Stalin's role in the purges, famines and general villainy becomes known in 1938 in the USSR.

In 1938 Stalin decided to purge NKVD chief Yezhov, the main reason is that the guy knew too much. However because Yezhov knew exactly how Stalin's methods of purging someone worked, he knew exactly, for months in advance, what was coming. And then..... decided to do nothing about it and just get drunk.

What if Yezhov had thoroughly documented all of Stalin's dark secrets, and when the time of his purge came he defected to the US or another country, leaking out for the world to see (including the USSR) all that Stalin had done?

What would be the outcome?
 
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Churchill's quote still applies:
If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.

Less pro-Stalin support among communists in Europe; Maybe. Beyond this, Stalin's USSR still gets supplied, supported and helped during the War.
 
A combination of two old posts of mine:

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During the so-called Yezhovshchina, when Khrushchev complained to Stalin about the NKVD trying to manufacture a case against him, Stalin shrugged and said, "They're gathering evidence against me, too." Sheila Fitzpatrick, *On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics,* p. 134. https://books.google.com/books?id=HAIACQAAQBAJ&pg=PA134 That response may seem disingenuous, but Stalin may actually have been telling the truth:

"Among the papers confiscated during Ezhov's arrest in April 1939, there was indeed a pre-1917 correspondence of thirty-five pages of the Tiflis gendarme with respect to the search for 'Koba' (i.e., Stalin) and other members of the Transcaucasian RSDRP organization. Later, the correspondence could not be found in Ezhov’s file; Beriia was rumored to have kept it.61 In Ezhov’s papers, however, the authors came across a dozen notices of the Turukhansk post office relating to remittances and parcels received by I. V. Dzhugashvili (Stalin), when he was exiled there in 1913–15. 62 About Ezhov’s intentions, one can only speculate. Could he have collected evidence in order to prove, if necessary, that Stalin had been an Okhrana agent? Or there could be a quite simple explanation, that is, that he collected evidence on Stalin's prerevolutionary activity for a museum of the leader, for he was a specialist in this field and in 1935–36 had directed the organization of the Central Lenin Museum in Moscow.63 It is not to be ruled out, however, that during the period of Stalin's cooling off toward him, since the summer of 1938, Ezhov was no longer completely loyal and was quietly collecting strength and evidence against Stalin." Marc Jansen and Nikita Petrov, *Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940,*, p. 176. https://books.google.com/books?id=3IcnAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA176

Now most historians do not believe that the young Stalin was an Okhrana agent, and neither do I. But this forum is after all concerned with *alternate* history. So let's say that Stalin *had* been an Okhrana agent, that Yezhov found absolutely conclusive documentary proof of it, and that he sent it abroad with orders to make it public if anything should happen to him--and then informed Stalin of what he had done...

When I said "absolutely conclusive" I meant that they can be proven *not* a forgery. Now you may say that news of them can be suppressed in the USSR. True enough (in the sense that even people who learn about them will have to pretend they don't exist). But, still, Stalin will have to ask himself: Is shooting Yezhov really worth the damage the revelations would do to Stalin's reputation outside the USSR?

https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ainst-me-too-yezhov-blackmails-stalin.368470/

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To those posts, I would just like to add that with regard to other things, Yezhov's blackmail ability would be less--even if we assume that Stalin cares that much about the effects on his reputation outside the USSR. Yezhov "exposes" that Stalin was behind the purges?! The Soviet press was constantly emphasizing that it was Comrade Stalin who had taken the lead in uncovering the "wreckers." If you're expecting some cynical document where Stalin says, "I know these men are innocent but let's make up a case against them and punish them anyway" I am pretty sure that no such document exists.

Or the shooting of Kirov? I doubt very much that Stalin was behind it https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/why-was-jfk-assassinated.444126/page-2#post-17049579 but if he was we can be quite sure that he did not leave a paper in the archives saying "Dear Comrade Yagoda: See to it that Kirov is killed. I. V. Stalin"

Or the 1933 famine? No doubt all the documents Yezhov can get his hands on will blame it on "kulak sabotage." It would have been suicide for any Soviet official to put in writing that it was Stalin's fault.
 
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NoMommsen

Donor
In 1938 Stalin decided to purge NKVD chief Yezhov, the main reason is that the guy knew too much. However because Yezhov knew exactly how Stalin's methods of purging someone worked, he knew exactly, for months in advance, what was coming. And then..... decided to do nothing about it and just get drunk.

What if Yezhov had thoroughly documented all of Stalin's dark secrets, and when the time of his purge came he defected to the US or another country, leaking out for the world to see (including the USSR) all that Stalin had done?

What would be the outcome?
Aside from the possibility, that Stalin actually might have left such evidence (see post above by @David T ) Yezhov would be accused in no time of being a counterrevolutionary traitor who can not be believed, surely having 'manufactured' his so-called evidences on behalf of his capitalistic backers he just fled to.
I was interested more in the internal effects in the USSR rather than international reaction.
And if anyone within the SU at this time would say : "Yes comrade Stalin, you're surely right, but ... " this would be his last "but". ... might even trigger another purge, though possibly rather small one (who's left to be purged at this pont of time ?).
 
I was interested more in the internal effects in the USSR rather than international reaction.

Any unfavorable information you had about Stalin you had to pretend not to know--so it's as if it didn't exist.

For example, probably every CPSU member who had joined the Party before the mid-1920's knew about Lenin's "Testament." In the 1920's Stalin himself had publicly accepted it as genuine. But by the late 1920's it became "anti-Soviet" to mention it and nobody (at least in public) did until 1956. The same would be true about any unfavorable information Yezhov could dig up about Stalin--even if a Soviet citizen could somehow learn about it or at least hear rumors about it.
 
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