Soviets without Ukraine, Belarus, or Caucasus

What if the Soviet Union, following the Russian Revolution and Civil War, did not control Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, or the North Caucasus?


Map of the Soviet Caucasus (aka, lands that won't be Soviet here).

1280px-Soviet-caucasus1922.png
 
They'd be far weaker. The SU is losing tens of millions as well the industrial and agricultural heartland of the state. When collectivization comes we could see a serious famine in Rudsia since unlike IOTL they won't be able to steal Ukrainian foodstuffs.
 
They'd be far weaker. The SU is losing tens of millions as well the industrial and agricultural heartland of the state. When collectivization comes we could see a serious famine in Rudsia since unlike IOTL they won't be able to steal Ukrainian foodstuffs.

But the question is, without Baku oil or Ukrainian grain can the Soviets afford to abandon the NEP?
 
But the question is, without Baku oil or Ukrainian grain can the Soviets afford to abandon the NEP?

You could argue they couldn't afford too IOTL but did anyways. Without Baku and more jmpimportan without the grain they might not, although the Soviets being restrained to Russia implies military failures which implies alot of different politics. Either way, as far as I'm aware Lenin and the rest thought of the NEP has a temporary measure. They might have to keep it for longer than IOTL because of the military situation, but eventually they'd have gotten rid of it.
 
It wouldn't be a superpower, it's as simple as that, if they can't even annex belarus or eastern ukraine, then they have no chance of having influence in central europe... So unless there is another large communist country in europe that can be allied it would just be a great power.

That or they follow some weird eurasian policy to make up with the population loss, but this USSR would be widely different from ours.
 
They'd be far weaker. The SU is losing tens of millions as well the industrial and agricultural heartland of the state. When collectivization comes we could see a serious famine in Rudsia since unlike IOTL they won't be able to steal Ukrainian foodstuffs.
Collectivization would either not come at all or else much later as they couldn't either provide themselves or afford the tractor and harvester fuel. And probably not the tractors or harvesters for that matter.
 
Collectivization would either not come at all or else much later as they couldn't either provide themselves or afford the tractor and harvester fuel. And probably not the tractors or harvesters for that matter.

Even not counting the element of genocide in the Holodomer collectivization was always going to be a disaster and it always is. I think the Soviets were stubborn enough to force it anyways. They might wait in the face of military defeats, but I don't think that they would decide not to collectivize. Trotsky and Stalin both would probably have gone ahead imo. They most certainly would have to wait because of presumably extended wars, but collectivization was kind of one of the main points of the revolution, and I think inevitable.
 
It was but the timing was predicated on the introduction of mechanisation in agriculture. In a situation where mechanisation increases both the national trade deficit and the military vulnerability of the regime they are going to have to do it differently. And they can't starve as many of the peasant class as TTL they will need them to harvest the crop and plough and sow the following year.
 
... or the North Caucasus?
That one is going to take some doing as the Mountain Autonomous Republic and the Dagestan Autonomous Republic are mostly on the wrong side of the mountains—unlike Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan—so have comparatively little in the way of natural defences.
 
It would be interesting how the Nazis interact with independent Belarus and Ukraine. There's nobody to partition Poland with, so they annex all of Poland in 1939, and come 1941 they might declare war on Belarus and Ukraine, what does Soviet Russia do at that point? Join the Allies for protection?
 
It would be interesting how the Nazis interact with independent Belarus and Ukraine. There's nobody to partition Poland with, so they annex all of Poland in 1939, and come 1941 they might declare war on Belarus and Ukraine, what does Soviet Russia do at that point? Join the Allies for protection?

The Soviets probably fail to hold the line, seeing as they're much weaker from the beginning. Probably results in an Anglo-American Nazi War style scenario.
This is assuming that the Nazis still come to power, it could very well be a Kaiserreich scenario (or for that matter Germany could go socialist too).
 
When you say Ukraine do you me majority ethnic areas before Russia kill everyone there

I mean the lands that more or less correspond to today's Ukraine.

It would be interesting how the Nazis interact with independent Belarus and Ukraine. There's nobody to partition Poland with, so they annex all of Poland in 1939, and come 1941 they might declare war on Belarus and Ukraine, what does Soviet Russia do at that point? Join the Allies for protection?

If the Soviets are another 200 miles/330 kilometers east, might that affect whether or not the Soviets are even enough of a threat in the German mindset to drive the Nazis to power?

A weaker USSR => less support for the KPD => less anticommunist fear in Germany => less support for the NSDAP (perhaps).

It wouldn't be a superpower, it's as simple as that, if they can't even annex belarus or eastern ukraine, then they have no chance of having influence in central europe... So unless there is another large communist country in europe that can be allied it would just be a great power.

That or they follow some weird eurasian policy to make up with the population loss, but this USSR would be widely different from ours.

What do you mean Eurasian? Trying to create a common Russo-Turkic-Mongol identity?

That sort of reminds me of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_people



With Moscow so close to the border, perhaps the Soviets stick their capital in Kazan or Samara, which would make the center of the country's political life closer to Central Asia.
 
If the Soviets are another 200 miles/330 kilometers east, might that affect whether or not the Soviets are even enough of a threat in the German mindset to drive the Nazis to power?

A weaker USSR => less support for the KPD => less anticommunist fear in Germany => less support for the NSDAP (perhaps).

On the other hand, without a strong Soviet Russia, the KPD might be more independent, which could led to a SPD-KPD coalition winning elections with Ernst Thalmann as Chancellor.
 
The Soviets were IMO disastrous for the left wing in the long term. Leaving aside the various Red Scares they also tended to suck the air out of home grown leftist movements- see, for example, the Spanish Anarchists, or the general collapse of a till-then fairly venerable US labor tradition in the 1950s.
 
The Soviets were IMO disastrous for the left wing in the long term.
Not to mention championing a fairly unworkable and unprofitable model of state capitalism that was adopted by even moderate socialists and which largely edged out potentially more viable alternatives like co-operatives and profit-sharing with worker participation.
 
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