Trotsky's USSR

I am fairly certain that someone else has already started a discussion on this topic or wrote a timeline surrounding it (but since I couldn't find one I'll start my own). It's easily one of the biggest what-ifs in early 20th century history, what if Leon Trotsky succeeded Vladimir Lenin as the leader of the USSR instead of Joseph Stalin?

How exactly would the USSR be influenced by Trotsky's leadership and his diametrically opposed views to Stalin?

Let's for a second imagine a timeline in which Trotsky's Left Opposition gained enough power to effectively split the party in two, resulting in something not too dissimilar from Gorbachev's Perestroika occurring 60 years ahead of schedule, a complete implementation of the concept of soviet democracy and multi-candidate elections comprising candidates from the two separate factions of the Communist party. Trosky's Left Opposition manages to be elected into power with Trotsky being declared the Supreme Soviet in a term-limited position starting on January 1928.

The Western world looks with curiosity at the USSR and its newfound democracy and the eastern world is changed forever.

What do you think would happen next?
 
Can this meme that Trotsky was a hero please just die already? I swear, in an alternate timeline people are posting here asking about the bright democratic future Stalin could have brought if that dastardly Trotsky had just been killed... Just because Stalin was a huge cunt and Trotsky was his enemy doesn't make Trotsky a nice guy. Many of Stalin's disastrous economic policies were the same as Trotsky's, and Trotsky certainly wouldn't have transformed the USSR into a democracy. On top of that, the guy was insanely militaristic and believed in the world revolution, which makes him more problematic than a very cautious, paranoid and isolationist guy like Stalin. With Trotsky proactively trying to spread Communism, Fascism may get a warmer reception as a necessary evil to ward against this internationalist menace.
 
Can this meme that Trotsky was a hero please just die already? I swear, in an alternate timeline people are posting here asking about the bright democratic future Stalin could have brought if that dastardly Trotsky had just been killed... Just because Stalin was a huge cunt and Trotsky was his enemy doesn't make Trotsky a nice guy. Many of Stalin's disastrous economic policies were the same as Trotsky's, and Trotsky certainly wouldn't have transformed the USSR into a democracy. On top of that, the guy was insanely militaristic and believed in the world revolution, which makes him more problematic than a very cautious, paranoid and isolationist guy like Stalin. With Trotsky proactively trying to spread Communism, Fascism may get a warmer reception as a necessary evil to ward against this internationalist menace.

Trotsky was no saint - he was certainly a killer, an executioner and a ruthless fighter with bloody hands. But in my opinion, there was nobody worse than Stalin amongst the leading Bolsheviks to take over the Soviet Union after Lenin died. Stalin was the absolute worst of the lot.

For example:

Would Trostky have conducted the Stalinist show trials and Great Purge? (A fantastical religious-style inquisition that murdered thousands of loyal Old Bolsheviks, talented and dedicated international revolutionaries, and Russian Civil War heroes and veterans from the Red Army, which was escalated to slaughter millions of innocent Soviet citizens, and totally crippled the Soviet military and government). No.

Would Trotsky have purged, gutted, neutered and strangled the Comintern and international communist movement to such a cynical extent like Stalin did that the Spanish Republicans would be hamstrung by a cycle of internal witch-hunts and purges even while the Nationalists are breathing down their necks? Or would the KPD be ordered to refuse to ally with the SPD "social fascists", thereby sabotaging efforts to try and prevent the Nazi rise to power? Or would the Chinese Communists be told to remain unarmed sitting ducks for Chiang Kai-Shek's 1927 Shanghai Purge? I don't think so.

Would Trotsky, ever in a million years, sign a pact with the world's foremost anti-communist - Adolf Hitler - and trust in that pact to such a foolish extent that he would leave the Soviet Union completely unprepared for a Nazi invasion like Stalin did? And indeed, even suppress intelligence that clearly showed that a Nazi invasion was incoming, and then command the Red Army not to take any precautions, in order to keep up that delusion like Stalin did? No way.

Was Trotsky a military incompetent and bungler like Stalin? No, he was the father of the Red Army.

Was Trotsky a racist that would order mass deportations of Soviet ethnic minorities, causing millions of deaths, like Stalin did? No.

Would Trotsky order Russification to crush local cultures throughout the Soviet Union like Stalin did? No.

Was Trotsky an anti-Semite (hah) that would orchestrate state-sanctioned pogroms such as the Doctor's Plot like Stalin did? No.

Would Trotsky have tolerated a rapist and sexual abuser like Beria remaining in charge of the secret police like Stalin did? I don't think so.

Would Trotsky have bungled agricultural collectivization so badly as to ignore - and then worsen - a famine that was causing millions of deaths like Stalin did? Perhaps, but I don't think he would have then added anti-Ukrainian racialist elements to the policy to turn it into the Holodomor like Stalin did.

Would Trotsky have used mass penal/gulag slave labour in his industrialisation policies like Stalin did? Of course, that was Bolshevik policy, but I still can't see it killing the millions of innocents that Stalinism did.

Finally, would Trotsky have created a ludicrously sickening, almost-religious, totalitarian personality cult of himself like Stalin did? I don't think so, but a much milder personality cult pushed by his supporters may have sprung up anyway. I doubt Trotsky would give it official sanction though.
 
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Would Trotsky have bungled agricultural collectivization so badly as to ignore - and then worsen - a famine that was causing millions of deaths like Stalin did? Perhaps, but I don't think he would have then added anti-Ukrainian racialist elements to the policy to turn it into the Holodomor like Stalin did.

On this particular item I'd lean much more in the "probably not" direction. Trotsky, after all, was one of the first to draw attention to the problems caused by War Communism to Lenin and proposed it be brought to an end in 1920 due to its inefficiencies and the hardships it was causing to the Russian people. Sovnarkom disagreed but ultimately I think this suggests he'd be willing to re-assess agricultural collectivization policies if they were producing suboptimal, counterproductive, or even destructive outcomes though odds are it would not happen immediately and require such problems to emerge in the first place.

That said the bigger problem with a Trotskyite USSR is Trotsky himself, while a military mastermind, was a terrible politician with little support in the Party when Lenin died even with Lenin's Last Testament. The odds are pretty good he would have ended up sidelined, though probably not exiled and murdered, in any post-Lenin scenario where Stalin doesn't come to power.
 
On this particular item I'd lean much more in the "probably not" direction. Trotsky, after all, was one of the first to draw attention to the problems caused by War Communism to Lenin and proposed it be brought to an end in 1920 due to its inefficiencies and the hardships it was causing to the Russian people. Sovnarkom disagreed but ultimately I think this suggests he'd be willing to re-assess agricultural collectivization policies if they were producing suboptimal, counterproductive, or even destructive outcomes though odds are it would not happen immediately and require such problems to emerge in the first place.

That said the bigger problem with a Trotskyite USSR is Trotsky himself, while a military mastermind, was a terrible politician with little support in the Party when Lenin died even with Lenin's Last Testament. The odds are pretty good he would have ended up sidelined, though probably not exiled and murdered, in any post-Lenin scenario where Stalin doesn't come to power.

Oh yeah, this should be emphasised. Trotsky rising to leadership of the Soviet Union is very unlikely due to those factors, but the idea that he - or any other leading Bolshevik more likely to take power than Trotsky (e.g. Sverdlov, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Rykov, Frunze, Kirov, etc) - could have been just as bad (or worse) a leader than Stalin is one I fundamentally disagree with on many levels. Stalin was a unique form of disastrous garbage.
 
I am fairly certain that someone else has already started a discussion on this topic or wrote a timeline surrounding it (but since I couldn't find one I'll start my own). It's easily one of the biggest what-ifs in early 20th century history, what if Leon Trotsky succeeded Vladimir Lenin as the leader of the USSR instead of Joseph Stalin?

How exactly would the USSR be influenced by Trotsky's leadership and his diametrically opposed views to Stalin?

Let's for a second imagine a timeline in which Trotsky's Left Opposition gained enough power to effectively split the party in two, resulting in something not too dissimilar from Gorbachev's Perestroika occurring 60 years ahead of schedule, a complete implementation of the concept of soviet democracy and multi-candidate elections comprising candidates from the two separate factions of the Communist party. Trosky's Left Opposition manages to be elected into power with Trotsky being declared the Supreme Soviet in a term-limited position starting on January 1928.

The Western world looks with curiosity at the USSR and its newfound democracy and the eastern world is changed forever.

What do you think would happen next?


Read Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky if you want to know what Trotsky was really like in the revolutionary period. His criticism of the Paris Commune was that it did not crack down on dissidents enough, and he advocated forced labor. This sort of viewpoint is not conducive to democracy.

My satirical NationStates character "Vanguard of the Communist Revolution" is based in part on the odd nostalgia that people seem to have for Trotsky.
 
The thing is, Trotsky's views weren't diametrically opposed to Stalin's - Stalin actually ruled in accordance with the very ideas he'd opposed from Trotsky when they were competing. And Trotsky only came out against brutality in the Bolshevist USSR after he'd been pushed from power (I don't think Trotsky was necessarily being dishonest about this even - seeing the downsides of Proletarian dictatorship probably changed his mind on a few things).

Strangely, Trotsky being boss may have resulted in a more democratic USSR, as his rule would be much weaker than Stalin's. However, any democracy would by necessity be the sort to emphasize the power of the party (the regional-managers of the Party managed to stop STALIN from democratizing the party more, no way would Trotsky get anything past the party that the party didn't want).

And the only way we've ever found to plausibly get Trotsky into supreme power is for Lenin to live a longer healthier life, make Trotsky his designated no. 2 (which isn't a sure thing by any stretch) and for Trotsky to not mess up too seriously before Lenin dies and leaves him as heir apparent.

Of course, a longer-lived Lenin brings its own changes with it.

fasquardon
 
If Stalin was a ten on the wankeq scale, then Trotsky was about a 7.5. He was not a lot better as others have pointed out. Theses going to be lots of misery in the USSR under him also .
 
Read Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky if you want to know what Trotsky was really like in the revolutionary period. His criticism of the Paris Commune was that it did not crack down on dissidents enough, and he advocated forced labor. This sort of viewpoint is not conducive to democracy.
Trotsky advocated a militarisation of labour within the context of the Civil War. It's not unusual for nations at war to operate on a no-strike policy and to highly plan and organise the economy of a nation to the detriment of civil liberties, as we understand them, during a period of war, for example the total war of Britain during WW2 in gearing the national economy towards a focus of overcoming the enemy and supplying the armed forces. In the Soviet Union, the anarcho-syndicalist group operating in Petrograd and Moscow, Golos Truda, advocated and agreed with the militarisation of labour in order to support the Red Army and overcome the counter-revolution.

Historically, Trotsky's criticisms of the Paris Commune only echo the criticisms of Marx and Engels who famously pointed out that every revolution is an armed force acting in an authoritarian manner to suppress counter-revolution. To claim that Terrorism and Communism is the sum of Trotsky's ideas instead of a defence of the strategy of the Civil War, in accordance to the conditions they were facing in Russia, against a Kautsky who was siding with the Noskes of the world who were massacring the Luxemburgs, is ultimately limited and doesn't really explore the interpenetration of opposing movements and contexts.

Edit: Actually, just to clarify, the militarisation of labour was an aspect of Trotsky's imagining of a transition from capitalism to socialism and in a sense Trotsky, and the Bolsheviks and their supporters, were 'forcing' people to work in a fashion they considered no different to the way workers are 'forced' to sell their labour on the market to a capitalist but the difference being that the workers would be participating in a transition to socialism and the defence of the revolution from counter-revolution and Trotsky specifically points out that if the workers as a whole didn't support the necessity for the planned militarised labour then it would fall apart at its base. It was a necessary step to overcome the conditions they faced due to the Civil War and the general collapse of the economy. "The question is not what is going to happen in twenty or thirty years’ time – at that date, of course, things will be much better – but of how today to struggle out of our ruins, how immediately to distribute labor-power, how today to raise the productivity of labor." [...] "None the less, we have to rebuild our economic life today, without waiting, under circumstances of a very painful heritage from bourgeois society and a yet unfinished civil war." etc Maybe I'm being too easy on him but I can't escape the understanding of the context within which these things were advocated.
 
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yourworstnightmare

Banned
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Well first of all the NEP would be probably be cancelled much faster if the Left Opposition are in charge, since that was one of their biggest gripes.

Second, Trotsky was much less of a Realpolitician than Stalin. Stalin adopted the "Communism in One State" approach to foreign policy, i.e. allowing the USSR to somewhat normalize diplomatic relations with the World, and wait for a good opportunity to present itself for the spread of the revolution. Trotsky critisized him heavily for that, he was much more in the World Revolution camp.

All in all, in the 20s and 30s Trotsky might be even more of a boogieman in the rest of Europe than Stalin was, which of course causes butterflies.
 
There is the whole "export the revolution" thing as well. Provided he still came to power, you might see the West actively championing Hitler as a beacon of light against "godless communism" ...which sounds horrifying when said aloud. :eek:
 
There is the whole "export the revolution" thing as well. Provided he still came to power, you might see the West actively championing Hitler as a beacon of light against "godless communism" ...which sounds horrifying when said aloud. :eek:

Pretty much all Bolshevik party thinkers were in favour of exporting the revolution until Stalin came up with Socialism in One Country. I rather suspect that if Stalin lost the power struggle, whoever won would pinch Socialism in One Country - at least as far as Europe goes. By the end of the 20s, when the post-Lenin power struggle was settling down, the international situation was starting to look rather unfavorable for a Soviet Union that continued putting emphasis on supporting foreign revolution.

However, what one might see under Trotsky is export of revolution to Asian countries - Iran, Afghanistan and China particularly.

Also, for Trotsky and the other "internationalist" Bolsheviks, it wasn't just about revolution - the internationalists ALSO emphasized the need for more trade with the non-socialist world.

A Soviet Union that doesn't clamp down on travel and foreign trade could advance faster than Stalin's Soviet Union (Stalin's restrictions on the travel of scientists in particular hurt Soviet science badly - before Stalin clamped down, the Soviets looked to be fostering a real flowering of Russian science).

fasquardon
 
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