Was Soviet Industrialization inevitable?

[Julian]

Plenty of other Soviet politicians of the time (Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, etc.) would have done away with him too. This is a man who was basically the closest thing to Lenin's favored successor (and had even spent time during the last years of Lenin's life acting as his voice and delivering speeches for him and such). He blew it badly IOTL, and it's really hard to see him not doing it even with different circumstances.

Great minds...

Heh, always good to reach the same conclusion desperately. It's validating!

There is however another way one could get Trotsky into power. He did have power over the red army and he might have had the capacity to pull off a coup. Some of his supporters definitely did urge him to try a coup OTL. If he gets fed up with petty party politics and starts seeing the writing on the wall, he may try to pull something.

I don't think the above is likely given what we know of trotsky, but it does seem somewhat possible.

The Red Army experienced a degree of political oversight and indoctrination that made it unlikely for it to present an organized front to launch a coup. Attempts to organize a coup by Trotsky would either result in him being denounced by the army and shot, or the plot would be discovered and those involved would be shot. A military coup was something the party feared the most, and it worked to crush any possibility of it occurring.

 

[Julia Augusta]

That just sets a destabilizing precedent in Soviet politics, and ultimately one that will destroy Trotsky himself in time, there's no guarantee that the generals will like Trotsky any more than the Party did.

Yes, it probably would not end well, but there is at least a path to trotsky leadership that way. I see really little way it could happen with the bolshevisk party politics.

 

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

Yes, it probably would not end well, but there is at least a path to trotsky leadership that way. I see really little way it could happen with the bolshevisk party politics.

The problem is the fears of Trotsky were motivated because there were fears he would use his Red Army connections to lead a coup.

Plenty of the Red Army at this time were devoted communists who believed just as fervently as the Party did in a subordinate military, so finding support even among the Army might be up for dispute.

 

[Cook]

Actually, the Russian Empire's industrialization was also driven largely by foreign involvement. Obviously on a far greater scale than that of the isolated Soviet Union, but Russia's industrialization before WWI came from influxes of foreign capital (as the Russian nobility was poor, and throwing even more taxes onto the indebted Russian peasantry was a time bomb the Tsars wisely chose to avoid) as opposed to a more self-driven model that you had seen elsewhere in Western and Central Europe during the Industrial Revolution.

Absolutely, mostly French investments; the Russian economy benefited from a lack of French investor confidence in their own economy, which was stagnated. The last decade before World War One saw annual growth in the Russian economy averaging about 7% I think.

 

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

Absolutely, mostly French investments; the Russian economy benefited from a lack of French investor confidence in their own economy, which was stagnated. The last decade before World War One saw annual growth in the Russian economy averaging about 7% I think.

Indeed, and the French government had an obvious interest in helping the Russian Empire industrialize as a means of countering the Germans.

 

[Julia Augusta]

Yeah, anyway, I would view the most probable alternative to Stalin would Bukharin, who would have probably continued the NEP. Bukharin probably could have defeated stalin. Although I personally couldn't see him keeping power.

If you are looking for someone more leftist perhaps Zinoviev and Khamanev would work.

 

[LHB]

Yeah, anyway, I would view the most probable alternative to Stalin would Bukharin, who would have probably continued the NEP. Bukharin probably could have defeated stalin. Although I personally couldn't see him keeping power.

If Bukharin is the one who ends up taking power odds are the Stalinist system of palace intrigue, internal coups, and the like won't develop. The Bolsheviks by the end of the Civil War were definitely a far cry from being democrats of any stripe but they also weren't the absolutist nightmare Stalin spent the better part of the 1930s creating. If Bukharin wins through internal party maneuvering and dumps Stalin in a position like counting caribou in the Kola Peninsula or something equally vital to the Soviet Union as opposed to disappearing and shooting him that would set a very different tone for leadership, transitions of power, and how political disputes are resolved in the USSR.

Another VERY important difference between Stalin and the rest of the Old Bolsheviks is most of the Old Bolsheviks were intelligent, well-educated men. Stalin, by contrast, was a seminary school dropout and to be honest more of a thug than a thinker. It's not surprise the Stalinist system devolved into an absolutist cult of personality when you look at the man who set it up; by contrast if you have the Old Bolsheviks who were used to debate, discussion, and argument for settling disputes over policy as opposed to purging the opposition some of the more Orwellian aspects of Stalinist Russia are highly unlikely to develop if they emerge in the first place. The Bolsheviks weren't a bunch of innocent schoolboys but a good part of their brutality and ruthlessness during the Civil War was a product of being in a literal state of siege; no Stalin (Trotsky's HIGHLY unlikely to end up in charge) means it is doubtful the USSR would become the Soviet Union of OTL.