No Stalin

Assume he is not conceived, conceived as a girl or dead by age 14

I am assuming this makes no difference to the Bolshevic October coup (aka great October revoloution) or to the Civil war.

Does this give Trotsky a chance of taking power?

Is there a risk of an even more unpleasant ruler (Beria perhaps)?

I am assuming the Soviet Union is still as dictatorship but that many fewer people would be murdered in the 1930s.

Might a different Soviet leadership have advised the German Communists differently? If so could Hitler have been kept from power

If the Nazis still took power could a different Soviet leadership have encouraged Spanish Communists to be more careful. Could a more united Republic have beaten the Spanish Fascists

If other events follow as in otl how would a rational Soviet leadership react to the offer of the pact in 1939?

Any more questions or answers?
 
Stephen Kotkin in his recent first volume of a projected three-volume biography of Stalin, discusses what if Stalin had died before he achieved power (or at least full power):

"But what if Stalin had died?31 He had come down with a serious case of appendicitis in 1921, requiring surgery. “It was difficult to guarantee the outcome,” Dr. V. N. Rozanov recalled. “Lenin in the morning and in the evening called me in the hospital. He not only inquired about Stalin’s health, but demanded the most thorough report.”32 Stalin had complained of pain, despite a local anesthetic, and Rozanov administered a heavy dose of chloroform, the kind of heavy dose he would administer to Frunze in 1925, who died not long after his own operation.33 Stalin, who may have also suffered ulcers (possibly attributive to typhus), following his own operation had taken a rest cure—ordered by the politburo—at Nalchik in the North Caucasus from May through August 1921.34 In December 1921, he was again incapacitated by illness.35

"Later, Kremlin doctors recorded that Stalin had suffered malaria at some point in his youth. In 1909, in exile, he had a bout of typhus in the Vyatka hospital, a relapse because he had suffered it in childhood. Stalin’s elder second brother Giorgy, whom he never knew, had died of typhus. In 1915, in Siberian exile, Stalin contracted rheumatism, which periodically flared, accompanied by quinsy and flu.36 Stalin also suffered tuberculosis prior to the revolution. His first wife, Kato, died of tuberculosis or typhus. Yakov Sverdlov, with whom Stalin bunked in a single room in Siberian exile, had tuberculosis, and Stalin moved out. Sverdlov appears to have died of TB in 1919. Tuberculosis might have killed off Stalin as well..

"If Stalin had died, the likelihood of forced wholesale collectivization—the only kind—would have been near zero, and the likelihood that the Soviet regime would have been transformed into something else or fallen apart would have been high. “More than almost any other great man in history,” wrote the historian E. H. Carr, “Stalin illustrates the thesis that circumstances make the man, not the man the circumstances.”43 Utterly, eternally wrong. Stalin made history, rearranging the entire socioeconomic landscape of one sixth of the earth. Right through mass rebellion, mass starvation, cannibalism, the destruction of the country’s livestock, and unprecedented political destabilization, Stalin did not flinch. Feints in the form of tactical retreats notwithstanding, he would keep going even when told to his face by officials in the inner regime that a catastrophe was unfolding—full speed ahead to socialism. This required extraordinary maneuvering, browbeating, and violence on his part. It also required deep conviction that it had to be done. Stalin was uncommonly skillful in building an awesome personal dictatorship, but also a bungler, getting fascism wrong, stumbling in foreign policy. But he had will. He went to Siberia in January 1928 and did not look back. History, for better and for worse, is made by those who never give up." http://nemaloknig.info/read-272699/?page=126
 

Wendigo

Banned
To state the obvious tens of millions don't die from starvation, shooting, disease, exposure, being worked to death in the Gulag, etc.

That many people not dying means a ton of butterflies not to mention how no Stalin would affect WW2.
 

Archibald

Banned
All those microbes, virus and bacterias together and yet the S.O.B lived through, and killed hundreds of million. Damn.
 

tenthring

Banned
Communism ended up bad pretty much everywhere it was tried. So its not all that evil Stalin perverted Lenin's great dream or some nonsense. Mao had his version of collectivization driven mass starvation.

I have no doubt it would be different, but at the end of the day communism does have certain tenants and a certain political structure.
 

Deleted member 1487

Communism ended up bad pretty much everywhere it was tried. So its not all that evil Stalin perverted Lenin's great dream or some nonsense. Mao had his version of collectivization driven mass starvation.

I have no doubt it would be different, but at the end of the day communism does have certain tenants and a certain political structure.
Pretty much any place communism was tried wasn't doing great when it took over. But the USSR modernized Russia more than capitalism had and that was after WW1 and a Civil War and being cut off of world credit markets. It came at a horrible cost in human life and suffering though. Same with China. They modernized and are one of the most modern nations today, though they are transitioning away from strict Maoist communism. Again in their case they came from a bunch of national disasters pretty continuously in the 19th-20th century until Mao too over (then imposed his own atrocities on the population). Lenin or anyone else might well have done things a lot slower and far less brutally than Stalin.

Generally though the major atrocities of communism were caused by paranoid dictators that took over the system (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot) and because of their personal beliefs and paranoia, plus no checks and balances, they were able to do horrible things at a whim, either intentionally or out of stupidity while their cult of personality kept them on their path. Hitler had the same crap going in his system, Germany was just already industrialized, so imposing 'modernization' in the Nazis sense didn't require forced rapid industrialization and mass starvation; Hitler got the help of the existing system, which he slowly Nazified (or in the case of Fascist states like Italy they had a similar buy in from the existing power base), so didn't have to go through these disruptions that the underdeveloped communist states did after their knowledgeable elite had fled the country, died, or were forced at gone point to work for the new regime.
 
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tenthring

Banned
Pretty much any place communism was tried wasn't doing great when it took over. But the USSR modernized Russia more than capitalism had and that was after WW1 and a Civil War and being cut off of world credit markets. It came at a horrible cost in human life and suffering though. Same with China. They modernized and are one of the most modern nations today, though they are transitioning away from strict Maoist communism. Again in their case they came from a bunch of national disasters pretty continuously in the 19th-20th century until Mao too over (then imposed his own atrocities on the population). Lenin or anyone else might well have done things a lot slower and far less brutally than Stalin.

Generally though the major atrocities of communism were caused by paranoid dictators that took over the system (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot) and because of their personal beliefs and paranoia, plus no checks and balances, they were able to do horrible things at a whim, either intentionally or out of stupidity while their cult of personality kept them on their path. Hitler had the same crap going in his system, Germany was just already industrialized, so imposing 'modernization' in the Nazis sense didn't require forced rapid industrialization and mass starvation; Hitler got the help of the existing system, which he slowly Nazified (or in the case of Fascist states like Italy they had a similar buy in from the existing power base), so didn't have to go through these disruptions that the underdeveloped communist states did after their knowledgeable elite had fled the country, died, or were forced at gone point to work for the new regime.

Plenty of countries modernized without communism. It's likely that the system retarded rather then accelerated economic growth. China became a modern miracle after it abandoned communism in all but name.

Dictatorship is inherent in communism. Eliminating private property is inherently a concentration of power. They didn't all end up dictatorships by accident.

Communism also had a rather idiotic ideology of human nature behind it that drove a lot of its bad decisions. There weren't bad men corrupting a good doctrine. It was a bad doctrine. Rotten down to the core.
 

Deleted member 1487

Plenty of countries modernized without communism.
Sure, never said otherwise.

It's likely that the system retarded rather then accelerated economic growth. China became a modern miracle after it abandoned communism in all but name.
That is highly debatable. Arguably the system China has now is similar to Lenin's NEP.

Dictatorship is inherent in communism. Eliminating private property is inherently a concentration of power. They didn't all end up dictatorships by accident.
IOTL of how Communism came about it certainly was, but that is why those systems are identified by the names of their rulers, rather than as communism (Stalinism, Maoism, etc.). They came to power as the result of major violent struggles, which tends to engender a militaristic hierarchy of order; of course Communism in the USSR and post-Mao in China weren't dictatorships. There was a means of transition to power and no one since had the power guys like Stalin or Mao did. Fascism did have the dictatorship model down pretty solid too.

Communism also had a rather idiotic ideology of human nature behind it that drove a lot of its bad decisions. There weren't bad men corrupting a good doctrine. It was a bad doctrine. Rotten down to the core.
Doesn't Capitalism also have an ideological view on human nature and behavior as well? Same with Fascism or even the view the everyone is ready for and wants Democracy. I'm not saying Communism, such that it existed as a coherent ideology and wasn't invented on the fly once in power because it didn't really have a governing model laid out, was a good system or the choice one, it's just that using a few examples from history and claiming that the problem was the ideology without taking in the huge other confounding variables into account is an ideological view of Communism as the problem in all cases.
 

tenthring

Banned
Sure, never said otherwise.

That is highly debatable. Arguably the system China has now is similar to Lenin's NEP.

IOTL of how Communism came about it certainly was, but that is why those systems are identified by the names of their rulers, rather than as communism (Stalinism, Maoism, etc.). They came to power as the result of major violent struggles, which tends to engender a militaristic hierarchy of order; of course Communism in the USSR and post-Mao in China weren't dictatorships. There was a means of transition to power and no one since had the power guys like Stalin or Mao did. Fascism did have the dictatorship model down pretty solid too.

Doesn't Capitalism also have an ideological view on human nature and behavior as well? Same with Fascism or even the view the everyone is ready for and wants Democracy. I'm not saying Communism, such that it existed as a coherent ideology and wasn't invented on the fly once in power because it didn't really have a governing model laid out, was a good system or the choice one, it's just that using a few examples from history and claiming that the problem was the ideology without taking in the huge other confounding variables into account is an ideological view of Communism as the problem in all cases.

China has a mixed economy managerial state like basically everywhere else in the modern world. Absolutely nobody in China would honestly consider themselves communists or claim they had something to do with Lenin.

It's not a few examples. It was literally vast swaths of the world population, across all sorts of regions and cultures, over the course of a century. It killed untold tens of millions and created gigantic slave states. Being a communist apologist is the equivalent of being a Nazi apologist.

Communism was a utopian ideology. It proposed a "new man" and an "end to history". A similar attitude also got fascism into trouble. Capitalism has its problems, but at a minimum at least it doesn't propose to use the power of the state to overturn human nature. Creating a "new man" usually means killing off a lot of old ones.
 

Deleted member 1487

China has a mixed economy managerial state like basically everywhere else in the modern world. Absolutely nobody in China would honestly consider themselves communists or claim they had something to do with Lenin.
China has evolved, but there is still enormous state intervention in the economy, it certainly is nowhere near capitalist except in small business. Again similar to the NEP. There are just certain universal things that work. But there is a LOT more intervention in the Chinese economy by the state than even in 'socialist' Europe.

It's not a few examples. It was literally vast swaths of the world population, across all sorts of regions and cultures, over the course of a century. It killed untold tens of millions and created gigantic slave states. Being a communist apologist is the equivalent of being a Nazi apologist.
Sure the Soviets, ChiComs, Cambodians all had horrific atrocities committed by the state in the name of ideology, but in each of those cases it was a crazy dictator with ultimate power that could get away with mass murder. Just like in Fascism and other ideologies. Monarchy's have a particularly brutal history of it too, as does Imperialism. Some estimates even having the US killing something like 20-30 million people world wide since 1950-94 in the Cold War to stop Communism. Certainly things are pretty nasty on a smaller scare in the Global War on Terror and Iraq situation.

In the end it is tough to really say that Communism is responsible ideologically for what happened in the worst atrocities of the USSR, Communist China, and Cambodia, as it came down to the behavior of specific dictators. Can we say genocide is a feature of Fascism because of Hitler? Or that Imperialism/Colonialism/Slavery/Genocide of Natives is a feature of Capitalism? I mean just looking at the history of the USA there is horrible atrocities against Native Americans, African-Americans, labor, and so on. In fact right now the US has the world's largest prison population by far and in some places they use them literally as slaves. In the South for some time the prison system was used as a substitute for slavery post-civil war in that they were able to totally deprive people, mostly black, of any civil rights and make them work for free in whatever way the state wanted.

Communism was a utopian ideology. It proposed a "new man" and an "end to history". A similar attitude also got fascism into trouble. Capitalism has its problems, but at a minimum at least it doesn't propose to use the power of the state to overturn human nature. Creating a "new man" usually means killing off a lot of old ones.
Capitalism doesn't use the state to over turn human nature per se, but it enforces it's market ideology on the public with the power of state and we can see the impact of corporate power over the state in the US currently and throughout history that hasn't really led to fantastic results. Plus we've seen the impact of the security state during various conflicts including the Cold War in abusing people. Not say that is anywhere comparable to what Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot did in the name of Communism and the US state had the ability to reform during the Great Depression (less so now), but had to go to bloody war to end slavery in name, though not exactly in practice, and during the Great Depression it was only the direct threat of Fascism and Socialism or Communism overthrowing the state that forced reforms against an unwilling elite.
 
In my opinion, as a citizen of a former communist country (Romania), the tyrrany was intrinsic to the communist ideology and the dictators like Stalin were no accidents, but the mere logical consequence of the system (it applies also to fascism). Why? Paradoxically, the belief that humankind was intrinsic good and only alienated or perverted by capitalism led to concentration camps for disidents and mass-murder of millions; on the contrary, the opinion that man is imperfect and the society should be governed from the "invisible hand" of the market (Adam Smith) led to the very imperfect, yet very bearable open society we all now know. Does anyone think that such a forum and our posts would be possible in a stalinist society ?
 

Deleted member 1487

In my opinion, as a citizen of a former communist country (Romania), the tyrrany was intrinsic to the communist ideology and the dictators like Stalin were no accidents, but the mere logical consequence of the system (it applies also to fascism). Why? Paradoxically, the belief that humankind was intrinsic good and only alienated or perverted by capitalism led to concentration camps for disidents and mass-murder of millions; on the contrary, the opinion that man is imperfect and the society should be governed from the "invisible hand" of the market (Adam Smith) led to the very imperfect, yet very bearable open society we all now know. Does anyone think that such a forum and our posts would be possible in a stalinist society ?
You don't think the very birth of the USSR and Communist China had anything to do with why they evolved as they did? The USSR was born out of WW1, the Russian Civil War, and foreign invasion to put the hated Czarist regime back into place; they were founded on the world trying to wipe them out and got into power by winning violent conflicts. Pretty similar to the Chinese Communists were there nearly exterminated several times by the KMT and gained power by breaking down the system of landownership that lashed back at them at the same time they fought foreign invaders. Then they won the Civil War and had to participate in the Cold War against a hostile Superpower and deal with less then friendly ideological 'allyies' to the north and south. In the specific case of Romania that regime was born out of WW2 and the Soviets helping impose a Communist system to make sure they had a buffer between them and the west after yet another and by far the worst invasion the USSR/Russia had faced that nearly exterminated them, one in which the Romanians willingly participated in for gain and massacred civilians in the hundreds of thousands in the USSR. So it is understandable why the USSR was interested in building up an ideologically friendly series of buffer regimes to it's west after WW2.

In that case Communism really was imposed on the Romanian people by an external regime that effectively conquered it (even as the Romanian government switched being a puppet of one superpower to another) and forced it to accept a puppet regime friendly to the USSR. If we look at South Korea the US imposed a US-friendly regime there despite the South Korean people not wanting US backed dictatorships until they finally accepted one in 1948. Latin America is replete with US backed dictators and genocidal regimes. Indonesia too had a military regime friendly to the US and exterminated 1 million 'communists' in the villages 'just in case'. Clearly the Communist regimes were horrible systems that inflicted untold human suffering, but they came out of situations where they were facing being destroyed themselves and grew up with a violent mentality as a result. Like an abused child they grew up into an abusive adult. That doesn't excuse what the Communist regimes did, but it does contextualize why they did what they did beyond just saying that there is something in Marx that says commit mass murder.
 
Although a few timelines (most notably Dead by Dawn) have Trotsky as the leader of the USSR, IIRC it's considered an implausible cliche. Trotsky was very arrogant and not well-liked, and didn't have the same political survival skills that Stalin did. If he does comes to power, he probably gets taken out within a few years.
 
Never mind that the only contender for Soviet leadership who was not in favor of forced collectivization was Bukharin.

Strictly speaking, *no* Soviet leader--including Stalin!--in the 1920's claimed to be for forced collectivization. But in any event, the opponents of Stalin's anti-peasant policies in 1928 included three of the nine full members of the Politburo: Bukharin, Rykov (who after all was Prime Minister of the USSR), and Tomsky. Moreover, a fourth full member, Kalinin, at first showed signs of wavering. Uglanov, who headed the Moscow party organization and was a candidate member of the Politburo was also a "Rightist." So without Stalin's control of the Secretariat and without cronies he had promoted to the Politburo, like Kaganovich, it is hardly clear that the "Rightists" were doomed to fail.
 
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Essentially, up until the Civil War, Stalin's absence, in my opinion, would have affected nothing. Stalin was essentially a nobody before the Civil War, and even then was only somewhat a prominent figure by then. I mean, he held office, but he was a glorified pencil-pusher and bureaucrat. One Menshevik described him as "the grey blur" when stood alongside the likes of Trotsky, Lenin and Bukharin (then known as the party's "golden boy"). Despite the insistence of Stalin's propagandists, he had no prominent, if any role in the October Revolution's planning, to my knowledge not being part of the Revolutionary Planning Committee.

However, after the overthrow of Kerensky's government he was appointed to the first Politburo, and led the suppression of the Georgians. During this period, he does seem to have been one of Trotsky's biggest opponents, even working to gain personal dictator powers in the region. It does seem possible to me that without Stalin there wouldn't have been as much vocal opposition to Trotsky within the party, and potentially not as organised an opposition later on.

Stalin did also have a unique perspective when compared to the other Bolsheviks, having the perspective of a non-intellectual. As such he was better in tune with the opinions and concerns of the ordinary Russians. For example, he realised, unlike Trotsky, that a call for more war under "permanent revolution" wouldn't have gone down a treat, instead advocating for "socialism in one country". As such, one could argue that Stalin was necessary in developing effective resistance to Trotsky.

That being said, without Stalin, there would still have been organised opposition to Trotsky, primarily from Kamenev and Zinoviev. They feared he would hijack the revolution and become a "second Napoleon" (technically third Napoleon... or maybe Fifth?) In lieu of Stalin, they would have reached out to other political allies to undermine Trotsky. Molotov (Stalin's predecessor as General Secretary) had been attacked by both Trotsky and Lenin, so he likely would have joined in a similar Triumvirate to the one they formed with Stalin. However, this would assume that Molotov wasn't replaced as General Secretar in 1922. Alternatively, they might have reached out to Bukharin, Rykov and/or Tomsky on the Party's Right. However, it largely would have depended on who got what roles in Stalin's absence.

Hope this is interesting.

Btw, I'm the Arch Dubliner - pleasure to meet you all! :D
 
This is one of the most massive PODs in 20th Century history.

The absence of Stalin changes EVERYTHING about the USSR after the October Revolution.

Edit: For the better. Its hard to imagine a worse post-Lenin leader of the Soviet Union than Stalin.
 
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