a small tornado into a kitchen. Until then, our work had been relatively easy. People would bring in their work, we’d make sure it had something in it that propagated Communism and then send it down the line. It was a relatively quiet life, all in all.
Letov was having none of that. In fact, that was the very first thing he kicked out. Letov himself was always showing his love of Communism off, but he insisted that it should be obvious to people that it is the best political system and there was no need to rub it in everyone’s face 24/7. Instead he made us really go to work. Life was never dull now – we were always out looking for talent, or managing it, or doing one of the thousands of little things that needed to be done under Letov. It was annoying. It was exhausting.
It was glorious.


-Mikhail Cashtanov, The Beating Heart.




No, no, we were always very careful, and so were they. For instance, when Cuba tried to go Red, we couldn’t find a single Kremlin-deployed agent within a hundred miles of the island. They knew we could never let a Communist state exist so close to our shores. We knew it too. The Castro brothers? Well, they didn’t know at first, but they found out right around the time their faces went blue from the poison. You just don’t threaten the United States in such a way and expect to get away with it. You just don’t.


-J. Edgar Hoover, The Invisible War.




BEEP BEEP BEEP


-Sputnik.




7th of May, 1954


The wedding was beautiful. I always thought Jackie would do well for herself, and she has. She’s a picture star, and a singer, and a women’s rights activist. And that’s all wonderful, but there is still some instinct that just tells you to settle down and get married, isn’t there? John seems like a wonderful man, from a nice family, and so handsome too.
I only wish I could have dragged Anne here, too, but it’s been getting more difficult to keep up. She’s always getting mixed up in religious rights protests now, and I'm scared that something will happen to her. Why can't she just drop the matter?



-The Diary of Margot Frank.




The exodus of the hard-left members of the Party was a mixed blessing for Khrushchev. While their presence in most every Communist state in the world meant grave difficulties would be coming for Soviet diplomatic relations, it also meant Khrushchev mostly had USSR to himself. All he had to do was move slightly to the right to achieve the most stability USSR had had since Lenin’s death. To boot, he got China, far too intertwined with USSR economically and militarily to serve as a good base for dissidents.


-The Party Dynamics




We are still saying a lot of disruptions in many areas, but it appears to be safe to begin withdrawing troops from Maryland and Virginia, at least. Regrettably, the Army presence in Texas and Alabama will have to be stepped up to counteract the activities of the illegal and violent organizations acting there. But despite the few extremists who wish to stop the just process of integration, I am very pleased with the general public response to the situation.


-President Warren, in a special address to the people of the United States.




The Pacification of the South had divided the nation as nothing else since the Civil War. And the divisions were not simple. They ran through North and South alike, extending to organizations and even families. For every person who resented the uniformed figures making their rounds there was someone glad to see them. For every protester mourning states’ rights, there was someone quoting Lincoln’s “no right to do wrong” speech.
It was a complicated time.


-The Changing American Political Landscape




For too long has France been mired in colonialism. There is no future in it. In the past, our colonies brought us wealth and prestige. Now they bring us only expenses and shame. With the changing times, France needs to change as well, lest we be left behind.


-French Prime Minister Pierre Mendès




More than a decade after Lenin’s promise to stabilize the former Axis holdings and then get out, Soviet troops were still lodged in Germany and Italy. This was becoming an issue with the British at least. They made demands of Khrushchev, who brushed them off. Enjoying political stability for the first time since he entered office, he was perhaps not as careful as he might have been with international relations. Fortunately, the United States at least was otherwise occupied, and so instead of turning into anything serious, the incident merely devolved into a prolonged argument.


-Mapping the World: How national policy has reshaped borders.
 
At the time I did not believe Warren’s plan would work. Nonetheless, I have to admit that there was no war, just as he promised. We could never get enough people together, especially not once the new speech laws went into effect. I hate to admit it, but they really did help keep the peace. We didn’t see it that way at the time. We felt like our country was being stolen from us. A lot of us still do, I suppose, the ones who are still free. In any case, we didn’t have the force to oppose the government. Didn’t mean we weren’t going to do something about all of it.


Robert Chambliss, From Darkness Unto Light: My Redemption.




President Warren was always aware that the Republican party would not stand for his activities. Even among those who agreed with him on the civil rights issues he would find no sympathizers – he now stood against the very liberties the Republican party believed themselves to hold. The limited government was no more – Warren had turned it into the monolithic guardian of justice. The Republicans could not forgive him for that. Of course I thought it was done there.
Not so.
One day Warren privately mentioned to me that he’d gotten a better offer. I didn’t believe it at first, but he calmly explained to me that he’d won races as a Democrat before – and even as a Progressive. Sometimes all at once. The Democrats were prepared to risk throwing in their lots with Warren. They offered to take me as well, but I refused. Though I knew my own unrepentant participation in the Pacification of the South would mean the end of my political career if I stayed a Republican, I could not break with that party. So I prepared to go into the night of obscurity, unrecognized and unthought-of. I think it worked out a bit better than that, but it matters not. My part in this story is over.


-Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr, White Bastion: Amidst the Chaos




These past several years have brought naught but grief. When the American people elected Earl Warren to the highest office in the land, it was their sincere belief that he stood for principles of responsible government and liberty. But instead he’s brought tyranny to American soil.
Our Founding Fathers knew that to keep the government from treading on the liberties of the people it had to be kept limited. To that end they created a system of checks and balances within the government that would ensure that no one man could exert power over the entire country. Those limits have now been broken as the President tramples all over the sovereign rights of the Southern states. The American army has been used against law-abiding citizens, to institute a regime of fear.
It is therefore the aim of the undersigned to reverse the recent course of events. We will seek all legal means to overturn the Fourteenth Amendment, withdraw troops from the Southern states, and restore to each state their own proper Constitutional rights.


-An exert from The Southern Manifesto.



When I joined the Republican Party, I did not believe I would come to regret that decision. For how could the party of Lincoln – the party of freedom – let me down? I know how, now. The Republican party has let down every American by turning its back on the principles upon which it was founded. Once, they were the protectors of freedom and equality in America. Now, they rile against the Twenty-Second Amendment, even while proving again why we need it.
I would remind the writers of the Southern Manifesto of the oath they all take each and every day as they salute our flag. Need I recite the text of the Pledge of Allegiance to them? Here it is: I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I believe too many of my colleagues simply go through the words without stopping to think about what they mean.
We are “one nation.” This is why the Southern Manifesto is unacceptable. Because as one nation, we cannot declare ourselves The Land of Freedom ‘except over there.’ We can’t say that the traditions or customs of one part of this great nation overrule its laws.
We are “indivisible.” And that is why I had no choice but to send the army into the states perpetrating the heaviest injustices upon the population. Because the segregationalist sentiment in this country is alive and well and there are those who would rather see the great United States ripped in twain than give up on oppression.
Above all, we guarantee both liberty and justice for all! And to know why this is important, you have to look no further than the findings of Truman’s commissions, made publicly available to all Americans. They paint a grim picture – a picture unworthy of America. They tell us that until recently, a black man could not walk into a restaurant and sit down. Is this liberty? Dozens of people were lynched, strung up by men filled with anger and hatred, but overlooked by the law. Is this justice? No. This is oppression and lawlessness. It is hatred and bigotry and everything wrong in men’s souls.
It is the job of the government to defend the fundamental rights it citizens, serving as a shield against those who would take from their fellow men their freedom and their very lives. This has always been the guiding principle of my administration. If the American people wish me to continue in the capacity of the President, it will remain my guiding principle. If not, then I can only hope that my successor makes guarding the rights of all Americans his top priority.


[FONT=&quot]-President Earl Warren, Pledge of Allegiance Speech.[/FONT]
 
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