PC: Benevolent USSR?

The seeds of what the USSR was to become were sown during the Russian Civil War; by the time that was ended (1922) the Soviets were already heading toward authoritarian rule, with the Cheka (the forerunner of the KGB), gulags, and expropriation of the kulaks already in full swing. By then it's too late; the Bolsheviks are firmly in control and Lenin is leading them willy-nilly down the path to 'socialism'.

To have a 'nicer' Soviet Union we need a POD before the February 1917 overthrow of the Tsar and the establishment of the republic under Kerensky. If the Socialist Revolutionaries can gain power and negotiate a less humiliating peace with the Central Powers then perhaps the circumstances which brought the Bolsheviks to power can be avoided. While Russia under the SR won't be Paradise it won't be the living hell that it was in the first years of the Bolsheviks' rule either.
 
The USSR expands on its NEP society, it creates a more or less decentralized Communist dictatorship that evolves a stronger liberal core, and while overall weaker militarily this USSR is somewhat less of a scary-ass dictatorship to the West and so joins the League of Nations and provides the core of a new Franco-Russian alliance that defeats a short-lived German revanchist war over the Polish Corridor. The USSR is seen as a lighter and softer and quasi-democratic successor state to Tsarism. Lenin is seen as Kerensky but moreso and the Allies pass over the more unseemly traits of the Soviet Union.
 
If The Black Book of Communism is too slanted for your tastes, there's always The Unknown Lenin. Same conclusion: Lenin was a tyrannical homicidal jerk.

Lenin didn't liquidate the Politburo and elect a new one if decisions didn't go his way, so there might be more democracy within the Party, but the Party will still crush all opposition with an iron fist.

Perhaps Lenin lives long enough to get rid of Stalin and we get rule by a committee headed by someone less brutal. If the NEP continues, the USSR will be a more pleasant place to live, but without a heavy-industry program, it will be militarily weaker.

Might there be a way to do both? Invest the profits of the "commanding heights" state industries into heavy industry without slave labor, mass starvation, etc?

One thing about that is if the Soviets are clearly making improvements with the West and showing an openness to negotiations with the democracy and represent more Russian Social Democracy of the pre-war period than hardline Bolshevism then the Allies may decide to actually link the USSR in with the rest of Europe economically. This could end up ironically severing the Rapallo Treaty's protocols that led to the first stages of German re-armament and thus preventing a WWII as we know it, though the USSR will also not be the gruesome Stalinist juggernaut of OTL here.

To note as in other threads, Trotsky was a Menchevik first apparently. He jumped bandwagon.

The other side of that is that Stalin was an Old Bolshevik from the first with a distinguished record of.....fundraising.
 
it seems like a lot of the posts in this thread are being made with the idea of making the USSR into a liberal state, which kind of defeats the purpose of the USSR.

I'm also seeing a lot of posts considering the mensheviks as alternatives to the bolsheviks, but in my opinion the USSR is not happening without bolshevism in power. during the provisional government the mensheviks were defenders of the liberal republic, and supported its attempts to limit the revolution to the political sphere rather than the social and economic sphere.

I just don't see that party - the mensheviks - transitioning from being supporters of the liberal republic to overthrowing it and instituting a workers state in whatever form.
 
it seems like a lot of the posts in this thread are being made with the idea of making the USSR into a liberal state, which kind of defeats the purpose of the USSR.

I'm also seeing a lot of posts considering the mensheviks as alternatives to the bolsheviks, but in my opinion the USSR is not happening without bolshevism in power. during the provisional government the mensheviks were defenders of the liberal republic, and supported its attempts to limit the revolution to the political sphere rather than the social and economic sphere.

I just don't see that party - the mensheviks - transitioning from being supporters of the liberal republic to overthrowing it and instituting a workers state in whatever form.

My idea doesn't do that so much as ensure that the USSR seems a less-scary version of Tsarist Russia with a bit more de-centralization and less aggression overall against its rivals. That's not a liberal state so much as not-Stalinist-USSR.
 
Best chance is probably a Union of Soviet Republics led by Rosa LUXEMBERG IN gERMANY rather than in feudal russia
So...A German Soviet Union instead of a Russian one?

That...sounds interesting...and a bit scary.

It could even be a black comedy about Stalin's continual imprisonment and escapes. Great Escape meets Spaceballs meets Groundhog Day. :D

This...sounds epic. Why has no one done this?

Isn't it possilble that some sort of mix of menshevik and bolshevik groups could lead to what we're looking for?

What about a RSPR? Russian Socialist People's Republic?
 
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