Someone else other than Stalin

:confused:

Dunno. A wildcard would be a Sino-Japanese alliance; but I don't know enough about the Soviet military in the early 1930s to say who'd win.

I'm thinking of the probably rather intemperate Japanese reaction when the Soviets try to establish a Red regime in Manchuria.

The USSR is a lot weaker in the far east in 1931 than it would be later: for one thing, logistics (the transSiberian railway didn't get double-tracked OTL till 1935). Even if the USSR is industrializing as fast as OTL under Mr. X, they might lose in 1931...

Bruce
 
One thing to remember is Trotsky's own ideas. Not only was he really into exporting communism, he also had a theory of "perpetual revolution" wherein the government should be replaced every few decades. This is one of the reasons he was exiled.

Assuming that Trotsky sticks to his morals, you wouldn't really see a dictatorship rise in the USSR; at least not under him.
 
One thing to remember is Trotsky's own ideas. Not only was he really into exporting communism, he also had a theory of "perpetual revolution" wherein the government should be replaced every few decades. This is one of the reasons he was exiled.

Assuming that Trotsky sticks to his morals, you wouldn't really see a dictatorship rise in the USSR; at least not under him.

I don't know, he was pretty dictatorial too (he'd be a most unusual Bolshevik if he hadn't been). And while he did favour revolution abroad, we should also note that forced industrialisation was his idea to begin with. Stalin still liked the NEP at that time and portrayed Trotsky as a dangerous radical.
 
Okay, I've been doing some thinking about this for my class on Stalin, so feel free to poke holes in it.

One of reasons the state promoted collectivization was because it would increase grain production while making it easier to confiscate grain for industrial workers and to sell for export. Yet while collectivization gave the state more control over the grain that was produced, it’s not clear that the Soviet government had a net gain in the amount of grain it controlled. (I need to read about this, if I'm curious. Fortunately, I am not especially).

One of the dilemmas confronting Soviet policymakers in the 1920s was that they thought they needed to squeeze agriculture to industrialize, but on the other hand industrialization in many countries was driven by a prosperous agricultural base. Certainly, industrialization would have gone differently. But would the USSR have necessarily been worse off with fewer T-34s in 1941, if the ones they did have all had radios?

Remember too that collectivization resulted in mass famines, and huge drops in agricultural inefficiency; livestock, horses, etc. were all destroyed. And then there's the loss to productivity which you ineveitably have when people lack things like shoes or clothing.

Thought?
 

HJ Tulp

Donor
What are the chances of Pyatakov? Lenin seems to be fond of him. Maybe he and Buhkanin could have set something up?
 
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