Plausibility check/WI: The Soviet Union collapses in the 50s

[Ricardolindo]

How plausible was it for the Soviet Union to have collapsed in the 50s, after Stalin's death? If it did collapse, what effects would this much earlier end of the Cold War have? What would the ex-communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe look like, today?
Would NATO have dissolved? What would decolonization look like?

 

[Sam R.]

Yes. As a result of the “Third revolution,” or the Central European Workers Council Revolution. There were still extensive bolshevik networks that believed in proletarian revolution, and a few social networks of proles. In the Central European countries there were active social democratic revolutionaries who had been bent left by Soviet rule, combine this with “native” communists who experienced the heady days of 1944-1945 when liberation meant the possibility of proletarian rule.

The biggest threat until Kadar and Brezhnev is from the left.

 

[James Ricker]

If the Soviet Union does a little worse in "The Great Patriotic War"combined with Stalin liquidating a few more popular and rational individuals ,It could happen. Particularly if he dies in the middle of one of his purges then all bets would be off everyone would pull the knives out in self-defense. That would be generated in toys Civil War pretty quick and after the casualties suffered against the Germans no one would really have the strength to be able to pull off a victory.

 

[starwarsfan]

Yes. As a result of the “Third revolution,” or the Central European Workers Council Revolution. There were still extensive bolshevik networks that believed in proletarian revolution, and a few social networks of proles. In the Central European countries there were active social democratic revolutionaries who had been bent left by Soviet rule, combine this with “native” communists who experienced the heady days of 1944-1945 when liberation meant the possibility of proletarian rule.

The biggest threat until Kadar and Brezhnev is from the left.

This is quite interesting, do you have any sources on this topic and any potential groups/leaders of these movements?

 

[Tjakari]

Yes. As a result of the “Third revolution,” or the Central European Workers Council Revolution. There were still extensive bolshevik networks that believed in proletarian revolution, and a few social networks of proles. In the Central European countries there were active social democratic revolutionaries who had been bent left by Soviet rule, combine this with “native” communists who experienced the heady days of 1944-1945 when liberation meant the possibility of proletarian rule.

The biggest threat until Kadar and Brezhnev is from the left.

Makes you want to sing the Internationale doesn't it.

 

[Sam R.]

This is quite interesting, do you have any sources on this topic and any potential groups/leaders of these movements?

Some of the Zhadanovishchina weren’t just victims of factional infighting but differentiated lines. See also: Rajk, Nagy, Gimes, Maleter, Mikoyan.

Makes you want to sing the Internationale doesn't it.

The Russian Imperial GDP didn’t force socialist relations of production. Nor did the Chinese gdp. Hoping that a quarter of the worlds gdp will materially require changed relations of production because Imre Nagy is nicer than Lenin is a bet I won’t place.

 

[Ricardolindo]

Bumping for interest, this seems an underused POD.

 

[Ricardolindo]

To expand on this thread of mine, could De-Stalinization have gotten out of control, like Perestroika and Glasnot did, 30 years later, and led to the collapse of the Soviet Union?

 

[Kaze]

Well... there is a way... instead of a relatively peaceful succession of Stalin (some murders happen and people disappear, but not much) - Civil War could spark between the heirs. This could bring and end of the Soviet Union - or make it more interesting. Whatever will the West back - or would they just popcorn it?

 

[David Floyd]

Sure, they could have launched a war against the West. Try that in the early-mid 50s and the Soviet Union will collapse one way or another.

 

[Sam R.]

Well... there is a way... instead of a relatively peaceful succession of Stalin (some murders happen and people disappear, but not much) - Civil War could spark between the heirs.

Sure, they could have launched a war against the West. Try that in the early-mid 50s and the Soviet Union will collapse one way or another.

And the United States could have invaded the United Kingdom in 1949. And Truman could have executed his opponents.

The Soviet Union was not a cartoon supervillain, nor was it a cold war stereotype.

Neither of these suggestions lie within the system of relationships that defined the nomenklatura and the Central Committee as an aparatus. It took four years and two major policy failures by the "anti-party bloc" before Khrushchev could move effectively on them—in fact they moved upon him first, and the result was

• Molotov was sent as ambassador to Mongolia
• Malenkov became director of a hydroelectric plant in Kazakhstan
• Kaganovich became director of a small potash works in the Urals
• Shepilov became head of the Economics Institute of the local Academy of Sciences of Kyrgyzstan

Red in tooth and claw.

The Great Patriotic War almost destroyed the soviet people. Not the Soviet Union, I'm talking about the people. The male deficit was enormous and created a gendered revolution in work which resulted in crashes in living standards for newly feminised professions. The GPW brought the only famine on after forced industrialisation of agriculture. The GPW resulted in guerillas fighting inside the Soviet Union into the 1950s. The GPW scared the shit out of the Soviet Union's elite and created a defence in depth mentality that forced the maintenance of an overly large conventional armed forces.

Soviet concepts of offence were political (Berlin), or peripheral (Korea, Yugoslavia). Picking a war with the West is not within the comprehension of the nomenklatura. The main reason why they didn't go into Yugoslavia was because of the response to the attempt to unify Korea.

To expand on this thread of mine, could De-Stalinization have gotten out of control, like Perestroika and Glasnot did, 30 years later, and led to the collapse of the Soviet Union?

The only way it is going out of control is via workers councils. This will probably lead to a kind of Dubcek-like reform under Khrushchev-Mikoyan-Zhukov-whatever opportunists glom on to the reform from below movement. Out of those three only Mikoyan really has a taste for it, Zhukov is politically agnostic, but has a soft spot for ordinary people. Khrushchev is a master opportunist, but prefers less "administrative" and more "legal" methods generally.

There's enough of a reservoir of people who actually would rather like the promise of Communism in 1953-1963 that collapse is not on the table.

In the Soviet Union itself you're not likely to see multiple revolutionary parties permitted, but rather multiple Leninist factions legalised.

Now this is very dangerous for the west. Particularly if they demonstrate that multiple factions can coexist without liquidating each other.

yours,
Sam R.