Second Russian Civil War in 1930s?
- Thread starter Bukabuck
- Start date
-
- Tags
- great purge stalin ussr
A Second Civil War is not on the table, however a military coup (though unlikely) is possible.
Quite a number of people in the officer corps were of noble or bourgeois ancestry, and were carried over into the Red Army out of pure neccesity. Their loyalty to the soviet state was often questionable.
This is not to say that the Great Purge was justified, most of the victims were honest communists who lost their lives to outbursts of paranoia. However there were certainly some, who would have liked to see the fall of soviet power.
So lets say, there is no Great Purge (or at least the officer corps is less affected than in OTL). A clique of officers successfully assasinates Stalin and swiftly mobilizes the Red Army. Military units enter Moscow and seize the Kremlin, important government and party buildings, NKVD headquaters, radio stations, newspaper offices, police precints, and key railway stations. The state and party leadership is arrested, and the city of Moscow is completely locked down, no one gets in, no one gets out.
Radio broadcasts and newspapers proclaim that counter-revolutionary and careerist elements within the Party and NKVD have murdered Stalin and planned to lauch a coup against soviet power. This treacherous plot was only prevented by the brave and bold action of the Red Workers and Peasants Army. A temporary revolutionary military government will take power untill the enemies of the people have been crushed and new elections to the Supreme Soviet can take place. The NKVD is abolished per decree.
During the following months, the party is purged and many honest communists are summarily executed. Economic reforms take place, many of the recently formed Kolkhozes are dissolved and the free market is re-established in the countryside. This pollicy is legitimized by the ostensible need to stabilize the economic situation after years of counter-revolutionary sabotage. Comparisons are made to the NEP and the important role of the market in the proletarian state is emphasised. Obviously, since the old bourgeoisie and feudal nobility have been expropriated and destroyed as classes, there is no logical contradiction between private property and the workers state. Russia is too underdeveloped to construct socialism at this point anyway, didn't Stalin himself say that during the 20s? The left-radical adventurism of the 30s brought the Union nothing but chaos, Stalin himself was opposed to it, however he was pressured by the rest of the party and state leadership to support it.
Over the following years special economic zones are created in Vladivostok, Sevastopol, and Baku. After all, foreign investment will bring much needed capital and modern technology to the Soviet Union. The government monopoly on foreign trade is abolished and soviet enterprises start trading with the capitalist world. Furthermore, privileges for party and state bureaucrats are increased. After all, the brave leaders of the workers movement, who spend all their time and energy to increase the well-beeing of the Rodina, deserve to be compensated appropriately, right?
The USSR doesn't annex the Baltic States in 1940 and there is no Winter War. In exchange for increased trade with France and Britain, Moscow secretly pledges to support the Allies in any potential conflict against Germany.
When Germany invades Poland, the USSR, along with France and Britain, declears war on Germany. By 1941 the Red Army meets the british and french armies at the Elbe. After the war, the USSR installs a satelite regime in Poland, however it's government is not a communist one, but a "government of national unity". Much of the polish economy becomes property of the soviet state.
In 1943, the USSR invades and annexes the Baltic states. The invasion in justified by the ostensible need to protect the russian minority in those nations. The west is alarmed, however the small Baltics are not worth risking the expanding western-soviet trade links.
Further economic reforms take in place in the USSR post war. The first state owned enterprises are privatised (most of the new entrepreneurs are former bureaucrats and officers). Slogans like "To become rich is glorious" and "realize the dream of Lenin and Stalin - start your own busines!" dominate the headlines of Pravda and Izvestia.
By 1950 the USSR is an authoritarian capitalist state ruled by a military junta (somewhat comparable to OTL China), with some socialist veneer on it. Through capital export and military dominance it has created a sphere of influence in parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Relations with France, Britain and the US are ambivalent, but tensions are a lot lower than during the OTL Cold War.
It's not quite what you asked for, yet I hope it was somewhat constructive. I just wanted to describe how socialism can be destroyed through salami tactics.
Quite a number of people in the officer corps were of noble or bourgeois ancestry, and were carried over into the Red Army out of pure neccesity. Their loyalty to the soviet state was often questionable.
This is not to say that the Great Purge was justified, most of the victims were honest communists who lost their lives to outbursts of paranoia. However there were certainly some, who would have liked to see the fall of soviet power.
So lets say, there is no Great Purge (or at least the officer corps is less affected than in OTL). A clique of officers successfully assasinates Stalin and swiftly mobilizes the Red Army. Military units enter Moscow and seize the Kremlin, important government and party buildings, NKVD headquaters, radio stations, newspaper offices, police precints, and key railway stations. The state and party leadership is arrested, and the city of Moscow is completely locked down, no one gets in, no one gets out.
Radio broadcasts and newspapers proclaim that counter-revolutionary and careerist elements within the Party and NKVD have murdered Stalin and planned to lauch a coup against soviet power. This treacherous plot was only prevented by the brave and bold action of the Red Workers and Peasants Army. A temporary revolutionary military government will take power untill the enemies of the people have been crushed and new elections to the Supreme Soviet can take place. The NKVD is abolished per decree.
During the following months, the party is purged and many honest communists are summarily executed. Economic reforms take place, many of the recently formed Kolkhozes are dissolved and the free market is re-established in the countryside. This pollicy is legitimized by the ostensible need to stabilize the economic situation after years of counter-revolutionary sabotage. Comparisons are made to the NEP and the important role of the market in the proletarian state is emphasised. Obviously, since the old bourgeoisie and feudal nobility have been expropriated and destroyed as classes, there is no logical contradiction between private property and the workers state. Russia is too underdeveloped to construct socialism at this point anyway, didn't Stalin himself say that during the 20s? The left-radical adventurism of the 30s brought the Union nothing but chaos, Stalin himself was opposed to it, however he was pressured by the rest of the party and state leadership to support it.
Over the following years special economic zones are created in Vladivostok, Sevastopol, and Baku. After all, foreign investment will bring much needed capital and modern technology to the Soviet Union. The government monopoly on foreign trade is abolished and soviet enterprises start trading with the capitalist world. Furthermore, privileges for party and state bureaucrats are increased. After all, the brave leaders of the workers movement, who spend all their time and energy to increase the well-beeing of the Rodina, deserve to be compensated appropriately, right?
The USSR doesn't annex the Baltic States in 1940 and there is no Winter War. In exchange for increased trade with France and Britain, Moscow secretly pledges to support the Allies in any potential conflict against Germany.
When Germany invades Poland, the USSR, along with France and Britain, declears war on Germany. By 1941 the Red Army meets the british and french armies at the Elbe. After the war, the USSR installs a satelite regime in Poland, however it's government is not a communist one, but a "government of national unity". Much of the polish economy becomes property of the soviet state.
In 1943, the USSR invades and annexes the Baltic states. The invasion in justified by the ostensible need to protect the russian minority in those nations. The west is alarmed, however the small Baltics are not worth risking the expanding western-soviet trade links.
Further economic reforms take in place in the USSR post war. The first state owned enterprises are privatised (most of the new entrepreneurs are former bureaucrats and officers). Slogans like "To become rich is glorious" and "realize the dream of Lenin and Stalin - start your own busines!" dominate the headlines of Pravda and Izvestia.
By 1950 the USSR is an authoritarian capitalist state ruled by a military junta (somewhat comparable to OTL China), with some socialist veneer on it. Through capital export and military dominance it has created a sphere of influence in parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Relations with France, Britain and the US are ambivalent, but tensions are a lot lower than during the OTL Cold War.
It's not quite what you asked for, yet I hope it was somewhat constructive. I just wanted to describe how socialism can be destroyed through salami tactics.
Last edited:
You are right. But some officers were actually trotskysts and had anti-stalinist views.
About your WW2 scenario..
So there is no Germany/Russia pact do the Germans still attack Poland?
They would have a buffer in the East wouldn't they just go straight for France?
Deleted member 107125
Tukhachevsky’s admiration of Napoleon was solely in military terms.
Moreover, he wasn’t anti-socialist, and he flat out refused to coup the government when one Boris Feldman suggested doing so.
And most reports made by General Volkogonov and the Khrushchev + Gorbachev administrations conclude that there was no military conspiracy, and even then, Tukhachevsky would not be at its helm.
Last edited by a moderator:
As far as I understand it, you're citing incidents/quotations made about Tukhachevsky from way back in 1917 and there's hardly any indication that any of this was true in the period following the Russian Civil War. He was almost certainly not ideologically a Bolshevik when he joined their ranks and it's pretty universally regarded as a careerist move since he (along with a decent portion of the former Tsarist officer class) felt his lot was superior fighting alongside the Bolsheviks. Speaking about Tukhachevsky in this manner in the 1920s and 1930s relying on a couple personal anecdotes from all the way back in the February Revolution is... a flawed view though. It's almost as if I were to characterize Mussolini as an ardent communist simply because of his views prior to 1914 - correct me it I'm wrong but there's no documentation of explicit anti-semitism, anti-communism (or, strangely enough, even neo-paganism) made about him during the period in question.
As @Hindustani Person points out, the "Red Napoleon" moniker wasn't exactly his nickname because he was planning a Brumaire.. He was nicknamed such by the foreign press for being one of the foremost Soviet tacticians and he had an admiration for the military ability of Napoleon. Of course, during this time the paranoia of the Soviet elite regarding parallels to the French Revolution was pervasive and accusations of "Napoleon" were leveled against pretty much anybody, Tukhachevsky was not particularly unique in this regard.
That being said, Tukhachevsky certainly was viewed by White émigrés as someone who would be the head of a conspiracy to overthrow the Bolsheviks internally. The problem with the idea that Tukhachevsky would have done this is that the Soviet intelligence services were constantly using his name in fake plans to lure White émigrés back to the Soviet Union for imprisonment/execution. He never showed any particular interest in a coup d'etat and aided the Soviet state in capturing conspirators by using himself as a fake ploy to do so. In alternate history, I think Tukhachevsky is given a far too prominent role in Soviet politics, but that's another matter - his character was largely apolitical as was much of the Red Army during this period. One of the successes of the Bolshevik state from Lenin to Stalin was cultivating enough civic norms within the party-state apparatus in order to prevent the Red Army from acting independently of the political system. I don't think there's any reason to believe Tukhachevsky had either the will or the wish to move against Stalin, at worst he was only a careerist Bolshevik - he was hardly working against them. He was certainly ambitious and there had been enough rumors of Tukhachevsky's supposed involvement with 'counterrevolutionary organizations' inside and outside the Soviet Union for Stalin to have doubts about his loyalty, but as I mentioned earlier, the rumors had more to do with the paranoia of Bonapartism and the (inadvertent?) work of Soviet Intelligence. The same charges were brought against Tukhachevsky in 1930 and Stalin dismissed the charges, but perhaps he felt less secure in 1937 and/or he was interested in breaking up large swathes of the "Red Army fiefdoms" that had developed in many Military Districts...
This episode of the SRB Podcast with the excellent Peter Whitewood (and his book, The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military) sheds fairly good light on the nature of the military purges in the 1930s and elaborates a bit on the murky history of the Tukhachevsky affair, but essentially it is extremely unlikely he was in any position (or even interested) in leading a coup, and I disagree with your personal characterization of him considering, as far as I know but correct me if I'm wrong, this is based off of a few personal anecdotes published about him as far back as pre-revolution and does not have any extensive sourced basis.
As for my thoughts on the thread itself, no a Second Russian Civil War was not on the cards OTL - there was not enough stomach among the population or, more importantly, the nomenklatura or even the Army, to kick off anything. The monopoly on violence by the party-state was pretty total, and while Soviet state apparatus was "weak" in many parts of the USSR even into the 1930s, there was no serious organized opposition and no danger of a catastrophic internal split that could propel anyone into formal civil war. To achieve something resembling a civil war, you'd need a PoD going back to the October Revolution I think - the nature of the Bolshevik administration precluded outright civil war over ideological differences and armed White reaction was too weak and scattered.
Last edited:
Falk
Banned
Why just Ukraine. The famine stretched from the Polish-Soviet border all the way to the Altai mountains.
a ukranian uprising and other places during the Holodomor if some how the rumor spread that stalin was punishing all of the for the "crimes " of the kulaks and other places sadly it most likely gets crushed the only thing it would accomplish is the Holdomor actually without 100% of a doubt becoming a genocide as stalin most likely commits mass killings on ukrainians and letting most likely worsening the famine with the premeditated view on killing them for their rebellion that and making tankies say " but he only did this because they rebelled"