Stalin AND Trotsky Dead

Tsao

Banned
It really depends on when before 1930. For example, Trotsky dying in 1905 is different from Trotsky dying in 1927.
 
Who would rise to leadership if Stalin and Trotsky were dead?

In the paranoid environment of the nascent Soviet Union, the only person even remotely equipped to rise to the top of the Soviet food chain would be a man named Sergei Kirov. He was the man whom the Bolsheviks relied upon to form the Transcaucasian region into a Soviet Socialist Republic. This was also the man that Stalin had murdered in 1934 for challenging him in OTL.
 
In the paranoid environment of the nascent Soviet Union, the only person even remotely equipped to rise to the top of the Soviet food chain would be a man named Sergei Kirov. He was the man whom the Bolsheviks relied upon to form the Transcaucasian region into a Soviet Socialist Republic. This was also the man that Stalin had murdered in 1934 for challenging him in OTL.

Okay, what would he have been like? I'm guessing not the same paranoid dictator as Stalin.
 
In the paranoid environment of the nascent Soviet Union, the only person even remotely equipped to rise to the top of the Soviet food chain would be a man named Sergei Kirov. He was the man whom the Bolsheviks relied upon to form the Transcaucasian region into a Soviet Socialist Republic. This was also the man that Stalin had murdered in 1934 for challenging him in OTL.

What about Kamenev and Zinoviev, who were in some respects even more important players than Stalin in the mid 1920s?
 

Old Airman

Banned
the only person even remotely equipped to rise to the top of the Soviet food chain would be a man named Sergei Kirov.
Kirov is a big fat Nobody before early 1930. Assuming that both Trotsky and Stalin are simultaneously getting dead sometime between 1924 (Lenin's death) and 1929, USSR is gonna be ruled by an alliance of Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin and Rykov. Sort of OTL "collective leadership" of 1970s.
 
The convincing argument for Sergei Kirov

Well, to begin with, Sergei Kirov made a name for himself as a commander in Leon Trotsky's Red Army, leading the forces that defeated General Anton Denikin's Volunteer Army around Orel in 1919, and was a Stalin loyalist to begin with, and was recognized for it in the Mid-20's. it is hardly fair to say that he was a nobody, when he was brought in from Azerbaijan to run the Leningrad Central Soviet, a prestigious position at the time. Characters such as Lev Kamenev, Grigori Zinoviev and Abram Prigozhin were proto-Communist Party apparatchiks, martinets who were slavishly loyal to the Party and the Politburo. The were devoid of individual initiative, saving their talent for backstabbing for pure career advancement. They were dealt with accordingly.
 
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I also made a thread about a Soviet Union where it's run by a Trotskyite but it wasn't Trotsky himself. It was a guy called Ivan Nikitich Smirnov, and my thread was called Red Star Triumphant. I still have to modify its contents to correct some of the mistakes that I made.
 
We probably see a power-sharing type of system involving Bukharin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and perhaps another, either way, definitely not a system defined by a single, all-powerful figure like Stalin with an apparatus capable of basically outmaneuvering and destroying anybody who may pose a challenge, at least not for the time being.

The foreign policy would of course be immensely intriguing to see.
 

Old Airman

Banned
it is hardly fair to say that he was a nobody, when he was brought in from Azerbaijan to run the Leningrad Central Soviet, a prestigious position at the time.
Kirov was in "top 100" of Commie leadership. Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Rykov, Ryutin were in "top 7" (them + T & S). End of story.
 
Then if not Kirov...

Well, if we refuse to consider Sergei Kirov, perhaps shall we consider a hack such as Genrikh Yagoda, head of Stalin's NKVD? Or even better, the legion of Trotskyites that were allowed to survive because there was no Iosef Stalin to purge them? All possibilities in a world as chaotic as this.
 
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