Stalin Assassinated in 1939

A few days back I came across the story of Genrikh Lyushkov, the head of the NKVD in the Russian Far East in 1938. During the Great Purges he received a summons calling him back to Moscow which he suspected of being a one way trip so instead hopped the border to Manchukuo with a briefcase full of military secrets and defected to Imperial Japan. This was about a month before the Soviet–Japanese Border Wars kicked off in earnest with the Battle of Lake Khasan. Whilst working for the Japanese Lyushkov planned out and convinced them to implement a plan to assassinate Stalin in early 1939 whilst he was at his holiday home in Sochi via the Soviet-Turkish border using six Russian emigrant agents. The group had been penetrated by a Russian agent though so when the assassins tried to cross the border they were captured.

So the POD is that the group isn't infiltrated by the Soviet agent and they don't find out about plan. We'll say they still lose a two of the six agents arrested trying to cross the border but the other four make it to Sochi and successfully carry out the attack. Of the four three die in the attack and one is seriously injured but captured. So what happens now? I honestly don't know enough about the Soviet Union in this time so hopefully people more knowledgeable can chime in.

The most obvious question is who takes over? With all the jockeying and maneuvering do we see a single dictatorial leader take over again, a group working in concert or distrustful of each other, or something completely different?

The purges have pretty much already happened by this point so that's not going to change.

How is this going to affect the Soviet–Japanese Border Wars? The assassination takes place a couple of months before so once they hear that the operation was a success do they initiate the Battle of Khalkhin Gol earlier that in OTL to take advantage of the confusion? Zhukov is still there and he has the extra troops he'd asked for IIRC so does it end the same way as OTL? One of the major difference is going to be the aftermath, will the Soviets settle for the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact or are they going to want to keep punishing the Japanese in Manchukuo? The filthy little Asiatics have just murdered Comrade Stalin in cold blood after all.

With two of the agents captured who never made it passed the border and the lone survivor of the attack in their custody I'm sure Beria will be most interest in having a rather strenuous and frank chat with them about the whole affair. When the Soviets announce that it was a Japanese plot, with the Japanese saying that they were White Russians and nothing to do with them, what does that do to Japan's international standing?

Another major knock-on I can see is going to be is for WW2. With the confusion of who takes over the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact is going to be delayed. Of the possible replacements for Stalin would any of them sign it? And with everything going on does the invasion of Poland go ahead?

The other biggie is when the Germans invade. What's the Soviets being led by even a slightly less crazed loon likely to cause? If they're willing to at least listen to and consider all the intelligence that they had about the Germans planning to invade and not following Stalin's idiot no retreat line that cause so many of their troops to be encircled and captured whither Germany's progress with Barbarossa?

I'm sure that there are plenty of other factors to consider but those are the ones that I can think of off the top of my head.
 
It's an interesting POD. The butterflies could be enormous. No non-aggression pact, means probably no invasion of Poland by the Germans, or at least the invasion is a lot harder, if the Poles have a place to retreat to.

If traced to the Japanese, then it could get very bad for them. They can't hold Manchuria or Korea against a Soviet Invasion.
 
Just blue-skying here, but if Hitler is still focused on expanding to the East then Barbarossa would still go forward, although probably not in the form in OTL. It would be to his advantage to let the Soviet Union get involved in a war with Japan in the Far East.
 
It's an interesting POD. The butterflies could be enormous. No non-aggression pact, means probably no invasion of Poland by the Germans, or at least the invasion is a lot harder, if the Poles have a place to retreat to.

The question on this point becomes was the non-aggression pact and partition of Poland driven in the main by Stalin, or was it a 'Soviet' policy that was generally supported by the government and likely to be continued by whoever replaced him? I have nowhere near enough knowledge of the country in this time period to say. If it's the former then the Nazis have a slightly harder time taking the place but take the whole country, if it's the former then it could be pretty similar to as IOTL but slightly delayed say five or six months.

Of course this all comes back in a large part to who becomes the new boss. I'm currently trying to read up on the main players and what the situation was but this takes time. Anyone more familiar care to share their ideas on what might happen in regards to the leadership?
 
The plotting and killing in Moscow just after would make the Night of the Long Knives in Hitler's Germany look like a picnic. My guess is Beria winds up on top, but who knows? Things will get really confused for a while. Not sure that the Red Army would get involved, but I'm guessing not particularly after the 1937 purges.
 
Molotov was in many ways acting as Stalin's deputy before his elevation to Foreign Minister, but its possible Litvinov could put together a coalition seen as less Stalinist and win the support of the military (and kill Beria)

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

Bearcat

Banned
Litvinov was Jewish, and, unfortunately, that was becoming an issue by this time, with the resurgence of traditional anti-semitism in the USSR.

Beria only replaced Yezhov (Sp?) in late '38 or early '39. He is still consolidating his base at NKVD and probably not ready to make a play for the top.

I'd bet on Molotov.
 
Interesting idea

Hmmm. This is a fun idea. I don't know the players at this point well enough to have a good idea who would take over from Stalin. General impressions:

1) Initially you would almost certainly see a collective leadership, at least on paper, as the players made and broke alliances and scrambled to get to the top.

2) Dramatic changes in the direction of Soviet policy probably wouldn't happen in this environment, so probably no German/Soviet pact.

3) Lack of a German/Soviet pact should deter Germany from attacking Poland, but it probably wouldn't. My impression is that Hitler was determined to attack whether or not the Soviets were on-board. Given the German raw material situation, that wouldn't have been particularly rational, but at this point the Germans had to keep expanding to keep from facing a choice of collapse or drastic cuts in rearmament. The German economy was not capable of maintaining the level of arms manufacturing they were doing, due mainly to foreign exchange constraints. They maintained that level basically by taking and looting surrounding countries. Austria got taken and looted, then the Sudetenland, then the rest of Czechoslovakia. Germany needed another fix by September 1939.

4) The Soviet/Japanese balance was a bit more even than most people think based on the outcome of Nomanham. I've done quite a bit of reading on Nomanham and based on that I think that a big hunk of the Japanese problem there was that at a major part of the Japanese command felt that the local Japanese forces in Manchuria needed to be taken down a peg or two. The Japanese sent what? One inexperienced division and a few extra pieces? All of that versus something like five picked Soviet divisions. Then the Japanese made it clear to the Soviets that they would not escalate along other parts of the border, which let the Soviets concentrate on a limited battlefield. Then, once the Soviets cut that division to pieces the Japanese quickly wound the war down, overruling local commanders who wanted to go another round. After the war wound down, most of the Japanese officers who actually participated in the battle were essentially purged, which cost the Japanese much of the potential value of the experience.

Based on Nomanham, the Japanese were tough fighters, even in an inexperienced division, but they were outclassed in terms of firepower and especially tanks. They did have some advantages versus the Soviets: In the event of a major war with the Soviets, the Japanese could pull divisions in from China, though at a cost to their war effort there. They could have probably dominated in the air due to the quality of their pilots. The Soviets would have had to supply whatever forces they brought in across Siberia, which would limit the number of divisions they could maintain in a prolonged war. My guess: The Soviets would not have been able to take Manchuria/Korea if they had tried in 1939 or 1940.
 
Top