Non-Stalinist USSR
- Thread starter Cregan
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Deleted member 1487
Stalin's drinking gives him a heart attack, he has an accident, or he gets assassinated. Just make something up.
I don't know enough about Soviet politics to comment beyond that.
Lenins death is a bad POD because his death was if anything the moment where it became near inevitable that Stalin would rise to power. If the stroke outright killed Lenin, Trotsky has more potential to decisively push Stalin out of power but it's still a long shot. The months between Lenins second stroke and his death were definitive because it was when Stalin gained almost universal support from the "middle cadres" (mid level party bureaucrats who held a lot of personal power). Stalin was fond of saying that his rise to power was reliant on these middle cadre; rather than Trotsky who only bothered to appeal to the top ranks of the party and to the lowest ranks of the party. And who also coasted on the fact that he was the expect successor to Lenin for leadership, because duh. He was Lenins second in command and his closest political ally.
Hmm interesting.
What are some better PODs for preventing Stalinism then? And - depending on how Stalinism is stopped - what does the USSR become?
Its always interested me because Stalinism defined so much of the (disastrous) interwar period between the establishment of the Soviet Union and WW2, there is ample room to explore WIs without Stalinism.
Lenin lives another decade is the easiest. Around the end he was supposedly plotting to denounce Stalin and bureaucratism in general at the last party congress. Which would be a big deal because while Stalin was pretty decent at internal maneuvers, outright becoming Lenins enemy would probably doom him.
But otherwise, putting Ephraim Sklyansky on the central committee of the communist party might help. I'm not sure how but this was what The Resurrections did and that was a great AH book.
Otherwise, a communist Germany neatly destroys Stalinism, because Stalinism was in many ways a reaction to the isolation of the Soviet Union internationally, and within the Commintern it had power because Russia's was the only Commintern party of any importance. Germany would shift things so that Russia is a secondary power within the alliance, even if Stalin came to prominence (itself doubtful. Rosa Luxemburg would hate him) it wouldn't be Stalinism as we know it.
So does that mean that Stalinism would always be likely to rise to power due to Soviet isolation? If the other revolutions still fail and the Soviet Union remains isolated as the only communist state in the world, some form of Stalinism (even without Stalin himself) is still likely to be implemented?
GiantMonkeyMan
Banned
Stalin in 1920ish became the head of the internal organisation that appointed, promoted, demoted and transfered party members to posts across the state. During the civil war period, it was often enough to simply cite 'lack of party discipline' as a valid reason to demote someone and appoint a more amenable individual instead. Lenin defended his role during this period due to the terrible and difficult situation they found themselves in during the civil war and the necessity to organise a way to overcome famine and counter-revolution.
There were other individuals who could have taken on this role or there could have been an advisory oversight committee set up to prevent this system's abuse (it essentially meant Stalin could fill delegates to party conferences with his allies to drown out opposition) but due to some of the early disasters of the war (breaking of the Bolsheviks with the Left-SRs, the deaths of leading party organisers like Yakov Sverdlov, the isolation of the Soviets in Russia from their potential international allies etc) it was deemed impossible but was essentially the route Stalin used to solidify bureaucratic and political power over his opponents.
There were other individuals who could have taken on this role or there could have been an advisory oversight committee set up to prevent this system's abuse (it essentially meant Stalin could fill delegates to party conferences with his allies to drown out opposition) but due to some of the early disasters of the war (breaking of the Bolsheviks with the Left-SRs, the deaths of leading party organisers like Yakov Sverdlov, the isolation of the Soviets in Russia from their potential international allies etc) it was deemed impossible but was essentially the route Stalin used to solidify bureaucratic and political power over his opponents.
I'd personally say so. I mean, just look at the primary non-bureaucratic elements of Stalinism. A reembracing of Russian chauvinism, socialism in one country, a distinct shift in international communist politics to serve the foreign policy of the USSR? The social base for Stalin in the bureaucracy can be eliminated, and you could probably even murder Stalin but still retain a similar shift. It wouldn't be as bloody and would likely retain more old Bolshevik character. But it would still be roughly the ideological ideas being brought to the forefront.
There's also key moments that could be made better, the ban on factions in the Communist party was a disaster, it was rarely universally enforced but it created a very real situation where apparatus was king in the party because they controlled the mechanisms of enforcement for that kind of rule. Stalin is an easy man to target but it was a rot that went deeper than just him. Trotsky always viewed Stalin as just the face of a phenomenon. And there's a lot of truth there even if Stalin was also obviously more than that.