Status of major political ideologies of 1930s in a CP victory world?

Greetings, and welcome to this thread.

I'd like to discuss the way major political ideologies that affected the global events of 1930s and 1940s came to being in the form we know them in OTL, and talk about the ways different outcomes of WW1 and Russian Revolution might have affected to their development and content. The fascism and Marxism-Leninism we know are both offspring of Great War and Bolshevik triumpf in the Russia, and if we butterfly those origins to something else, the end results will naturally look quite different as well. This discussion is part of my attempt to create a Kaiserreich-styled alt-history mod for Hearts of Iron 3, but feel free to ignore that little detail and just discuss the matter in the contect of alternate history.

Let's start with the general outlines of the world where these changes and postwar developments take place. It is based on a shameless and openly admitted mix of creations of others, namely John Trungove, DerGreif, Hnau and wiking.

Short summary: Due different political development before the Great War in several fields (German naval policy, Moroccan Crisis, 1st Balkan War) result at least somewhat succesfull Ango-German detente, Germany goes against Russia first and leaves Belgium be by staying on the defensive in Alsace and Lorraine. Britain, busy with Home Rule crisis, starts to mobilize a large ground army but stays initially out from the conflict where France and Russia confront Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Eastern Front becomes the main battlefield of WW1, and in the end Russia is the first country to leave the war. February Revolution of 1917 is followed by July Revolution where the Provisional Government (that was way more more conservative than in OTL) is toppled and Petrograd Soviet takes over with Mensheviks and SRs in charge. Grigory Gershuni and Mikhail Gots, leaders of PSR, guide the new Russian Republic out from the world war by signing a separate peace where Russia cedes away Congress Poland and the Baltic provinces, cede Bessarabia to Romania, the latest member of Central Powers, and recognizes the independence of Finland. After brief civil disturbances and local fighting against the few renegedate White Generals and their forces, the new Russian government is able to consolidate its hold over the country. In general the PSR rules the countryside and is thus the strongest political force in postwar Russian politics, while reunified RSDLP holds most sway among the workers Soviets. In addition to this Kadets and some other smaller centrist parties have token presence in the postwar Duma.

By late 1917 still neutral Britain has a large ground army, German, Austro-Hungarian and French home fronts are tired of the war and French troops are still fighting on German soil in Alsace-Lorraine but their population is increasingly restless and doubtful about the outcome of the conflict. Finally British-mediated peace negotiations bear fruit when London together with US support more or less pressures both sides to come to terms. WW1 ends in the West, when France agrees to cede French concessions in China and protectorate of Morocco together with rest of French Congo, Djibouti and Madagascar. Even without war guilt clauses the outcome of the war is widely seen as a disappointment compromise on both France and Germany - nothing has been really solved and much has been made worse. But while German leadership can still point out to the new gains in the East and Africa as a proof of victory in the war, French public opinion is traumatized by their defeat.

This is the premise for postwar political development and the rise of major ideologies that I plan to discuss in this thread. On next post I'll start with in-depth look to the domestic situation of France, the most likely birthplace of equivalent of OTL fascism.
 
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Key points to notify when discussing the status of French postwar political climate:

1.) In 1914 France declared war on Germany, not the other way around. This was a major factor in determining the German demands in late 1917, when the British-mediated peace talks resulted in armistice in the Western Front. Despite the absence of any war guilt clauses it has also become a central part of French postwar debate about the war, and the powerful myth of Poincaré-la-guerre and his cronies allying France with the worst autocracy in Europe and then dragging France to war has much support among French leftist wordview. To right-wing groups these were only prudent precautions against German militarism that was poised to attack France anyway - they blame the prewar leadership for killing of a generation of fine young men with incompetent leadership and poor strategy and then wasting this noble blood sacrifice to the altar of Patria by signing the armistice with Germany just when they were clearly on a verge of revolution and Britain was considering an intervention to the war...

2.) France entered war with the aim of recovering Alsace and Lorraine, and this goal of keeping France safe from the enemy accross the Rhine carried the country through the war. The failure in this goal wrecked the credibility of French wartime leadership and destabilized the French society after years of wartime cohesion and effective cooperation.

3.) In 1916 the French government established a Ministry of Armaments, appointing Albert Thomas to lead it. Thomas, a Socialist, supported the views of Jean Jaurès and kept the unions involved in his planning efforts, hoping to create a mixed economy that would combine the best parts of socialist social justice and capitalist private initiative. This state-led corporatism was an important experience to all sides of the political spectrum, and became a central theme in postwar leftwing reformist thought.

4.) The success of labour mobilization accomplished by this cooperation pernamently changed French society by emancipating women. It also made them politically active. Traditional trade unions were ambivalent about this influx of female workforce, fearing that more women in factories ment that more workers would be sent to frontlines while remaining workers would risk wage losses as women were willing to do the same work for less money. As tasks that before the war were held by one skilled worker (who were nearly universally males and highly organized union members) were now divided to parts and given to several women. After the war the unions were surprisingly unsupportive and often outright misogynic towards female attempts to remain at work market in several industries, arguing that they would only be pitted against the male workers by the employers.

5.) The soldier mutinies of summer 1917 had a strong part in forcing France to the negotiation table. Yet the mutinying frontline soldiers who refused to go to return to the trenches until their demands would be met were not revolutionaries. They had not lost fate of French government and society and were still willing to fight for it, but desired to end the continuation of tactics that seemed to achieve nothing but senseless slaughter.

The mutinying soldiers always emphasized the importance of transmitting their conserns to their elected representatives in the Chamber of Deputies. Apart from mundane complaints of issues like poor food, rumours about colonial units being used to break up strikes of female workers and better leave policy, they first and foremost wanted peace. But just like demonstrating female workers they wanted a peace that would achieve the war aims the French leaders had stated to their people in 1914 - Alsace and Lorraine restored as part of France.

These "war strikes" were spontaneous and unorganized phenomena, and as the soldiers gradually dispersed back to their units, the French High Command quickly decided to avoid taking the blame by inventing a massive defeatist conspiracy in the interiour. Blaming the domestic pacifist movements for internal subversion and undermining the war effort, they sought to lay the blame to the politicians.

This is what they did in OTL, and like there it helps the Army to retain some credibility in the eyes of the public even after the armistice. The scapegoats of this scheme, labour unions and organizations, are not amused.

6.) Meanwhile exploding inflation was increasing tensions in French home front, as demands of female workers were increasingly often at odds with their male colleaques. It was thus women that were mostly mobilized by labor activism in the spring and summer of 1917, and the most significant wave of strikes coincidentally took place during the mutinies, further supporting the military leadership with their argument that these events were work of a fifth column within the French society.

In a series of strikes the female workers marched in tens of thousands, waving tricolors and red flags and demanding cost-of-living raises and free Saturday afternoons and arguing that the war would end when they stopped building the means for it. Yet these same demonstrators cheered the French poilus and only a fraction of them was hoping for a peace that would not see France regaining Alsace and Lorraine. Because of their reluctance to abandon the war effort completely, these strikes were temporarily calmed down and dispersed with minor concessions in wage followed up by repressive actions in form of lost wages from the strike and few dismissals and arrests. The claims and expectations of labour were increasingly at odds with current strategic reality. This situation exploded after the peace treaty, when the trauma of defeat was accompanied by wide social unrest.

7.) French postwar society was deeply divided and badly fractured. Prewar problems that had not been solved during the conflict were exacerbated and new difficulties had risen to accompany them and polarize the situation further. Labor had been strengthened, and socialist parties and trade unions gained strong initial boosts to their popularity while the middle-classes were hit hardest by inflation and war era economic stagnation. As war bonds bought in patriotic ethusiasm became virtually worthless, savings disappearead and long-term economic planning became virtually impossible, these people became really bitter.

The war became a question of gender and age. The mobilization of women had brought them new liberties and chances in French society and now the conservatives were trying to restore the old status quo and labour organizations seemed unwilling to defend them - this treatment and lack of voting rights made French women and feminists increasingly radical. Soon older generations were facing increasingly hostile and radical war and postwar age groups resentful towards the fact that French society had not been changed enough and that many old prewar leaders were still in charge.

As all groups of the French society more or less felt they had been victimized at the expense of their economic and political rivals of other classes, the wartime practice of polarizing the world into friends and foes made French politics increasingly ideological zero-sum game, and compromising between opposing extremes became harder and harder. Sporadic political street violence between conflicting groups became part of French politics, as new organizations of "political soldiers" clashed against one another. These paramilitary organizations of opposing social and political factions were initially filled with demobilized soldiers, but during 1920s more and more angry young men who had been too young to the frontlines joined their ranks.

8.) Moderate centrist parties declined as political conflicts became more ferocious, and socialist politics became the central ideological forces that mobilized people for or against them. Some members of the radical left were convinced that the war had marked the end of liberal democracy and social democracy, and that a more radical communist program was the way ahead. Together with political terrorism conducted by small, but noisy Anarcists groups this development convinced many members of French middle and upper classes that the liberal parliamentary state was in jeopardy and needed protection against the threat of a violent revolution.

Meanwhile moderate majority of various French leftists parties looked the success of Mensheviks in the Russian Republic as a model and sought to engage in democratic process with moderate centrist and right-wing political parties. They were accompanied by the growing French Social Revolutionaries, a prewar group who sought support among the large agrarian segment of French population.

9.) The immediate postwar situation in France was a state of virtual civil war, a guerre franco-française, as Republic's instituation seemed unable to protect the interest of French bourgeoisie against the growing mass of strikes. Yet the French bureaucracy, police and army were still dominated by traditional elites and begun to take action to restore status quo and seek allies from moderate Social Democrats who were willing to cooperate with them in exchange of increased political power. Gradually the situation stabilized somewhat, and the political pendulum begun to swing back and forth as both sides of the postwar political struggles at least temporarily sought to change France through the ballot box.

Young against old, right-wing against leftists, pacifists against people idealizing wartime unity and the brotherhood of the trenches, and unemancipated women against conservative men.
This is the cauldron where the equivalent of OTL fascism will first be cooked.
 
Now when we've determined the setting, let's talk about the indegrients we are going to use. Many ideas and attitudes of OTL fascism had prewar origins, and Europe of 1914 certainly had a fair number of political organizations willing to mobilize the masses behind ideas of cultural revolt, anti-Marxism, "national" variants of socialism, authoritarianism, ultranationalism, racism and anti-semitism. All these thoughts and ideas had effects on the various political movements that are currently categorized under the label of fascism.

And yet these groups had significant internal differences on many key areas. How would an ideology born in the postwar conditions of France response to the situation the country and French society faced? There are many possible routes to take and it is highly unlikely any of them would fully resemble Italian Fascism or German National Socialism.

For me, the most likely candidate for credible equivalent of OTL Fascism in France is National Syndicalism. When the political discourses and movements of integral nationalism as seen by Maurras and revolutionary syndicalist views of Sorel meet, the mixture in OTL soon evolved into different branches of modernist, revolutionary ideology that Maurras himself summarizes like this: "a socialism liberated from the democratic and cosmopolitan element fits nationalism well as a well made glove fits a beautiful hand."

Thinkers supportive of these ideas later on refined them based on their interpretation of P-J Proudhons ideas and created a joint manifest that stated: "Democracy is the greatest error of the past century. If one wishes to live, if one wishes to work, if one wishes in social life to possess the greatest human guarantees for production and culture, if one wishes to preserve and increase the moral, intellectual and material capital of civilisation, it is absolutely necessary to destroy all democratic institutions."

The stated goal of this movement was a creation of a new society - "virile, heroic, pessimistic, and puritanical—based on the sense of duty and sacrifice: a world where the mentality of warriors and monks would prevail." So, without major outside influences the experiences and society described above as their arena, what kind of ideology would National Syndicalism most likely be? How would it address gender equality and questions of race and ethnicity? How would it approach the usage of violence and the possibility of new war? What kind of economical policy would it see as ideal? What kind of allies it would have in postwar French society?
 
Possible outcomes: Freikorps and White forces defeat the Red Army at some point. (There was some indication of this that once the German position is secured in the Baltics, a march on Petrograd? Perhaps Trotsky flees to China?)

Italy still has Mussolini, despite being on the winning side OTL. I would think Russia devolves into something like China, weak central government and warlords. Maybe a Chinese like split in the Bolsheviks, who is Chiang in this TL?

Recall, China's KMT was originally more or less a left wing revolutionary movement from 1911. Without a USSR backing up it's left wing, what happens?

A cause of the Depression in OTL (arguably) was easy credit from the USA. This is an oversimplification, but USA loans money to Germany, Germany pays war debt to France. USA loans money to France and UK as well, as those economies, despite being on the winning side, are still adversely affected by what became a total war in OTL. Easy credit and loose economic policy in the 1920s leads to collapse of USA stock market. You don't necessarily have the same set of circumstances here, as you don't have the same impact on the British economy in this TL and there isn't the same warguilt/indemnification in this TL's peace. However, Germany will have the burden of propping up Poland, Austria-Hungary, Ukraine, etc., and subsidizing the colonial concessions from France. So you may still have the economic perfect storm for a Depression in this TL.

Note also, without USA participation in the war, you don't have the same impact on the American left wing as in OTL (e.g. no Debs in jail.) Possibly this leads to growth of the Socialist Party in the USA. And without a USSR in this TL, you don't have the splits you had OTL across both the European and American left, although then you still have a radical left in the SPD, no Spartacist League?

The breakdown of class due to the war, privations caused by the war are going to be felt across the continent. What about the UK? And what about fascism in the UK, as a means of continuing and protecting the UK's splendid isolation.
 
Possible outcomes: Freikorps and White forces defeat the Red Army at some point. (There was some indication of this that once the German position is secured in the Baltics, a march on Petrograd? Perhaps Trotsky flees to China?)

Trotsky is too controversial figure to rise to leading position, I've reserved that honour to Gershuni and M.Gots who are both still alive and kicking in 1917. The way I see it currently is that Falkenhayn remains at the helm of German war effort and pursues an early peace with Russia.

Italy still has Mussolini, despite being on the winning side OTL. I would think Russia devolves into something like China, weak central government and warlords. Maybe a Chinese like split in the Bolsheviks, who is Chiang in this TL?

The Italian situation was rather unique and is unlikely to repeat itself elsewhere. And in TTL Russian Civil War will be rather short, since combined forces and supporters of PSR and RSDLP are way stronger and unified as Bolsheviks were during the first years of OTL Civil War. Yet SR ideas about local democracy and peasant power would still turn Russia into remarkably free but inefficient, localized and decentralized state.

It also remains to be seen whether PSR and RSDLP can retain their "peasants and workers"-Popular Front or will their ideological differences lead to a confrontation later on.

Recall, China's KMT was originally more or less a left wing revolutionary movement from 1911. Without a USSR backing up it's left wing, what happens?

The way I see it now is that the left wing of KMT gains prominence, and rivalling warlord cliques most likely still rule central China by 1936 since Russian Republic isn't as inclined to meddle in internal affairs of China. So no Whampoa Military Academy, for example. Chinese intellectuals are also certain to take notice than an agrarian revolutionary party, PSR, rises to leading position in events of Russian revolution.

A cause of the Depression in OTL (arguably) was easy credit from the USA. This is an oversimplification, but USA loans money to Germany, Germany pays war debt to France. USA loans money to France and UK as well, as those economies, despite being on the winning side, are still adversely affected by what became a total war in OTL. Easy credit and loose economic policy in the 1920s leads to collapse of USA stock market. You don't necessarily have the same set of circumstances here, as you don't have the same impact on the British economy in this TL and there isn't the same warguilt/indemnification in this TL's peace. However, Germany will have the burden of propping up Poland, Austria-Hungary, Ukraine, etc., and subsidizing the colonial concessions from France. So you may still have the economic perfect storm for a Depression in this TL.

Ukraine is still part of Russia. And yes, even though London is likely to remain the center of world economy, the warring states are heavily in debt and recessions are possible.

Note also, without USA participation in the war, you don't have the same impact on the American left wing as in OTL (e.g. no Debs in jail.) Possibly this leads to growth of the Socialist Party in the USA. And without a USSR in this TL, you don't have the splits you had OTL across both the European and American left, although then you still have a radical left in the SPD, no Spartacist League?

This is true in all Western countries, and the Socialist International will be much more influential than in OTL. Although revolutionary Communist factions will still exist and so will some forms of Red Scare, the example of democratic Russian Republic is quite different from totalitarian Bolshevik Russia and horrors and attroxities of prolonged and bitter OTL Civil War. I don't see SRs persecuting religion as much as Bolsheviks, for example.

The breakdown of class due to the war, privations caused by the war are going to be felt across the continent. What about the UK? And what about fascism in the UK, as a means of continuing and protecting the UK's splendid isolation.

Without the traumas caused by the war and much better economic situation such radical thinking has little chance to succeed. Yet things that were more marginal in OTL might gain more support due different circumstances - expect more support for groups like Kibbo Kift, for example.
 
Part 2: Success of Russian Populism and it's impact on global politics

What if Social-Revolutionary Party didin't crumble to bickering factionalism and lack of firm leadership, but would instead run a tight ship, cooperate with Mensheviks and steer Russia towards a new course after war and revolution? What would be the ideological situation of a world without Soviet Union and Lenin in 1930s?

While postwar French political situation would spawn ideology that would unavoidably have key differences to all that is in OTL generally labelled as Fascism, the events and themes discussed in earlier update are by and large merely reactions to the earlier, even more dramatic change in Russia. The revolutionary message and outcome born from a mixture of Marxist thoughts and classical Russian Populism and forged in the fires of July Revolution and following events has by now, roughly 20 years later in mid-1930s been widely acknowledged as the most influential global event of postwar world.

To truly see the changes brought along by these events, one has to analyze the ideological situation where they came to being. Central to this analysis is the impact of Russian Populism, the ideology of Social Revolutionaries. Let's for a moment bypass the words and publications of Party ideologists like Chernov, Avksent'ev, Gots brothers and Gershuni, and start from the beginning.

On the eve of WW1 the revolutionary ideology of Russian Populism was above all marked by a conception of " the people" as a more or less single entity with collectivistic social aspirations. The expected socialist reorganization of society, the primary aim of PSR, was seen as natural result of the release of the inherent aspirations and revolutionary energies of the vast peasant masses. Yet during the decades when Gershuni and M. Gots were both living abroad in exile, Russian Populist writers and their ideological opponents wrote considerable volumes of essays, newspaper articles and whole books centered around few key problems in their ideology and agenda.

Many Populists thinkers were constantly preoccupied with the fear that the liberating and egalitarian ends of the revolution might be perverted by the means employed to attain them - If the people could not or would not rise united to build the new socialist order of freedom and equality, should the revolutionary Populist elites seek to force the matter and guide the flow of events to secure a better future for masses unable to react in time or with adequate force?

And subsequently: might not a revolution- or a revolutionary coup d'dtat- presided over by an elite of revolutionary intellectuals be on a constant risk of creating new forms of inequality and despotism? Rising against autocracy and ending up with new tyranny replacing the old was a central fear of many Populist writers, and it was this fear that led to their critique of the Marxist notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat in general and especially the application of this ambiguous Marxist formula to a country where the proletariat constituted only a tiny minority of the people.

Perhaps in no other revolutionary movement was this dilemma faced so explicitly and debated so seriously than among Russian Populist intellectuals. The reasons why this problem assumed particular prominence in the Populist movement lie both in the nature of the Tsarist Russian state and society and in the contradictory strands present in Populist ideology itself.

The continued and increasing gap in Russian society between the intelli-gentsia and the people, the political apathy of the peasantry and the general failure of the revolutionary intelligentsia to obtain mass support, the harsh police repression which made mass organizational activities virtually impossible -such were some of the factors which fostered elitist and conspiratorial tendencies in the Populist movement. Many increasingly turned to terrorism, to Jacobin and even Blanquist notions and methods of revolution. When this internal division and loss of faith was stagnating the Populist movement, many sought new aswers from Marxist theories.

The fact that the evolving relationship of early Russian Populism and Marxism was initally largely the result of increased interaction between Russian writers and exiled diaspora and Marx himself had a major impact later on, when opposing political views sought to portray Populism as an outdated worldview that was fixated to peculiarities of Russian history and unable to embrace the universal truths of Marxism. In these events Populists were able to prove that "the man himself" had been increasingly sympathetic to their views on his later years.

In fact, the First Russian thinker whom Marx took seriously and studied his ideas in depth was N.G.Chernyshevsky, a Populist. As he gained more knowledge to the situation of Russian countryside, Marx appraised the traditional Russian village commune and its potential to provide a basis for socialism without enduring the torment of primitive capitalist accumulation, noting Chernyshevsky's idea that Russia could "skip" capitalism alltogether by combining her traditions and unique situation to latest Western technological innovations. By 1870s Marx stated that "if Russia continues to pursue the path she has followed since 1861 (Emancipation Edict) she will lose the finest chance ever offered by history to a nation, in order to undergo all the fatal vicissitudes of the capitalist regime."

Later in his life Marx commented the debates between Russian Marxists and Russian Populists, rejecting the view that his "sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe was supra-historical theory of general path imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic cicrumstance in which it finds it self. On the contrary, events strikingly analogous but taking place in different historic surroundings often led to totally different results. The question of whether Russia must begin (her way towards Socialism) by destroying the rural commune in order to pass to the capitalist regime or whether it could instead appropriate all its fruits by developing its own historical peculiarities (ses propres données historiques) cannot be answered by fererence to a universal scheme."

The unavoidably agrarian nature of Russian revolution was a matter of interest to Marx, since the situation was so different from Western Europe. He also supported the Populist view that Russian revolutionaries should seek to utilize their unique situation instead of seeking to repeat the mistakes made earlier in capitalist West: "A Russian revolution is required if the commune is to be saved...if the revolution occurs in time...the rural commune...will develop...as an element in the regeneration of Russian society, as a point of advantage when compared to the nations enslaved by the capitalist system"

Finally a preface to a new Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto: "If the Russian revolution becomes the signal for proletarian revolution in the West, so that the two can supplement each other, then present Russian communal land ownership can serve as a point of departure for a communist development." Ironically Marx himself became more responsive to Populist ideas at the very moment when Plekhanov and his associates were intensifying their attacks against populist writers as reactionary utopians. After Marx died, Engels tented to side with Plekhanov, but the views of Marx would later on be utilized by a new generation of Populist leaders as a mean to build new bridges between the Russian revolutionary tradition and new Marxist ideals.

This later reconciliation and synthesis of earlier schools of thought was necessary for later events in Russia, since previous history had left Populist and Marxist revolutionaries on a conflicted position at the eve of WW1. Czarist security organizations had skillfully played the vain and uncompromising ideologists on both sides against one another by allowing the Marxists to publish and circulate their thoughts more widely in order to discredit the Populists, whom were seen as the main threat to internal stability and status quo.

The key difference between these revolutionary groups was their conflicting view on economy. Marxists insisted the inevitable development of capitalism in the countryside as well as in the cities, while the Populists postulated the inherent advantages of unique Russian peasant agriculture. The particularity of the modernist Populist view was that peasant agriculture should be seen as a non-capitalist family economy, employing the labour of its members to provide for the household's consumption. Thus the future of collectivism in Russian countryside would lay in a growing cooperative movement, rather than in the old commune.

Reflected here was not only the desire to escape the already evident social costs of capitalist industrialization- and a contempt for Western bourgeois society in general- but also an impatience to "wait history" an impatience expressed in their faith in Russia as the pioneer of socialist revolution. According to Populists, Tsarist Russia was closer to the achievement of socialism than the advanced industrialized states precisely because of the relative lack of capitalist development, and precisely because of the moral and social virtues inherent in Russian "agrarian backwardness." Yet the Populists were by no means advocates of backwardness per se. They saw themselves as modern scientific men and advocated the appropriation of the latest fruits of western European technology- but to be utilized for the benefit of the people rather than as new instruments for their oppression.

The faith in Russia's special socialist potential rested both on the uniqueness of Russian historical traditions and the notion that Russia was uniquely unburdened by tradition. It should be noted that central to the Populist faith was the view that the state and bureaucracy are inherently evil phenomena; the state was seen as an alien force which produces and perpetuates "unnatural " class divisions in society and precludes true human solidarity. In their vision of a non-bureaucratic socialist future, the Populists looked forward to a combination of "living and working " that was to be brought about by incorporating modern industry within the societal framework in accordance with the principles of the traditional peasant commune.

Closely related to this profoundly anti-bureaucratic orientation was a general hostility to intellectual and occupational specialization, and thus a certain enmity to formal higher education. Although they themselves were intellectuals and, for the most part, products of institutions of higher education, they shared Rousseau's belief in "the goodness of simple men" and his distrust of intellectuals and specialists.

For the Populists, unlike the Marxists, the decisive factor in history was not the inexorable movement of the material forces of production but rather the choices and actions of men; although socialism in Russia was ethically desirable and humanly possible, it was not historically predetermined. What would be ultimately decisive were "men who combine faith, will, conviction and energy." One of the early key paradoxes in Populist thought, often sharply pointed out and criticized by Marxists, was their belief that the creation of a new, better society would require the emergence of deeply dedicated and morally pure "men of the new age."

This group, an elite of young intellectuals capable of imposing their socialist consciousness on historical reality, would be necessary in providing guidance for the masses during the upcoming revolution. But the elitist implications of these notions were tempered by the basic, but perhaps conflicting, Populist faith that socialist consciousness still resided ultimately in the people themselves, in the socialist traditions and ideals of the peasantry. This deep commitment to complete equality and popular democracy and the acute distrust of anything imposed on the people from above created a deep division within the Populist movement.

It took the charisma of the popular tribune and the firm hand of the organizer in form of the legendary team of Gots and Gershuni to clarify the PSR program and stop the decay that threatened to cripple the party just before the major events in Europe were finally making the Russian people stir in their slumber.

Coming up next: Populism in power, postwar PSR ideology and the impact of succesfull Agrarian Socialist revolution on a global scale.
 
You don't even need "national syndicalism" per see. OTL's "Yellow Socialism" fits just fine as a kind of fascist ideology for export in France, the Americas, etc.
 

Hnau

Banned
Ah, I just saw this here. I am so excited that you are incorporating Russian Narodnichestvo! It's an ideology I investigated quite passionately when I was doing research for my Lenin-less World timeline. :)
 
You don't even need "national syndicalism" per see. OTL's "Yellow Socialism" fits just fine as a kind of fascist ideology for export in France, the Americas, etc.

One lives and learns...I had never heard of them even though I've recently skimmed through a few books regarding the different protofascist political movements. A good find, thanks.

Ah, I just saw this here. I am so excited that you are incorporating Russian Narodnichestvo! It's an ideology I investigated quite passionately when I was doing research for my Lenin-less World timeline. :)

Well, as I state in the opening message this TL would not exist in its current form without your earlier work. What goes around comes around :D

So far I've started from the premise that M. Gots and Gershuni both live on and hold PSR together, loyal to the idea of Party unity that was devised earlier by Pyotr Lavrov. And while PSR stays firmly agrarian and supports decentralized anti-state economical structure, the Party doctrine climbs out from the worst depths of their dead-ended earlier anti-capitalism and reaches a synthetist viewpoint with Menshevik Marxists in regards of the future of capitalism in Russia. Startting from the premise that while Socialism (as defined by Populism) is still the goal, using Western technology and capitalist means in some parts of the society can serve this purpose without jeopardizing it. For PSRs, this naturally means the already suspicious cities and heavy industry are deemed as unimportant compared to challenges and possibilities of Russian countryside.

For a while this might give RSDLP and PSR chance to share power and reach agreement on some parts of the economy with one party running the countryside and other dealing with cities and industry. What do you think?
 
Yet SR ideas about local democracy and peasant power would still turn Russia into remarkably free but inefficient, localized and decentralized state.

Hrm. Have you read From Farm to Factory?

Inefficient.. Maybe. But compared to the USSR?

I'm not a fan of the idea of the USSR as hell on Earth. But it's hard not not to agree that the state squandered enormous amounts of physical and human capital.
 
Hrm. Have you read From Farm to Factory?

Inefficient.. Maybe. But compared to the USSR?

I'm not a fan of the idea of the USSR as hell on Earth. But it's hard not not to agree that the state squandered enormous amounts of physical and human capital.

Nope, I've been tad too busy with my master thesis lately.

And you're right, even though I'm still loyal to my habits of initially portraying highly one-sided baits to lure people to comment :rolleyes:, things are dark gray rather than black and white. An utopian revolutionary movement aiming towards Switzerland-like decentralized agrarian New Order combined with their solid tradition of using terrorism as an accepted way of conducting policy is just as scary as Lenin and his merry fellows. While things wont immediately boil down to Russian version of Cultural Revolution, it won't be collective regime of peace and love either, that is for sure.

And on the other hand they might be just as or even more supportive to Western investments to Russian markets as Bolsheviks were under their similar tirades about evils of Capitalism. I've been reading a bunch of updates about the sorry fate of Gosplan Mensheviks and initial Soviet economical opposition, and the fact that by the end of WW1 Populist economical theory believed in the priority of consumption and distribution over production - in their definition, socialism in an economic sense was nothing else than a colossal consumption organization. When such worldview is mixed with ideas of Vladimir Gustavovich Groman and thinkers like Rubin, Finn-Enotaevsky, Kafengauz and the rest, the wild idea of "optimum combination of the development of productive forces" aiming to the growth of well-being of the working masses and development of socialist forms of the economy, we'll have interesting times ahead.

Theory of equilibrium and the other stuff they circulated around as alternatives in 1920s is rather fashinating. In fact, Groman visioned his Utopian "Russian Peasant Republic" to be a state relieved from almost all its social and economic functions by the various associations, cooperatives, congresses, leagues, academies and clubs. It was to own only forestry, oil and coal production, while everything else would be run cooperatively in a manner close to OTL Yugoslav model, economically and financially independent from state supervision and combined with small-scale enterprises regulated by discriminatory taxation.

Personally I think it is merely a recipe for a different kind of disaster Lenin and Stalin brewed up but a disaster nevertheless. But it will be interesting to study it in depth and to use it as in-game material.
 
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