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Most alternatives-to-the-Bolsheviks threads focus on either (1) the Whites as we know them (Denikin, Yudenich, etc.) prevailing in 1919, or (2) the Provisional Government as we know it (under Kerensky) surviving. This is understandable, but not only have both these themes become hackneyed, but neither of them IMO is very likely--the closer Denikin came to Moscow in 1919, the weaker his forces became, while Yudenich could not have overthrown the Bolsheviks even if he were to temporarily occupy a largely-depopulated Petrograd; and as for Kerensky, by October 1917 just about everyone was fed up with him.

Instead, why don't we look at some less-explored alternatives?

(1) The Left SR revolt succeeds in July 1918: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/Ymdstwd4BHc/qKDxTuEzo30J

(2) Kerensky's government peacefully gives way to a genuinely multiparty socialist government, rather than the Bolshevik-dominated one that violently seized power in OTL (even if the latter did have a few Left SR's for window-dressing). This could be plausible if center-left SR's like Chernov and center-left Mensheviks like Martov were willing to break with the right wings of their own parties, with Kerensky, and with the idea of a coalition with the Kadets, as I note at
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-bolshevik-russia.338005/page-2#post-10087382 Even in OTL there were many Bolsheviks who favored a peaceful transfer of power to the soviets and a multiparty socialist government, as I note at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/sRxwzgRL6NM/94HZ9IbElCgJ

(3) Preventing the Kolchak coup. Geoffrey Swain in his *The Origins of the Russian Civil War* (1996) claims that "Kolchak's actions ended a war which the moderate socialists might have won and started a war the Whites would inevitably lose, putting the real civil war, the forgotten first civil war, on ice until 1920. By the time fighting resumed in Kronstadt and Tambov, the majority of Russians, after seven years of war, were no longer prepared to take up arms." p. 8 In defense of his argument that the moderate socialists might have won, he admits that the capture of Kazan in September and Samara in October certainly put the People's Army on the defensive, "but as the SRs constantly stressed during the last days of the directory, after an initial rout, volunteer units were staging a successful counter-offensive by the first fortnight in November 1918. On 5 November 1918, an offensive aimed at recapturing Samara was begun, and on 12 November 1918 the SR administration in Ufa could boast that a whole Bolshevik regiment had been taken prisoner. The successful recapture of Samara was expected with some confidence." p. 252 Swain argues that the Directory was overthrown not so much because it was failing as because it was starting to succeed. On possible ways to prevent the Kolchak coup, see https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-a-sr-leader-in-rcw.332237/#post-9856014

(4) Maybe, *pace* Swain, 1920-21 wasn't too late for the "Reds" to be overthrown by the "Greens"? The situation in February 1921 looked like that of exactly four years earlier, with strikes in Moscow and Petrograd, and some soldiers refusing to fire on the strikers. Under these circumstances, as Orlando Figes writes, the Bolsheviks "could not wait for it [the Kronstadt uprising] to peter out. Revolts in other cities, such as Kazan and Niznhyi Novgorod, were already being inspired by it. The ice-packed Gulf of Finland, moreover, was about to thaw and this would make the fortress, with the whole of its fleet freed from the ice, virtually impregnable." (*A People's Tragedy*, p. 762) http://www.rulit.me/books/a-people-s-tragedy-the-russian-revolution-1891-1924-read-232715-281.html So an interesting POD would be the Gulf of Finland thawing a little early that year. Or if it be objected that changes in the weather are considered ASB, we could have the mutiny start a few weeks later...
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