Would Alexander Shliapnikov and the Worker's Opposition be more powerful inside TTL's Soviet Union than they were IOTL? Their policies and positions seem quite similar doctrinally to those of Rosa's Council Communists, and if their more syndicalist ideas (or similar ones at least) were central in the German Revolution, could that be a popularity booster in the Union itself?
Rosa's Reich - Red Germany
- Thread starter GlobalHumanism
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Would Alexander Shliapnikov and the Worker's Opposition be more powerful inside TTL's Soviet Union than they were IOTL? Their policies and positions seem quite similar doctrinally to those of Rosa's Council Communists, and if their more syndicalist ideas (or similar ones at least) were central in the German Revolution, could that be a popularity booster in the Union itself?
Indeed. And this could mean the USSR following Germany's example and opening up politically. With a positive model and less of a siege mentality, it could definitely happen.
Trotsky was also, to put it as politely as possible, not a people person. Even if his theory is vindicated, which odds are will only make his already widely disliked egotism worse, that won't guarantee him being propelled to the top spot.
Plus this TL might see Lenin living somewhat longer or avoiding the later assassination attempt that greatly shortened his life. It's also quite possible said assassination attempt succeeds with all kinds of interesting possibilities there.
Lenin will probably be a powerful voice in shutting down Russian left-nationalists who might balk at the idea of surrendering leadership of the revolutionary movement to Germany.
Same goes for Sverdlov who would also have been a contender for succession had he lived. Sverdlov's one disadvantage was that he wasn't much of a theorist (which did matter).
I believe Kaplan's assasination attempt predates the POD, and in any case Lenin had other serious health issues.
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This is a great question, and one that will come to bear in the final part of chapter 5 (next part). Already we have the Mensheviks taking advantage Bolshevik weakness in Moscow in regards to economic policy; and with the coming Battle of Moscow this may further empower them. Not to mention the heavier reliance on the Ukrainian Anarchists - the effects of all these issues may see Lenin forced into yielding more and more control over the Congress of Soviets to non-Bolsheviks.
Deleted member 108228
Examination of Extra-Universal Systems of Government
Russia is not ready for "economic democracy" - it is necessary to restore and develop the economy, and the overwhelming majority of the heritage cann't even read and write.
You can't suppress democracy and expect it to pop back up magically when it is ready. The people in power will never relinquish that power once they get their hands on it.
Yes, it will need to be significantly adapted to Russia, but it doesn't mean it can't happen. I will just be very different. People can't read and write? Hold local assemblies and have the few who can explain to them and take questions. The nation is mostly agrarian at this point? Make the basic unit a farmer village rather than a factory. There's a lot that could be done.
Nonsense. Russia could function on economic democracy, that's effectively what the mir communes that Kropotkin discusses in Mutual Aid were. People don't need to know how to read and write to understand the concept of collective decision-making and shared responsibility.
Deleted member 108228
So the peasant would be in a unit of other peasants in a 'Farmers Soviet' and cooperate with the 'Workers Soviet' who would represent each other with a person from each Soviet: The Workers Soviets would have a Farmer Representative and other ones, and vice versa.
More likely you'd have a system where there's a general Soviet for each given city or rural district further divided by urban districts or villages with specific farm and factory Soviets operating for those specific areas and also being represented as part of the many general Soviets. All of those Soviets would, in turn, elect delegates to the Congress of Soviets.
By economic democracy I mean the direct control of workers in production - and this requires a certain level of education and management culture.
I'm afraid you overestimate the peasants - they can agree with each other, but they do not care about "outsiders".
It is important that they only learn to think on their own, and do not have logic. The thinking of an illiterate peasant is at the level of the archaic epoch. An experiment was conducted - Will such people understand the question formulated on the basis of the syllogism:
1. In the Far North, where snow always lies, all bears are white.
2. The Novaya Zemlya is located in the Far North.
3. What color are the bears there?
Most of the men and women interviewed answered this question as follows: "I have never been to the North and have not seen bears" or "If you want to know the answer to this question, you should ask people who have been there and seen these bears"
In this connection, Luria (a well-known psychologist and neurologist) notes that "although our illiterate peasants can use objectively logical relations in their reasoning based on their own life experience, it can be confidently asserted that they do not possess syllogism as a means of logical reasoning ... "
If you want to free a person, then first you need schools and factories.
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Chapter V (1919) | Part VIII (Makno's Gambit)
Chapter V: Grand Coalition
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Time Period: November 15th - December 1st, 1919
Italy
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Time Period: November 15th - December 1st, 1919
Italy
As the frontline brigade of the Italian Royal Army rushed toward to the central district of the city, they were met with a hail of sporadic gun fire from several positions along the southern roadway. “No quarter for the reactionaries!” yelled a PCC commander as he open fire into the crowd of the King’s troops. Unable to the make further headway toward their primary objective, the Italian Royal Army commander ordered his troops back and instead commanded his armored vehicle to speed forward.
Using mounted turrets they sprayed indiscriminately in all directions. At the same time, the artillery corps began firing upon buildings suspected of harboring the insurrectionists.
Unable to contend with such a massive disparity in firepower, the PCC militia forces that weren’t decimated by the bombardment, retreated towards the center of Milan.
Back east, the bulk of the communist forces were immediate rush south to help cover the retreat as well as delay the reactionary’s advance. With Gramsci himself leading the charge they were able to successfully do so, with middling losses to their ranks.
For days the battle raged on. House to house; block to block, the reactionaries engaged the disparate PCC militia brigades throughout the city. By November 17th, Victor Emmanuel II received reports that half of the city had been successfully cleared insurrectionists.
With losses mounting, and still no sign of a general uprising occurring in concert with their plight, the PCC’s confidence in Gramsci’s leadership began to waiver. “I fear we may not last much longer if we stay in our current positions,” said Niccoli Bombacci as he and Gramsci met on the night of November 18th. “We haven’t even the ammunition to sustain our efforts past a few more days.”
However, on the morning of November 19th bread riots, which had spontaneously broken out in the neighboring provincial cities of Brescia and Bergamo change, suddenly changes the sentiments of the revolutionaries.
“Our PCC affiliates need only the political clout to mold these popular uprisings against the oppressive bourgeois monarchy into a mass movement of the working class,” Gramsci said to this beleaguered comrades in arms. “I implore – no, I beg of you to gather your strength for one final push against the forces on the southern side of the city!”
It was agreed; the future of the of Gramsci’s leadership, but of the PCC as a fledging alliance of disparate leftist causes in Italy would hinge upon an offensive drive to expel the crown’s army from Milan.
As the Royal Army paused their house-house to campaign to likewise prepare their entire force for a final thrust to capture the central political and economic points within the city from insurrectionist occupation – Gramsci ordered to retreat from their defensive positions and reform into two corps.
Placing one near the most likely axis of advance for the Royal Army and the other on the northeastern flank, he planned to draw the bulk of the reactionaries out into the central open square of the city and then counter-strike them in a flanking motion.
On the morning of November 22nd, the plan was put into action.
______________
Soviet Russia
Simultaneously, after an arduous march from Kiev, on November 22nd Denkin’s Russia White Army and the French expedition in support met their first line of resistance a few miles south of the city of Orel. With the Smolensk Offensive siphoning a massive portion of the Red Army’s men and material from the southern theatre of the civil war, Lenin had commanded that a majority the troops that remained south of Moscow be pooled into a corps for the defense of Orel. Though he had hoped for the city to holdout until at least January, onsite French support provided to Denkin, caught the Red Army by surprise. Unable to maintain their hold on the city without being encircled and annihilated, Orel was evacuated on November 25th; With the now weakened southern Red Army marching in retreat back toward Moscow and Denkin following in the rear, the Congress of Soviets fell into turmoil.
Already reeling internal due to Lenin’s rushed acquiesces to a small political insurgence by the Menshevik minority over economic policy months prior, the members of the Bolshevik Party demanded that Lenin abandon the internationalist Smolensk Offensive, and instead recall them to the southern theatre.
However, with Trotsky already relaying reports of success in several of the opening battles of the offensive in the west, and, more intimately, fearing the loss of revolutionary initiative to the Luxemburgists, Lenin was intractable.
“This action, which we have taken with the ideals of World Revolution in mind, shall not be called off due to the failure of one city to defend itself from reactionary malice,” he said in a November 27th address to the Congress. “Look no further than Berlin, Milan, and Budapest; the reckoning of the working class as come!” he said further as the hall broke into applause. “If the bourgeoisie hope to take Moscow, let us show them the meaning of this phrase.”
On November 28th, a levee en masse was ordered for all able bodied men and women of the city. With this call coming in concert with an order for all nearby Red Army commanders to return to Moscow to prepare for the defense of the city, Lenin ordered the upcoming December 5th Congress of Soviets election postponed on November 29th.
However, though publicly many soviet delegates remained in loyal support of Lenin, anti-Lenin factions within the separate parties began to emerge. The creeping repressive nature of war communism, coupled with heavy retribution inflicted upon the Left SR party after their attempted uprising earlier in the year, fermented a particular coalition of many Mensheviks and a few left-leaning Bolsheviks to band together. Eva Broido, head of both the Central Menshevik Committee and likewise leader of this unground faction began to believe, upon the fall of Orel, that a new political order would be necessary for the Russian revolution.
“Bolshevist domination was, for a time, arguably a necessary structure for the dire situation we all found ourselves in after the glory of October 1917. But clearly it is not he only means to achieve our goals for the working and peasant classes,” she said as she poured over a map of central Europe in a November 31st meeting.
“And I believe in earnest, comrades, that the time has come for a change in direction for the Congress.”
Pointing to Ukraine, she told the faction leaders of her idea to make contact with the leadership of the Ukrainian Free Territory. “But in order to do this, we must get Nestor Makho and his Black Army to march on Moscow.”
______________
Using mounted turrets they sprayed indiscriminately in all directions. At the same time, the artillery corps began firing upon buildings suspected of harboring the insurrectionists.
Unable to contend with such a massive disparity in firepower, the PCC militia forces that weren’t decimated by the bombardment, retreated towards the center of Milan.
Back east, the bulk of the communist forces were immediate rush south to help cover the retreat as well as delay the reactionary’s advance. With Gramsci himself leading the charge they were able to successfully do so, with middling losses to their ranks.
For days the battle raged on. House to house; block to block, the reactionaries engaged the disparate PCC militia brigades throughout the city. By November 17th, Victor Emmanuel II received reports that half of the city had been successfully cleared insurrectionists.
With losses mounting, and still no sign of a general uprising occurring in concert with their plight, the PCC’s confidence in Gramsci’s leadership began to waiver. “I fear we may not last much longer if we stay in our current positions,” said Niccoli Bombacci as he and Gramsci met on the night of November 18th. “We haven’t even the ammunition to sustain our efforts past a few more days.”
However, on the morning of November 19th bread riots, which had spontaneously broken out in the neighboring provincial cities of Brescia and Bergamo change, suddenly changes the sentiments of the revolutionaries.
“Our PCC affiliates need only the political clout to mold these popular uprisings against the oppressive bourgeois monarchy into a mass movement of the working class,” Gramsci said to this beleaguered comrades in arms. “I implore – no, I beg of you to gather your strength for one final push against the forces on the southern side of the city!”
It was agreed; the future of the of Gramsci’s leadership, but of the PCC as a fledging alliance of disparate leftist causes in Italy would hinge upon an offensive drive to expel the crown’s army from Milan.
As the Royal Army paused their house-house to campaign to likewise prepare their entire force for a final thrust to capture the central political and economic points within the city from insurrectionist occupation – Gramsci ordered to retreat from their defensive positions and reform into two corps.
Placing one near the most likely axis of advance for the Royal Army and the other on the northeastern flank, he planned to draw the bulk of the reactionaries out into the central open square of the city and then counter-strike them in a flanking motion.
On the morning of November 22nd, the plan was put into action.
______________
Soviet Russia
Simultaneously, after an arduous march from Kiev, on November 22nd Denkin’s Russia White Army and the French expedition in support met their first line of resistance a few miles south of the city of Orel. With the Smolensk Offensive siphoning a massive portion of the Red Army’s men and material from the southern theatre of the civil war, Lenin had commanded that a majority the troops that remained south of Moscow be pooled into a corps for the defense of Orel. Though he had hoped for the city to holdout until at least January, onsite French support provided to Denkin, caught the Red Army by surprise. Unable to maintain their hold on the city without being encircled and annihilated, Orel was evacuated on November 25th; With the now weakened southern Red Army marching in retreat back toward Moscow and Denkin following in the rear, the Congress of Soviets fell into turmoil.
Already reeling internal due to Lenin’s rushed acquiesces to a small political insurgence by the Menshevik minority over economic policy months prior, the members of the Bolshevik Party demanded that Lenin abandon the internationalist Smolensk Offensive, and instead recall them to the southern theatre.
However, with Trotsky already relaying reports of success in several of the opening battles of the offensive in the west, and, more intimately, fearing the loss of revolutionary initiative to the Luxemburgists, Lenin was intractable.
“This action, which we have taken with the ideals of World Revolution in mind, shall not be called off due to the failure of one city to defend itself from reactionary malice,” he said in a November 27th address to the Congress. “Look no further than Berlin, Milan, and Budapest; the reckoning of the working class as come!” he said further as the hall broke into applause. “If the bourgeoisie hope to take Moscow, let us show them the meaning of this phrase.”
On November 28th, a levee en masse was ordered for all able bodied men and women of the city. With this call coming in concert with an order for all nearby Red Army commanders to return to Moscow to prepare for the defense of the city, Lenin ordered the upcoming December 5th Congress of Soviets election postponed on November 29th.
However, though publicly many soviet delegates remained in loyal support of Lenin, anti-Lenin factions within the separate parties began to emerge. The creeping repressive nature of war communism, coupled with heavy retribution inflicted upon the Left SR party after their attempted uprising earlier in the year, fermented a particular coalition of many Mensheviks and a few left-leaning Bolsheviks to band together. Eva Broido, head of both the Central Menshevik Committee and likewise leader of this unground faction began to believe, upon the fall of Orel, that a new political order would be necessary for the Russian revolution.
“Bolshevist domination was, for a time, arguably a necessary structure for the dire situation we all found ourselves in after the glory of October 1917. But clearly it is not he only means to achieve our goals for the working and peasant classes,” she said as she poured over a map of central Europe in a November 31st meeting.
“And I believe in earnest, comrades, that the time has come for a change in direction for the Congress.”
Pointing to Ukraine, she told the faction leaders of her idea to make contact with the leadership of the Ukrainian Free Territory. “But in order to do this, we must get Nestor Makho and his Black Army to march on Moscow.”
______________
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