USSR under Trotsky.

In all likelihood he'd rightly see Germany and Spain as the weakest regimes in Europe, and take a very active role in fermenting revolution in those countries. Which given how he's also probably the Communist leader most aware of the political necessities of planning a revolution alive, he probably will succeed in. Not least because the Soviet Union under him, even if it's not rich, will certainly be a more open society which holds a better looking alternative system than OTL.



Trotsky was not an idiot, which is something I will stress all the time in talking about him. He knew what the military realities of Europe were and knew the Soviets could not win in a straight up war against everyone. Permanent revolution in Trotsky's policy means a use of the Commintern not just as a means to prop up Soviet Foreign policy, but as a means of exporting revolutionary practices, experience, and other generalized support for revolution as a primary purpose of Soviet Foreign policy, under the understanding that it was impossible for them to build a sustainable Socialism in One Country. Once that happens though everything is changed, because it essentially alters the equation.

I was more referring to Trotsky blatantly fomenting revolution in European countries rather than Stalin's Socialism in One Country approach. If in OTL a lot of European countries trusted Hitler more than Stalin until the Sudetenland Crisis than how would they react when the USSR would be more active in the whole "Global Revolution" in the interwar period than they were in OTL? Obviously, they wouldn't invade immediately, but if Trotsky doesn't industrialize as much as Stalin does and the West takes full advantage of the dissent in the USSR like Hitler didn't in OTL, it may be possible to topple the regime. Sure, the capitalist powers didn't defeat the Reds while fighting alongside with the Whites in the Russian Civil War, but they were also drained of manpower and trying to balance dissent in their own countries. If Trotsky tries to start a revolution in say, Germany, said powers might start having nightmares of at least a USSR stretching from the Bering to Gibraltar. And that could ratchet up the paranoia of "We're next if we don't do something" to the point where military action might be considered a possibility. All that being said, I'm sure I'm simplifying Trotsky's ideology so feel free to correct me where I'm wrong.

Just my two cents.
 
I agree with Leszek Kolakowski,*Main Currents of Marxism*, "It is possible that if Trotsky had been in charge of Soviet foreign policy and the Comintern in the 1920s he would have taken more interest than Stalin did in organizing Communist risings abroad, but there is no reason to think his efforts would have had any success. Naturally he used every defeat of Communists in the world to accuse Stalin of neglecting the revolutionary cause. But it is not at all clear what Stalin could have done if he had been actuated by the internationalist zeal which Trotsky accused him of lacking. Russia had no no means of ensuring a German Communist victory in 1923 or a Chinese one in 1926. Trotsky's later charge that the Comintern failed to exploit revolutionary opportunities because of Stalin's doctrine of socialism in one country is completely devoid of substance." https://books.google.com/books?id=qUCxpznbkaoC&pg=PA807
 
I think the Comintern of Lenin was completely gutted and pulled apart by Stalin and filled with ineffective, inexperienced yesmen. Just to quote Serge on the subject:

The Third International of the early days, for which men fought and many died, which filled the prisons with martyrs, was in reality a great moral and political force, not only because following the war the workers' revolution was on the ascendant in Europe and was very nearly victorious in several countries, but because it brought together a multitude of passionate, sincere, devoted minds determined to live and die for communism. The mountebanks and petty adventurers hardly counted in the ensemble. Where are all the men today?

Lazzari, Serrati, Loriot are dead. Paul Levi, expelled from the Party, committed suicide during an attack of delirium. Lefevre, Lepetit, Vergeat are dead. Terracini has bee in prison in Italy for many years. Roy, expelled from the Party, is in prison in India. Balabanoff, expelled, is an active socialist. Bordiga, expelled, enjoys a strictly limited liberty in Italy. Faithful to their convictions, Rosmer, Sourvarine (and with them Pierre Monatte and Jacques Mesnil, French communists of the earliest days), were expelled long ago. Vuyo Vuyovich is in prison in Russia at Verkhne-Uralsk. All the Russians for that matter... Joaquin Maurin, founder of the POUM in Spain, expelled and slandered by the official CP, was shot by Spanish Fascists; expelled and banished from the USSR, Andres Nin, Minister of Justice in the Catalonian Generalidad, is denounced daily in the local Stalinist press as an "agent of international fascism"; Sylvia Pankhurst and Newbold have been expelled; gone also is the indefatigable Sneevliet....

The CI has squandered its forces, disdained its great talents, dispersed, hunted, persecuted the men of good will who came from the ends of the earth to offer their services....​

Now I'm not saying that Comintern under Trotsky would have been the perfect organ for revolution. Indeed, half the names mentioned died in unhappy accidents and a number were imprisoned by the forces of reaction after failing to lead successful revolutions in their home countries (such as Bordiga), but would Trotsky have expelled the likes of Andres Nin, thus dividing the communist forces in Spain? Would Trotsky have raised up the likes of Bela Kun (mostly proven incompetent and disliked by Lenin), Kuusinen (who admitted to his own inability to take the lead in the failures of Finland), Kolarov and Dimitrov (who lead the Bulgarian workers movement to failure three times) and Heinz Neumann (who advocated working with Chiang Kai-shek right before he massacred the Shangai commune and butchered tens of thousands of revolutionary workers)?

Internally would he have appointed the likes of Zaslavsky to Pravda, a man who had once printed stories of Lenin being a German spy, or Maisky who had once been a part of the White government of Samara to the diplomatic core in London? Would he have expelled dedicated revolutionaries like Radek, Preobrazhensky, Ivan Smirnov, Muralov, Smilga and others?

Frankly, I can't see it. The entire character of the leadership of the USSR would be radically different under Trotsky as would the effectiveness of the foreign activity of Comintern... under virtually anyone besides Stalin, actually. Sycophants and self-serving bureaucrats would have been amongst Trotsky's most hated enemies - he was denouncing the bureaucratisation of the USSR as early as 1920.
 
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