Stalin Dies In 1936 - a test TL

This is pretty much a test thread to see what you think about this idea, and how plausibly I set up the scenario, and what I could do differently.

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By Early 1936, Josef Stalin was in a position of incredible status. He had whipped the USSR into a major industrial power with the most powerful army on the planet, though at an appalling cost of human life. His political opponents had been made to either submit before him, or be reduced into obscurity. It seemed that only the Red Army was in a position to challenge him, although he wanted to change that as well. As it happened, on one particular February day Stalin was walking down some stairs, when he slipped. The fall did not go well, his neck having been broken. The man of steel was dead. This left a considerable power vacuum. His shoes would very though to fill. If time could take its course for the Politburo to get its act together, it could very well be that a triumvirate of Molotov, Kaganovich and Voroshilov would assume power. However, the turn of events overtook any such speculations. Tukhachevsky did not like Stalin's clique, and would not be about to pass up on this window of opportunity, and launched a coup.

The coup succeeding pretty smoothly, the task of rebuilding a political establishment was underway. Many associated with Stalinism, especially thew high-ranking ones, where pushed into obscurity, some even exiled to Sibiria. People like Nikolai Bukharin, who had supported the coup, got position of power in the new government. The technocratic movement was able to advance their positions as well. Leon Trotsky returned from exile, but there would be quite some effort for him to regain influence.
 
Great Man theory of the Soviet Union.

Sign me down.

Go read Milovan Djilas on the internal structure of Soviet-style societies.

Trotsky isn't capable of rehabilitation in 1936 either. (Not without a major domestic crisis that calls for a more open Bolshevism). Some of Trotsky's Soviet followers may be quietly rehabilitated to form a reservoir of thought—if it is compatible with the continuing "low Stalinism" of the period.

And management is going to be purged just as heavily at the local level (See Fitzpatrick); but, the party might not decapitate its own leadership quite as badly.

You're certainly not going to see a Nagy, Gomulka or Dubcek.

yours,
Sam R.
 
Great Man theory of the Soviet Union.

Sign me down.
I'm not sure it's excercising the Great Man Theory as much as recognizing that Josef Stalin was a very powerful person in the Soviet Union, and his early death would have great consequences.

Go read Milovan Djilas on the internal structure of Soviet-style societies
What in particular do you want me to read? What does he say about it?

And management is going to be purged just as heavily at the local level (See Fitzpatrick); but, the party might not decapitate its own leadership quite as badly.
And what does Sheila Fitzpatrick (I'm guessing) have to say about it?
 
I'm not sure it's excercising the Great Man Theory as much as recognizing that Josef Stalin was a very powerful person in the Soviet Union, and his early death would have great consequences.


What in particular do you want me to read? What does he say about it?


And what does Sheila Fitzpatrick (I'm guessing) have to say about it?

Djilas's New Class points rather directly to high Stalinism being a result of economic imperatives within the nomenklatura. Imperatives for survival as a class which mean they'd happily turn on themselves.

Fitzpatrick covers the microscale of the purges, and notes that specialist baiting had played a strong role in the 7 or 8 years to 1936 in upward mobility by former workers and children of workers.

Neither the class interests of the Nomenklatura (Djilas), nor the strong and persistent desire for entry into professional occupations and the nomenklatura by workers (Fitzpatrick) are going to be eliminated by the death of Stalin. Both are causative of high Stalinism.

yours,
Sam R.
 
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