Trotskyist USSR
- Thread starter eliphas8
- Start date
Okay suppose he did have the skill to take control/Lenin lives long enough to ensure Trotsky comes to power/Stalin dies during the revolution somehow what then?
GiantMonkeyMan
Banned
Trotsky was in many cases just as, if not more brutal, than Stalin during the revolutionary period and under Lenin. I don't think the mass-industrialisation we saw under Stalin would have occured in the same ways but Trotsky was heavily involved in the Red Army so we might see a stronger, better organised military without so many purges. Trotsky did like to spout off about an international revolution and there was a period of time where many nations within Europe could have either swung left or right but somehow I think that heavier involvement by the Bolsheviks in those countries could have contributed to an even more reactionary swing.
Essentially.... who knows. Maybe it'd start a subsect of communist thought that would idolise Stalin as a 'better' alternative to Trotsky.
Essentially.... who knows. Maybe it'd start a subsect of communist thought that would idolise Stalin as a 'better' alternative to Trotsky.
Yep. The (very) simple version--you've just swapped Stalin for the Russian equivalent of Mao.
Not pretty.
Not pretty.
Trotsky had a chance, shortly before Lenin died, to read a speech by Lenin declaring Stalin as a traitor, this happening after Stalin's falling out with Lenin. However, Trotsky wussed out and read his own speech. We all know what happened after that.
*sighs*
No, not really.
See, the thing about that famous speech is--yeah, it criticized Stalin. It also criticized Trotsky. And pretty much every member of the Politboro whose name didn't start with 'L', end with 'N', and have three letters in between it. In fact, Stalin actually got off pretty lightly in it. So, no, reading it probably wouldn't have eradicated Stalin's heavily entrenched powerbase. That stated, yes, Stalin was challengable at this time. But it would take a united front from a group of people who spent a great deal of time IOTL demonstrating that they all hated each other.
John Fredrick Parker
Donor
Oh, yeah. If I may summarize...
A) Trotsky is HIGHLY unlikely to take power.
B) If he does take power, he won't keep it, due to his being a politically inept asshole with a knack for alienating those around him.
And this one, I freely admit it is mine...
C) If the idea is to make a slightly less awful Russia, you're barking up the wrong tree. Swapping out Stalin for Trotsky just swaps your flavor of evil--instead of Stalin's brutal paranoid pragmatism with a dose of grandiosity, expect overblown grandiosity with a dose of paranoia and pragmatism. About the only real improvement is the Great Purges aren't going to happen. Which is admittedly a big thing, but in the broader scheme of things not as major as you'd expect. The average Russian in the collective is still going to be starving. Indeed, that might wind up going worse.
A) Trotsky is HIGHLY unlikely to take power.
B) If he does take power, he won't keep it, due to his being a politically inept asshole with a knack for alienating those around him.
And this one, I freely admit it is mine...
C) If the idea is to make a slightly less awful Russia, you're barking up the wrong tree. Swapping out Stalin for Trotsky just swaps your flavor of evil--instead of Stalin's brutal paranoid pragmatism with a dose of grandiosity, expect overblown grandiosity with a dose of paranoia and pragmatism. About the only real improvement is the Great Purges aren't going to happen. Which is admittedly a big thing, but in the broader scheme of things not as major as you'd expect. The average Russian in the collective is still going to be starving. Indeed, that might wind up going worse.
er, guys, you seem(other than one poster) to be focusing on the internal changes it would bring.
But this would have a huge impact on a potential WWII. Trotsky was much more fiercely anti-Fascist, and I can't see a German-Soviet Nonagression pact with Trotsky at the head of the USSR(Trotsky was a Jew by birth for another thing, remember Stalin had to get rid of Litvinov in OTL)
maybe a more united Allied front with Britain, France, and a Trotsky-led USSR deters Nazi Germany altogether, or at least in ways to produce a totally different war.
But this would have a huge impact on a potential WWII. Trotsky was much more fiercely anti-Fascist, and I can't see a German-Soviet Nonagression pact with Trotsky at the head of the USSR(Trotsky was a Jew by birth for another thing, remember Stalin had to get rid of Litvinov in OTL)
maybe a more united Allied front with Britain, France, and a Trotsky-led USSR deters Nazi Germany altogether, or at least in ways to produce a totally different war.
Ummm, the big point of most posters is it almost certainly CAN'T happen. Further, a few of us are pointing out that if through some miracle it did, the tendency to assume it would make a nice USSR is largely wishful thinking.
I've seen a lot more unlikely WIs given serious consideration on this board. It's an AH board, responding "that can't happen" to a WI scenario that isn't ASB doesn't seem like much fun.
And the second point is more "internal USSR" stuff-ok, so Trotsky is no enlightened despot, but I still think him being the dictator rather than Stalin would have huge effects on the events of the 1930s in Europe.
Firstly, when one comes to understand Trotsky one comes to understand that his taking over the Soviet Union is the Russian political equivalent of Sealion succeeding.
Secondly, this 'internal stuff' is likely going to dominate Russian concerns, much as it did IOTL. What occurs and how it is dealt with is the basis for what occurs on the international stage in such a TL.
Secondly, this 'internal stuff' is likely going to dominate Russian concerns, much as it did IOTL. What occurs and how it is dealt with is the basis for what occurs on the international stage in such a TL.
I get the impression that the person most likely to defeat Stalin was Bukharin. It would be interesting to see a timeline where he is powerful instead of Stalin.
Bukharin, by the standards of the Bolsheviks, was a pretty nice guy. Which is more or less why he was eaten alive.
Snake Featherston
Banned
Trotsky would succeed in the most probable fashion only by becoming the front man for what in actual practice is a Soviet military dictatorship. Such a dictatorship would *want* the kind of industrialization both Stalin and Trotsky favored, a mass industrialization program favoring the state in general and the army in particular. And with the original hard core of competent leadership a USSR run by the army would have an easier time trying to find means to contain German revanchism, particularly if front-man Trotsky means that Nazism gets a shot in the arm. *If* the huge number of obstacles in the way of a Trotskyist system could be surmounted, then a Trotskyist USSR will look like a hybrid of Imperial Japan with strong elements of the nastier traits of Stalinism, the one difference being that the most stable set of institutions in the USSR will be the Red Army.
Snake Featherston
Banned
Actually the person most likely to defeat Stalin was http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSsmirnov.htm < this guy, who was the other candidate for General Secretary of the Communist Party. The General Secretariat enabled Stalin to transform the Communist Party from a governing clique of multiple, equally powerful individuals into a giant patron-client network, if his rise is at all to be averted then Ivan Smirnov is the only man who could stop it by virtue of holding the position that made Stalin what he was.
The problem with that, Snake, is that such a regime is going to want a better front man than Trotsky. (Despite what most of the party imagined, Trotsky really wasn't that popular with the officers. Or the men, for that matter.)
Another aspect to deal with is that a Trotsky government--again, assuming the miracle happens--is likely to try out some very ODD things, especially on the cultural front. (Which is not to say that Stalin didn't, but Trotsky was much more interested in this sort of social engineering...)
Snake Featherston
Banned
True, though on the other hand to a certain version of the Junta Trotsky would be desirable for precisely this reason: he's a Founding Father whose power is solely contingent on the military as without them he's toast, so he provides superficial continuity while in practice being powerless. Think the stereotype of Hirohito but moreso. In the grand scheme of things, though, unless the Soviets put someone else in the position to be General-Secretary averting the rise of Stalin is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do as he was quite good at doing the vital but unglamorous work behind the scenes.