Peasants, enrich yourselves! A right opposition USSR TL.

[RousseauX]

Important. For immediate read by chief editor. Soviet leader Iosef Stalin. Assassinated. Moscow. Assailant Unknown.

December, 20, 1926, Telegram Dispatch to New York Times

Though it will never be fully established why Alexei Ivanovich Vasiliev, a young Chekist, chose to shoot Stalin as he walked the Kremlin grounds. Nor whom he was really acting on behalf of, whether it was on the part of the so recently defeated left opposition, some other political faction within the party, a foreign intelligence service, or simply out of his own personal grievance. But what we do know is that he fired a shot which is to change history forever........ [1]

Sheila Fitzpatrick, A History of the Soviet Union (2003), Cambridge University Press.


*[1] Similar to the assassination of Sergei Kirov otl

 

[RousseauX]

The death of Stalin in 1926 set off a succession crisis within the All-Union Communist party leadership. By 1926, the Left opposition which had composed of Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky had already being defeated at the party center. The opposition's primary power bases: Leningrad and Moscow had being taken over by Stalinists like Molotov and Kirov. This left them relatively powerless, and a convenient scapegoat for the recent murder of the General Secretary. Accused of "moral complicity", all three leaders were expelled from the central committee in January 1927, having already being expelled from the Politburo earlier in October 1926. By November 1927, all three would be expelled from the Communist Party entirely. [1]

This did not end the struggle for control over the Communist party and the World Communist movement, but rather set the stage for a another confrontation. This time between the "Stalinist group" (recent arrivals promoted to high level politics by Stalin): like Sergei Kirov, Lazar Kaganovich, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Anastas Mikoyan against the older generation of leadership under old Bolsheviks Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky and Grigori Sokolnikov.

- Sheila Fitzpatrick, A History of the Soviet Union (2003), Cambridge University Press.

[1] As per otl, in the 1920s Stalin was actually considered a moderate in dealing with defeated left opposition members. With right oppositionists calling for harsher punishments, there is no reason to expect the Zinoviev et el to be treated leniently at least politically had Stalin died.

 

[RousseauX]

One of the consequences of the defeat of the left opposition is the political destruction of the opponents of the NEP. Stalin's lieutenants, having so recently fought against the left's line of forcibly extracting from the peasants to fuel industry, was not about to suddenly embrace those same policies. The right opposition itself of course continued to support the NEP, leading to a political consensus on domestic economics in the immediate post-Stalin era.

At the same time the succession struggle raged on: while the right-opposition, being composed of a large percentage of the old Leninist era leadership, had a numerical advantage in the Politburo the Stalinists had an advantage almost everywhere else. During Stalin's tenure as General Secretary he had packed the Central Committee, the party apparatus both at the center and in the provinces with his clients and cronies. Those men either have pre-existing patron-client relations with the Politburo Stalinists, or instinctively drew towards men in the "Stalinist center" like Economic Inspectorate (Rabkrin) chief Sergo Ordzhonikidze for protection in the post-Stalin era. This gave the Stalinists a large degree of power to determine who would be elected the new General Secretary.

-Sheila Fitzpatrick, A History of the Soviet Union (2003), Cambridge University Press.

 

[RousseauX]

General Secretary Vyacheslav Molotov, leader of Soviet Union at 38

At the 15th All-Union Party Congress in December 1927 the Central Committee elected the senior-most Stalinist in the Politburo: Vyacheslav Molotov to be new General Secretary and Party leader. With the Central Committee so packed full of Stalinists, it is difficult NOT to have one of their party "bosses" being elected to party leader. A.I Rykov retained his premiership, making a rightist head of government to balance out Stalinist hegemony over the party. [1]

However, the position of general secretary itself was weakened, with the addition of senior rightist Mikhail Tomsky to the secretariat as an additional Politburo member to balance out the Stalinist's control over that key body. Several high ranking rightists was also elected to the Orgburo as part of an effective power sharing agreement, giving the rightists significant opportunities to build their own party machine both at the center and in the provinces.

The congress also divided the spoils from the fall of the leftists: Bukharin became the new head of the Comintern taking over from Zinoviev. Nikolai Bryukhanov was promoted to deputy premier taking over from Kamenev. While Grigori Sokolnikov, the talented economist responsible for stabilizing Soviet government finances after the Civil War, was elected once again [2] to be a candidate Politburo member and took over his old post as Finance Commissar. This posting in particular is have dramatic consequences for the fate of Soviet socialism in the near future.

-Sheila Fitzpatrick, A History of the Soviet Union (2003), Cambridge University Press.

*[1] Similar to the Malenkov-Khrushchev relationship after Stalin's death in which Khrushchev was party head while Malenkov was premier

*[2] In otl Sokolnikov was a politburo member ousted for a brief stint of support for the left opposition against Stalin. With Stalin's death, he has recanted and brought back for his talent.

 

[RousseauX]

....having being expelled from the party in 1927, Trotsky and his followers were first internally exiled to Kazakh SSR in mid 1928. However, he was deported from the Soviet Union altogether in late 1928. After which he first settled in Turkey before leaving for Norway and eventually Mexico.

In exile he penned his most famous work: "Revolution betrayed" (published 1937), in which he accused nearly every member of the Bolshevik leadership (other than himself and Lenin) of not having followed the ideals of Marxist-Leninism. He called the Soviet Union of the post-Stalin era a "deformed worker's state" in which real power has being taken from the workers and the "true" revolutionaries and put into the hands of a "neo-bourgeois class" and "bureaucratic caste". He referred to the defeat and exile of the left-opposition (including himself) as a "Soviet thermidor" in which the original ideals of Socialism were betrayed.

While he spoke ill of almost every leading Communist, he reserved special fire for Nikolai Bukharin: the man who provided much of the ideological underpinning for Soviet policies of the 1920s-1930s. Calling him a "Capitalist-Roader" and a "reactionary in Marxist clothing". He laments "Socialism in one country" [1] rather than World revolution was the official foreign policy of the USSR and accused Bukharin of "burying the revolution" for it. He further predicted that the capitalism was going to be restored in the USSR unless a "third revolution" [2] by the working class topples the current leadership and restores a "true worker's state". The following quotes demonstrates Trotsky's vision....

-High School History AP Textbook, Republic of Scotland, 2006.

[1] Socialism in one country actually originated as a joint Bukharin-Stalin idea in 1924

[2] After the February and October revolutions of course

 

[RousseauX]

Finance Commissar Grigori Sokolnikov

The first major issue the new Soviet leadership had to deal with at the beginning of 1928 was the ongoing scissor crisis, in which price of industrial goods have reached sky-high levels. While prices of agricultural goods collapsed: leading to a situation in which peasants are no longer willing to sell their grain to the party as they would be unable to purchase desired industrial goods from the cities anyway. The lack of grain deliveries to urban areas is bringing specter of civil war era famines.

The man with a real material solution to this was the newly returned Sokolnikov. An old Bolshevik and an economic technocrat, he held borderline heretical position that economic planning was folly, and that Market Socialist Economy needs to be implemented if the Soviet Union was to prosper and develop. Sokolnikov recognized that the root cause of the scissor crisis was the relative low productivity of Soviet industry owing to the lack of advanced technology and capital which meant there wasn't enough consumer goods produced to sell to the peasantry in exchange for grain. The only way to resolve this was to seek out foreign investments, after all, did not Lenin say "They [the capitalists] will supply us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers."?

Sokolnikov was lucky to find a patron in premier A.I Rykov. Rykov, a politically talented and charming man, had the chops for convincing General Secretary Molotov as well as other Stalinists in the Central committee of the necessity of foreign investments in the Soviet Union [1], often over drinking sessions. Infamously, in one report to the Central Committee, Rykov proclaimed: "The capitalists will sell us the rope we will use to hang them!" [2]. Normalizing economic relations with Germany and other western countries soon became a leading priority for the party. Sokolnikov was able to find two key allies: the young Trade Comissar Anastas Mikoyan [3] and Foreign Comissar Georgy Chicherin [4] in finding sources of foreign capital for the Soviet Union.

However, the actual act of normalizing relations between the birthplace of the global worker's revolution and the heart of the industrial capitalist states would prove difficult...

-Sheila Fitzpatrick, A History of the Soviet Union (2003), Cambridge University Press.

[1] Stalin approved of the same thing in 1928, though he often sabotaged his own projects such as by opening negotiations with Germany for loans and then immediately arresting German engineers in the USSR.
[2] There is no evidence Lenin ever actually said this, here Rykov coins the phrase
[3] Mikoyan otl "worshiped Stalin because he was young", with Stalin dead, he transferred his adoration to the charismatic Rykov instead
[4] Another supporter of attracting foreign investment for the USSR otl

 

[RousseauX]

People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Georgy Chicherin


The Soviets were able achieve significant success in diplomacy in 1928-1929. First of all, the the Soviets were able to obtain a significant long term loan from Germany in exchange for promises of future deliveries of grain, oil and other natural resources. [1] The Soviets also offered significant concessions to the French, including assumption of the Tsarist debts to be paid in negotiated installments [2], which brought in French loans as well. The French loaned money to the Soviets partially to counter-weigh German influences in the USSR.

Perhaps most significantly, in June 1929 the Labor party returned to power in the UK. In 1924 the Labor government had being ready to extend significant loans to the USSR in return for the UK being granted "most favored nation" trade status by the Soviets and for the end to Comintern agitation in the British Empire. However, an agreement never took place due to Labor's loss in the 1924 General election. [3] With Ramsay McDonald back at 10 Downing, a belated signing took place in July of 1929 in London with Mikoyan and Chicherin attending.

Finally the Soviet Union had access to significant foreign capital as well as access to western goods, expertise and technology as a way to advance the "productive forces of society". German engineers were soon working to improve Soviet factories and educate their Soviet counter-parts on modern industrial techniques using western machines. However, this did not work out completely as planned. For one, the west was still reluctant to sell their most advanced technologies to Communists, not to mention even with loans the Soviets still had trouble paying for it. While productivity did increase: it would take time for new technologies and capital to be integrated into the Soviet industrial process. Much of the loans also had to go to directly purchase western consumer goods and, ironically for a state containing the Ukrainian breadbasket, grain to feed the cities. [4]

In the midst of all this the food situation in the cities was growing worse, Sokolnikov was forced to adopt the same measures he did in the early 1920s: which is to ruthlessly control monetary emissions (printing money) to ensure inflation is under control so peasants would accept payment for their grain. [8] In material terms, this was effectively a means of decreasing industrial investment in favor of focusing on maximizing production of consumer goods by tightening up credit for investment [5]. When industrial managers complained to the finance commissariat, Sokolnikov taunted them with the quote "Printing Money is the opium of the economy!". However, obviously the longer term impact of this is that Soviet industry was growing slower: which meant the crisis continued.

For all the wizardry of the Bolshevik technocrats in foreign policy and economics, the measures taken to combat the "scissor crisis" still wasn't enough, and by mid 1929 the Soviet leadership which had fought so hard against coercing the peasantry barely two years ago found itself forced to send in OGPU [6] to combat what amounted to tax riots against grain requisition. Soon tens of thousands have being arrested in the Urals and Siberia for "anti-Soviet agitation" and "economic crimes". Trotsky gleefully penned from his Kazakh exile that he had being correct all along about the need to coerce peasants into giving up their grain to fuel industrialization. [7]

However right as Soviet Communism seems to be unraveling due to its own internal contradictions, it was thrown a lifeline by what Marx had prophesied: the inherent contradictions of American Capitalism.

On October 31, 1929, the New York stock market crashed, losing 15% of its value within a few hours. This would mark the start of the greatest economic catastrophe capitalism had ever known....

-Sheila Fitzpatrick, A History of the Soviet Union (2003), Cambridge University Press.


[1] Stalin did try to negotiate for this in 1928, the Germans and Soviets saw each other as partners in dismantling the Versailles order in the Rapello era
[2] Stalin also offered this to the French OTL
[3] This happened OTL. The possibility for Detente between the Soviets and the west was there in the 1920s, it fell apart otl due to several factors. A more determined Soviet leadership who cared less about not being temporarily dependent on foreign capital could have made it work.
[4] The Soviets actually did import grain in the late 1920s, Bukharin wanted to import more than the Soviets actually did well Stalin wanted more coercive requisitions precisely because he did not want to be dependent on foreign imports from capitalists
[5] An obvious means of tightening monetary supply is to tighten up credit issued to industry
[6] The secret police predecessor of the NKVD and KGB
[7] He did the same thing otl and it was this which caused his deportation from the USSR by Stalin
[8] This effectively raised the real price of grain, thus the peasants are somewhat more willing to hand over their produce

 

[RousseauX]

The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn the capitalist world have ever experienced in the age of mass politics. It was this, more than almost any other factor, which gave the USSR the ability to recover from the crisis of the mid-late 1920s and march towards becoming an industrialized power.

The Soviet Union was relatively insulated from the depression's negative effects for several reasons. Unlike much of the capitalist world the USSR was not on the gold standard, which meant it did not experience the deflationary cycles which wrecked western economies. [1] Second, despite hit to its export revenues due to lower commodity prices: the Soviets were still far less interconnected with global trade and financial networks than most other countries. The planned nature of Soviet industry also meant it was more immune to market forces and the downturn did not result in unemployment: depressed global conditions hardly caused lower quotas issued by industrial managers.

The depression also provided significant opportunities to the USSR: first in terms of a trickle of immigrants from the United States and other western countries. [2] A significant minority of them were highly educated leftists who lacked job opportunities in their native countries where 25% unemployment was common. They saw Soviet socialism as the future and an alternative to the "crash of the old world" in capitalist countries. Those ideologically convicted intellectuals would prove valuable in lending their skills at mathematics, engineering and technology to the Soviet economy in the 1930s and beyond.

Most importantly, the prices of capital goods fell through the floor during the depression. Nobody was looking to open new factories in America or England, so western machine tools manufacturers were desperate for customers. All of a sudden it was a buyer's market for the most advanced industrial technologies at literal fire sale pries, with the Soviets being one of the few purchasers. The crown Jewels of American industrial capitalism became an open catalog for their arch-nemesis to purchase. [3]

By 1930, Freyn Engineering was helping setting up brand new steel plants as big as the flagship US steel plant in Gary, Indiana in the Ural mountains [4]. Caterpillar build factories producing tractors in Kharkov and Leningrad. Ford was building auto-plants modeled on the Baton Rouge in southern Russia. Electric plants, ball bearings plants, textile factories, furniture factories flowed in from Sweden, the UK, France and Germany. Factories for everything from the highest valued capital goods to the lowest valued consumer goods was being built all across the USSR. [5] The Soviets would also use quite a few "tricks", such as purchasing the license to build one factory plant, and then simply built a dozen using the blueprints they acquired to cut down on costs. All over the Soviet Union, industrial productivity was finally up, and Russia for the first time had something akin for a modern industrial economy on par with that of its western rivals. Finally consumer goods were being manufactured at a rate which met at least some of the demands of the Soviet people. [6]

Hidden from view however, this industrialization was paid for with horrific human costs....

- A History of Global Industrialization, David Landes, Harvard University Press




[1] The great depression was a financial crisis turned deflationary spiral, with central banks unable to act because of adherence to convertibility to gold. Countries like China which was on the silver standard suffered less otl, and recovery in the US began when FDR went off the gold standard.

[2] As per otl, except they (mostly) don't end up being purged

[3] Exactly as per otl, an understated reason for the "success" of Stalinist industrialization was that western technologies became available exactly when it was "do or die" for the Soviet industries.

[4] Magnitogorsk will be built as otl thanks to the lobbying of newly minted heavy industry commissar Sergo Ordzhonikidze

[5] Soviet industries is more focused on light industry and consumer goods as opposed to heavy industries like steel than OTL. Without collectivization, and with more pragmatic and risk averse leadership, increasing consumer goods production to pay for grain overcomes ideological disposition towards heavy industry. Overall Soviet industrialization is also slower than OTL for reasons we will explore

[6] Note, collectivization never took place ttl, this is going to have incalculable consequences in the future. Overall living standards in the USSR are also much, much higher than otl 1930s. It's hard to overstate what a disaster collectivization was. In some areas such as Kazakh SSR the number of livestock fell by 90%. Without collectivization the peasantry are immensely better off.

 

[RousseauX]

A quick snapshot of the World in January 1933:

Mao Zedong is sitting in Yan'an, busy fighting Chiang Kai Shek 's Nationalist warlords from the outside, and busy purging the supporters of the Moscow trained "28-Bolsheviks" within the party. Despite some superficial similarities between the land redistribution policies of the CPC in Yan'an and Moscow's agricultural policies, he has being secretly reading a translation of the works of Leon Trotsky. However, he cannot quite be so open about this until he finds some way to purge Soviet "agricultural adviser" and Comintern agent Nikolai Yezhov [1], whom Mao suspects was sent by Moscow to keep an eye on him.

Walter Ulbricht is in Paris, having fled under an assumed name after the recent Nazi victory led by Adolf Hitler, in battle for Germany. Despite a half-hearted alliance with the Social Democrats [2], the Steel Helmets and the Red Front couldn't keep the Nazis at bay. Oh well....he will soon be heading to Hotel Lux in Moscow to wait another shot at the revolution. While at a Parisian Cafe, he had a very interesting chat with an idealistic young Briton named Kim Philby.

Franklin Roosevelt has defeated incumbent Republican Herbert Hoover, and is preparing for his inauguration and a "New Deal" for America...

Heinz Guderian is giving a lecture on logistics at the Frunze academy in Moscow [3], which is attended by deputy defense Comissar Mikhail Tukhachevsky, at the reception the two agreed that the new German government is likely to recall German military missions in the Soviet Union. And bid each other farewell with some regret.

[1] Funnily enough, Yezhov was deputy commissar for agriculture in the late 20s otl. In atl, he lost some power struggle in the post-Stalin era and has being sent on what is effectively an exile to China.

[2] The Comintern doesn't take the "Social Fascist" line ttl, but the KPD itself was pretty dubious about cooperating with the SDP

[3] German officers did do this during the Interbellum due to the Rapello Pact

Overall, the world has not changed too much from OTL. The butterflies thus far have being contained to the USSR and the global Communist parties.