Soviet expansionism in a no-Nazism scenario?

CaliGuy

Banned
Other than Poland (where the Soviet Union would have wanted the Ukrainian-majority and Belarusian-majority areas) and Romania (where the Soviet Union would have wanted Bessarabia and Bukovina), where exactly would the Soviet Union have expanded in a scenario where the Nazis never came to power in Germany (for instance, due to Adolf Hitler getting killed back in 1923)?
 
Depends on the international situation and who is leading the SU. Trotsky while an internationalist would not have wanted to provoke the western powers by a full scale attempt at conquest.

Stalin would have wanted the strategic areas mentioned and maybe Manchuria.

I don't know about Bukharin or Zinoviev.
 
Depends on the international situation and who is leading the SU. Trotsky while an internationalist would not have wanted to provoke the western powers by a full scale attempt at conquest.

Stalin would have wanted the strategic areas mentioned and maybe Manchuria.

I don't know about Bukharin or Zinoviev.
Trotsky was obsessed with spreading the revolution. Being a good military leader helps.
 
If--as seems most likely to me--the alternative to Hitler is a rearmed, conservative, somewhat authoritaian but non-Nazi Germany that gets along fairly well with the Western Allies https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...s-over-in-193ps-germany.413448/#post-14516643 this would if anything be a *greater* deterrent to Soviet expansionism than Hitler was.

The idea that Hitler (at least temporarily) saved Europe from Soviet expansionism is IMO as wrong as the idea that he saved Germany from Communist revolution.
 
On the idea of Trotsky invading everywhere with the Red Army, let me recycle a post of mine from a few months ago:

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Why does everyone assume that Trotsky is more likely to do this than Stalin? Leaving aside the obvious and extreme riskiness of this course, he never advocated it. "Encouraging world revolution" (which both he and Stalin favored *as long as it could be done*) =/= "invade everyone with the Red Army." Trotsky seems to have been at first reluctant to cross the Curzon Line and invade ethnic Poland in 1920. (Some people have questioned this, but Richard Pipes, not exactly an admirer of Trotsky, has defended him on this point: "Several historians have questioned whether Trotsky really opposed the invasion of Poland as he later claimed...But the documents cited against him date from August 1920, when the matter had long since been decided, and Trotsky, having fallen in line like a good Bolshevik, naturally desired a quick and decisive victory." *Russia under the Bolshevik Regime*, pp. 182-3.)

From an interview of his in 1940:

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QUESTION: Do you, as the former head of the Red Armies, feel it was necessary for the Soviets to move into the Baltic states, Finland and Poland, to better defend themselves against aggression? Do you believe that a socialist state is justified in extending socialism to a neighbor state by force of arms?

ANSWER: It cannot be doubted that control over the military bases on the Baltic coast represents strategical advantages. But this alone cannot determine the question of invasion of neighboring states. The defense of an isolated workers’ state depends much more on the support of the laboring masses all over the world than on two or three supplementary strategical points. This is proven incontrovertibly by the history of foreign intervention in our civil war of 1918-20.

Robespierre said that people do not like missionaries with bayonets. Naturally that does not exclude the right and duty to give military aid from without to peoples rebelling against oppression. For example in 1919 when the Entente strangled the Hungarian revolution, we naturally had the right to help Hungary by military measures. This aid would have been understood and justified by the laboring masses of the world. Unfortunately we were too weak ... At present the Kremlin is much stronger from a military point of view. However, it has lost the confidence of the masses both inside the country and abroad.

If there were soviet democracy in the USSR; if the technological progress were accompanied by the increase of socialist equality; if the bureaucracy were withering away, giving place to the self-government of the masses, Moscow would represent such a tremendous power of attraction, particularly for its nearest neighbors, that the present world catastrophe would inevitably throw the masses of Poland (not only Ukrainians and White Russians but also Poles and Jews) as well as the masses of the Baltic border states on to the road of union with the USSR.

At present this important pre-condition for revolutionary intervention exists, if at all, in a very small degree... https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/ww2.htm

***

Now of course there is boasting here: if *I* were in charge of the Soviet Union, there would be popular revolutions in eastern Europe, and everyone would be begging the USSR to come to their rescue! But I doubt that as actual leader of the USSR, he would be guilty of such self-deception, knowing about the nationalism Polish workers had shown in 1920...
 
Trotsky was obsessed with spreading the revolution. Being a good military leader helps.
Trotsky would nurture communist parties across the world, he allow the Cominterm to serve its intended purpose as an intended strategy think tank. He would encourage diplomacy and technology interchange with the west. He would be focused long term on the triumph of world communism but he wouldn't be rolling tanks across Poland to get there.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Why would there be a united Europe in this TL, though? Indeed, wasn't pre-Nazi Germany relatively pro-Soviet?

Also, what about expansion in Asia and the Middle East?
 

CaliGuy

Banned
If--as seems most likely to me--the alternative to Hitler is a rearmed, conservative, somewhat authoritaian but non-Nazi Germany that gets along fairly well with the Western Allies https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...s-over-in-193ps-germany.413448/#post-14516643 this would if anything be a *greater* deterrent to Soviet expansionism than Hitler was.

The idea that Hitler (at least temporarily) saved Europe from Soviet expansionism is IMO as wrong as the idea that he saved Germany from Communist revolution.
Wasn't pre-Nazi Germany relatively pro-Soviet, though? After all, I seem to recall that the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo inaugurated an era of good German-Soviet ties that lasted until Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany a decade later.
 
Why would there be a united Europe in this TL, though? Indeed, wasn't pre-Nazi Germany relatively pro-Soviet?
They'd be unified compared with OTL, not having to worry about containing a recklessly militarist Germany; other nations in Europe might look to be friendly with the Soviets to counterbalance other European powers, but that doesn't mean they're going to roll out the welcome mat for the Red Army to march across the continent, and that's the kind of ASB scenario I was referring to.
Also, what about expansion in Asia and the Middle East?
That's a different kettle of fish from what I was talking about; FWIW, I can absolutely see Stalin TTL entangling his country deeper into the war in China.
 
Wasn't pre-Nazi Germany relatively pro-Soviet, though? After all, I seem to recall that the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo inaugurated an era of good German-Soviet ties that lasted until Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany a decade later.

It was friendly to the USSR as a fellow pariah-state. Once the West gave up on the military limitations of Versailles, allowed the remilitarization of the Rhineland, etc.--and IMO these things were inevitable with or without Hitler--there would be less need for close ties with the USSR--though I also don't expect a conservative Germany in the 1930's to be violently *anti*-Soviet, since non-Nazis did not share Hitler's fantasies about *Lebensraum* in the East.
 
You clearly have never met Trotsky. Let me introduce you.

I know who he is but reckless aggression is much more different from the double and triple crossing of Stalin.

They'd be unified compared with OTL, not having to worry about containing a recklessly militarist Germany; other nations in Europe might look to be friendly with the Soviets to counterbalance other European powers, but that doesn't mean they're going to roll out the welcome mat for the Red Army to march across the continent, and that's the kind of ASB scenario I was referring to.

That's a different kettle of fish from what I was talking about; FWIW, I can absolutely see Stalin TTL entangling his country deeper into the war in China.

Also, what about expansion in Asia and the Middle East?

With Asia and the Middle Stalin only took calculated risks, he only meddled in Outer Mongolia and Xinjiang for resources but was careful enough to keep them independent from the USSR, besides Stalin' triple crossing nature wouldn't give him any friends. What happens with the Chinese Communists is still up in the air, If the 13 Bolsheviks screw up like they did, Communism in China is not going to be seen as viable just as in OTL.
 

Redbeard

Banned
Stalin introduced the "Socialism in one country" dogma, not at least as a reaction to Trotsky's expansionist dreams and as a precautionary step until USSR got strong enough.

In 1939 I'm quite sure he hoped for the Western powers bleeding pale and the USSR utilising the situation to "liberate" working classes of Europe from capitalism. Soviet military planning certainly way before WWII focussed on creating a very strong offensive capability. Tuckachevsky's (sp?) military ideas were a kind of early Blitzkrieg and the Red Army had more tanks than the entire world combined.

The rearmament programme in progress when Hitler attacked in 1941 was for 500 Divisions being ready by mid 1942. Most footmarching but quite powerful Rifle Divisions but a very large proportion of armoured or mechanised forces too. The plan wouldn't necessarily have been completed by 1942, but much less would do if he wanted to take a chance vs. some western neighbours.
 
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