Soviets annex the Curzon line and the Baltic states in the aftermath of World War 1

Anyway the Soviets could gain the Curzon line and the Baltic states during the various wars in the aftermath of World War 1

How would this impact the Soviet Union

What would be the impact on the Interwar period and World War 2
 
So a different outcome to the Baltic civil wars and a less successful Polish counter-offensive (or conversely, a more effective Soviet defense against said counter-offensive which amounts to the same thing) at Warsaw. Hmm... that basically gets rid of most of the territorial incentives for Stalin in the M-R pact, unless he does something like insist on the 1914 borders instead. Of course, that is assuming there is an M-R pact, but the butterflies make that rather... questionably plausible.
 
A border between Germany and the Soviet Union might make the allies less hesitant to endorse German rearmament. Finland would also be much more geographically isolated from potential allies and vulnerable to a naval blockade or the territorial arm-twisting in the lead-up to the winter war.
 
A border between Germany and the Soviet Union might make the allies less hesitant to endorse German rearmament. Finland would also be much more geographically isolated from potential allies and vulnerable to a naval blockade or the territorial arm-twisting in the lead-up to the winter war.

The Winter War as we know it would get butterflied ITTL. There might be a different Finno-Soviet war here, though, and possibly a lot earlier than IOTL, too, with a *Soviet Russia that sees success in "exporting revolution". What with the knock-on effects and buttrflies from the Baltics going Red ITTL, this Finland would have different domestic politics from what we know. A worse paranoia about a potential Red takeover would give more influence to the nationalist far right. On the left, there would be more Soviet influence in Finland from since 1918. On balance, it might be difficult to maintain a democratic form of government in Finland.
 
A worse paranoia about a potential Red takeover would give more influence to the nationalist far right. On the left, there would be more Soviet influence in Finland from since 1918. On balance, it might be difficult to maintain a democratic form of government in Finland.
Could a Military or a fascist dictatorship be possible
 
Could a Military or a fascist dictatorship be possible

I think we could see Finland go authoritarian under a leader who suspends the republic in order "to save it from Communism", somewhat in the vein of the OTL Päts regime in Estonia. Outright Fascism seems unlikely, IMO.
 
A border between Germany and the Soviet Union might make the allies less hesitant to endorse German rearmament. Finland would also be much more geographically isolated from potential allies and vulnerable to a naval blockade or the territorial arm-twisting in the lead-up to the winter war.

Where would such a border war come from though? The only place the Soviets and Germans would be in contact is along the Lithuanian/East Prussian border and the border there is liable to be clearly defined even if (as is likely) the Germans take back Memel in response to Lithuania's absorption by the USSR...

The Winter War as we know it would get butterflied ITTL. There might be a different Finno-Soviet war here, though, and possibly a lot earlier than IOTL, too, with a *Soviet Russia that sees success in "exporting revolution". What with the knock-on effects and buttrflies from the Baltics going Red ITTL, this Finland would have different domestic politics from what we know. A worse paranoia about a potential Red takeover would give more influence to the nationalist far right. On the left, there would be more Soviet influence in Finland from since 1918. On balance, it might be difficult to maintain a democratic form of government in Finland.

Would just acquiring the Baltic States and the "Ukrainian/Belorussian"-parts of Poland really be counted as success in "exporting the revolution" if the Poles still turn back the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw and Germany still fails to go communist?
 
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Where would such a border war come from though? The only place the Soviets and Germans would be in contact is along the Lithuanian/East Prussian border and the border there is liable to be clearly defined even if (as is likely) the Germans take back Memel in response to it's absorption by the USSR...



Would just acquiring the Baltic States and the "Ukrainian/Belorussian"-parts of Poland really be counted as success in "exporting the revolution" if the Poles still turn back the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw and Germany still fails to go communist?
Germany had the largest communist party outside the USSR during the interwar period. The KPD may be emboldened by having the USSR much closer, and the Weimar right may be more paranoid about the communists.

A smaller and militarily weaker Poland would be a less credible counterweight to Germany in this East. France's OTL alliance with Poland may be butterflied away or dropped for closer Franco-Soviet relations.
 
Would just acquiring the Baltic States and the "Ukrainian/Belorussian"-parts of Poland really be counted as success in "exporting the revolution" if the Poles still turn back the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw and Germany still fails to go communist?​
It would be in comparison to the OTL. Here comparatively much more of the former Russian Empire would go Red by the early 20s. Several more bourgeois independence movements get beaten than IOTL. Where the difference to our history would be most pronounced would then be Finland, not part of a "western fringe" with a bigger Poland and the Baltics that successfully broke away from Russia and where the Whites/natunalists won, but alone with a rump Poland to have escaped the revolution. Here, the idea that it would be "natural" for Finland to join the Soviet domains would likely be a more common argument among 20s Soviets than IOTL.​
 
So a different outcome to the Baltic civil wars and a less successful Polish counter-offensive (or conversely, a more effective Soviet defense against said counter-offensive which amounts to the same thing) at Warsaw. Hmm... that basically gets rid of most of the territorial incentives for Stalin in the M-R pact, unless he does something like insist on the 1914 borders instead. Of course, that is assuming there is an M-R pact, but the butterflies make that rather... questionably plausible.

The Soviet Union would be seens as a greater threat than OTL by the west, meaning that France will put even more efforts into strengthening and stabilizing the Cordon sanitaire; at the same time, the Entente (even the French, albeit reluctantly) might consider the option of allowing German rearmement and accepting Germany in some kind of new anti-Soviet alliance.
 
It would be in comparison to the OTL. Here comparatively much more of the former Russian Empire would go Red by the early 20s. Several more bourgeois independence movements get beaten than IOTL.

That's a comparison the Soviets don't have though. All they can see is that they've still been repulsed at the gates of Warsaw and the revolution in Germany, which was the measure of success of exporting the revolution as far as the Bolsheviks were concerned, has failed. Crushing the independence of the Baltics? That's no more relevant to the success or failure of the international revolution then the crushing of the independence of the Caucausus or Central Asian states were. A more harsh Soviet policy towards Finland? Plausible, but technically separate from the issue of International Communist Revolution. That Permanent Revolution might pick up substantially more cred in a TL where a successful German revolution is still a no show strikes me as a bit of a leap.

Would they allow Germany to retake the Polish Corridor

The OP's supposition still has the Poles repulse the Soviets from Warsaw at least, so probably not. Only if the Soviets crushed the Polish state could I see the Entente permitting Germany to retake the Polish Corridor.
 
That's a comparison the Soviets don't have though. All they can see is that they've still been repulsed at the gates of Warsaw and the revolution in Germany, which was the measure of success of exporting the revolution as far as the Bolsheviks were concerned, has failed. Crushing the independence of the Baltics? That's no more relevant to the success or failure of the international revolution then the crushing of the independence of the Caucausus or Central Asian states were. A more harsh Soviet policy towards Finland? Plausible, but technically separate from the issue of International Communist Revolution. That Permanent Revolution might pick up substantially more cred in a TL where a successful German revolution is still a no show strikes me as a bit of a leap.

I don't think getting a successful revolution in Germany would have been the only measure of success for spreading the revolution, at the time. If we took that tack, then we might for example argue that even the Hungarian Soviet Republic surviving, or say, Sweden having a revolution and going Red would not have been seen as a success back in Russia and would not have an effect on Soviet policies. If we look at early Soviet history, IMO any comparative-to-OTL success is success and similarly any defeat is defeat. IOTL, what the existence of independent states on Russia's "western fringe" did was to create a continuous "front" of former parts of the Russian Empire, from Finland to Poland, where White/bourgeois nationalist groups hand won and where the revolution had been stopped in its tracks. I can't help but to think that this state of affairs alone was an influence on the growth of a "fortress mentality" in the young Soviet state and the Soviet leadership going for the "Socialism in one country"-thinking by the mid-20s. We may haggle over how much, exactly, it would be an influence if this process was changed by revolution succeeding in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, but it would be a departure from the OTL development nonetheless. ITTL, revolution has won in more of the former empire. Winning in the Baltics is, in my view, more important than success in the Caucasus or Central Asia in terms of the Soviet leaders' own perception of the revolution's success abroad: it moves the balance of the revolution west, towards the area that would matter the most, Central and Western Europe.

And it would have an effect on the very composition of the Soviet leadership. You may scoff at the Baltic states as small, peripheral areas with little to offer to world history, but then we need to remember that this is the early, formative days of the Soviet state, and seemingly small changes in the years immediately after the Russian revolutions would have comparatively bigger effects than arguably similar changes decades down the line. The Baltics becoming SSRs already by 1920 would have a bigger effect on the USSR than the Baltics becoming SSRs in 1940. Here, they would be grandfathered in. The USSR would be different from the start. IOTL, the major Soviet cities of Petrograd and Moscow were centres of refugees. From all of the "western fringe", thousands of Red leaders and activists fled to Russia as refugees in hiding from victorious nationalists/Whites, and they would have their own groups and cliques and their own effects on the early development of the Soviet political and bureacratic system. We can well say that this state of affairs led to a Baltic and Finnish overrepresentation in Petrograd and Moscow. On balance, we might argue that this created in a way a sense of defeatism in the early Soviet political culture: where ever one looked, one could see someone from the "western fringe" to remind them where the revolution had failed against even comparatively small nationalist movements. Many of these non-Russians Reds rose to important political positions, or positions in the Red Army, in the 20s, before many if not most of them would eventually perish in the purges.

ITTL, there would be much less of this Baltic overrepresentation. Most of the Baltic Communists would be instead back home in Tallinn, Riga or Kaunas/Vilnius, etc, building the Soviet system there. And also many Russians that IOTL did not leave Russia would be working in the other SSRs for this end. Already from the start, then, the living space of Soviet Communism would be (and appear) bigger than IOTL, and less hemmed-in by hostile states and governments. The general outlook for the success of the revolution would be comparatively brighter and more optimistic than IOTL. ITTL, Finland would be seen as the aberration from the general trend in the "western fringe", instead of the place where the revolution started failing to lead to a similar process in the three Baltic states. The changes in the Soviet politics from the constellations of power changing in Petrograd and Moscow, etc, and a comparative change of mood, would be hard to predict. But there would be changes, and that is my point.

Apart from what would happen in Russia and the Baltic states, and in eastern Poland themselves, the butterflies would also spread abroad. There would necessarily be more emigration of conservatives/counter-revolutionaries from the Baltic states and eastern Poland, at the very least in tens of thousands, and this would have an effect in Finland, Sweden, and for example Germany which would receive a bigger influx of Baltic Germans than IOTL. The likely bigger Red Scares in the west have already been commented about. The need for a "cordon sanitaire" would be felt more acutely in the west here, and different nations than IOTL would need to be included in such plans. Like Sweden, for example, now placed at the first line against the Red menace looming across the Baltic Sea.

Like I mentioned above, while this all would not be an absolute, massive change to the OTL (like the revolution succeeding in Germany would be), but it would be a change nonetheless, and it would bring along its knock-on effects and butterflies which would then give rise to more second-order changes down the line, both inside the *USSR and outside of it. Eventually, we would see major changes. In AH scenarios, we often parlay changes in the lives and decisions of individual leaders into big changes down the line. When people then at the same time in AH discussions say that changing the fate of entire nations and millions of people would have no real difference on the flow of history, it creates, IMO, a contradiction. If one thinks that such a change in the history of entire nations will not have significant effects on the timeline, then I think that this person may have not not looked at the prospective immediate and further changes deep and hard enough.
 
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