Vienna, winter of 1913

In the winter of 1913, Leon Trotsky was in Vienna visiting his friend the Menshevik Matvei Skobelev. Suddenly, the door opened, and Stalin (who was in Vienna to gather materials for his forthcoming work on the "national question") entered. Trotsky had never really met Stalin before (though they were both at the London 1907 Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, Trotsky did not recognize Stalin then--and why should he have, given the latter's obscurity as of 1907?). Skobelev explained to Trotsky that this was the Georgian Djugashvili who had just been elected to the Bolshevik Central Committee, and was starting to make a name for himself. Stalin went to the samovar, filled his empty glass with tea, and left without saying a word (though he had made a guttural growl which might have been taken for a greeting). http://books.google.com/books?id=v_1G3ddOoYsC&pg=PA173

POD: Before Stalin leaves, a robber enters, takes the exiles' meager possessions, and then shoots them all to prevent them from talking...

(This is assuming that Trotsky's story is acccurate; see https://books.google.com/books?id=cnGQl1fWE-wC&pg=PA156 for some reasons to doubt it...)
 
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Fascist or reactionary Russia instead of USSR. Germany loses WW1 faster. WW2 alliances are extremely difficult to predict, but if reactionary Russia does not make five-year plans, then Barbarossa or whatever happens instead of it could be successful.
 

Cook

Banned
Fascist or reactionary Russia instead of USSR.

Neither man was essential for the October coup to be successful, nor, despite Trotsky's ludicrously inflated opinion of himself, for the Bolsheviks to win the Civil War. Without Stalin the Soviet Union would have entered the 1930s both richer, and with more friends internationally. Militarily and industrially the country would have been stronger, and the Bolshevik party internally would have been more democratic (not still no more willing to share power with others that it was historically).
 

Stolengood

Banned
Fascist or reactionary Russia instead of USSR. Germany loses WW1 faster. WW2 alliances are extremely difficult to predict, but if reactionary Russia does not make five-year plans, then Barbarossa or whatever happens instead of it could be successful.
...you've just killed all the butterflies, dude.
 
I am wondering about the crime itself, it seems so wild wild west and not European style ;)

Stalin and Trotzky should not have much influence until AFTER the October revolution - so butterflies should be flying low until 1917-1918 -
 
I am wondering about the crime itself, it seems so wild wild west and not European style ;)

Stalin and Trotzky should not have much influence until AFTER the October revolution - so butterflies should be flying low until 1917-1918 -

Trotsky certainly had a great deal of influence in the October insurrection itself, at least so far as its *tactics* were concerned. (Lenin wanted to start it earlier, when it would arguably have been premature; he wanted to start in Moscow, where it would have been a much more bloody affair with the outcome uncertain; etc. I go into this in some detail at https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ober-who-do-you-kill-lenin-or-trotsky.396645/)
 
Fascist or reactionary Russia instead of USSR. Germany loses WW1 faster. WW2 alliances are extremely difficult to predict, but if reactionary Russia does not make five-year plans, then Barbarossa or whatever happens instead of it could be successful.
That Russia would not have industrialised without Stalin is basically a line pedalled by Stalinist apologists. Russia was actually the most rapidly industrialising country in the world c.1890-1914 and that was under Tsar Nicky! Indeed, his fall (like the Shah of Iran's) was probably more through the dislocations and tensions caused by his massive modernisation than his being an absolutist reactionary (absolutist sure, reactionary not so much). One of the reasons why WWI started was that Germany felt that it was only up to 1916 that they could have a war with Russia while there was still a window of possibility of them winning. They did overrate Russia's military reforms but the basic reasoning was sound (as they discovered in 1945 OTL).
Denekin, Wrangel, Boldyrev, Kappel, Kornilov, Kolchak, Alexiev, Yudenich et al were all pro military and communications/logistics modernisation so, even in a worst case scenario of a military dictatorship, industrialisation would continue.
Now Russia was hurt and exhausted by WWI and there was a lot of infrastructure damage in the West-no argument from me on that. But as far as the industrial economy was concerned (mainly in Petrograd, Kiev, Moscow and Tsarityn at that point), it took the Civil War and War Communism to really do damage. No Civil War and no War Communism, some territorial gains at Turkey's expense and a share in German reparations? Along with no murder or mass migration of scientists, industrialists, managers and engineers (including Zworykin, Seversky and Sikorsky) Russia would have been roughly where she was in 1933 ten years earlier (so even with a slower rate of industrialisation than under Stalin they would still outstrip him due to their ten or fifteen years head start). Not to mention being more integrated in the world economy from 1917 onwards (no defaulted debts or lack of diplomatic recognition so they could buy in as well as build). By 1938/39 Russia would be at least as much, and probably more, industrialised (OK maybe with more of the industry this side of the Urals) than OTL. They would also have a more modern and competently led army and airforce with no purges (and likely some post war experience in Finland, Poland, the Baltics, Middle East and China to keep them sharp too) and very unlikely that Germany would have the inclination to take them on. Unlikely to be a lot of German industrialists bankrolling a Hitler hostile to their greatest trading partner in 1932/33 either.
 
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