What do you think of the possible dictators of a communist USA?

The only halfway realistic answer is: Some obscure figure chosen by the Soviets after they win the Third World War. Not very plausible, but all other scenarios for a Communist USA are much more implausible.
 
After the fall of communism in the late 1980s'-early 1990s', Shulman tried to bring Hoxhoaism to the United States, and kept working at his mission of communist activism until his death in 1999.

Say what you will about his political views, but from what I have read about this guy, Shulman is most certainly not a man that lacks conviction towards his cause.

Conviction, indeed. According to that article, Shulman was still supporting Hoxhaism nine years after it had collapsed in Albania, and after his death, his followers started a Hoxhaist party in 2008.
 
Anyway, I'm just gonna throw Angela Davis' name into the mix here. Seems to me she's no more implausible than any other CPUSA figure mentioned, and she did have way more street cred with the boomer generation than anyone from the supposed glory days of Depression-era Communism. These days, Bill Browder is almost certainly more famous for his scrapes with the current KGB hack running Russia, than his grandfather is for having toadied to the earlier generation of hacks.

Also, Angela Davis was allied with Herbert Marcuse, who would lend an aura of youth-friendly libidinal liberationism to any CPUSA regime. That is, until he got shot or exiled for bourgeois decadence of something.
 
Trotsky’s day out: How a visit to NYC influenced the Bolshevik revolution
Author Kenneth Ackerman explores the life of the Jewish radical in the weeks leading up to the overthrow of the Russian Provisional Government
Trotsky-In-New-York-300x480.jpg

https://www.timesofisrael.com/trots...t-to-nyc-influenced-the-bolshevik-revolution/

Maybe Trotsky stays in New York.
 
I think the biggest problem is actually building a dictatorship in the US (let alone a communist one). Stalinism was in many ways the product of its circumstances:

The civil war and the thus more authoritarian style of the Bolsheviks in party and government gave the bureaucrats an extraordinary amount of power. When, after the Civil War, many people entered the Party without ideological training, the bureaucracy was able to use them as loyal newcomers. The fact that with Lenin even Stalin's greatest critic as a result of the assassination in recent months was severely restricted and dependent on Stalin made resistance to him more difficult.

Then Stalin had the opportunity to eliminate the leftist opposition: with the help of the pro-NEP wing, he was able to explain why Russia or the Soviet Union were not yet ready for full socialism.

So, considering that the Soviet Union could never be able to give enough soldiers for a puppet government I think it's pretty hard to turn the US into a Stalinist analogue. But if you are searching for a possible "American Stalin" you will have to look for bureaucrats in the CPUSA which have the possibility to amass enough power.
 
But if you are searching for a possible "American Stalin" you will have to look for bureaucrats in the CPUSA which have the possibility to amass enough power.

What about J. Edgar Hoover? He certainly had the clout within the FBI but I don’t know if the political iron was ever hot enough for him to strike.
 
America as the dictatorship of the armed proletariat?
The proletariat through their right to bear arms rebel against the robber Barrons and Wall street fat cats and declare a People's Soviet Federal Republic of America after the banking crash in the 1930s.
Motto of the People's Soviet Federal Republic of America.

"All political power comes from the duty of the proletariat to bear Arms"

New flag has the statue of Liberty and Armed Workers along with a star for each of the states.
 
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Bro, I'm straight up not having any idea how Hoover could be convinced to become a Communist.

Well, I guess in the proposed timeline, Communism is a respectable ideology in the USA, attracting all the ambitious up-and-comers.

Problem is, in such a timeline, J. Edgar Hoover as we know him wouldn't exist.
 
Well, I guess in the proposed timeline, Communism is a respectable ideology in the USA, attracting all the ambitious up-and-comers.

Problem is, in such a timeline, J. Edgar Hoover as we know him wouldn't exist.
If we talk about "Communism" as in "Marxism-Leninism" J. Edgar Hoover would never be a Communist. He worked in the Justice Department since 1917 (before the October Revolution) and since then fought against "radical foreigners". It would take a quiet harsh turn of events to turn the leading prosecutor of the left into a leftist and a Communist.
 
Well, I guess in the proposed timeline, Communism is a respectable ideology in the USA, attracting all the ambitious up-and-comers.

Problem is, in such a timeline, J. Edgar Hoover as we know him wouldn't exist.
In the Reds! timeline J Edgar Hoover went straight from head of the FBI to head of the secret police.
 
In the Reds! timeline J Edgar Hoover went straight from head of the FBI to head of the secret police.
Reds! IMO, despite being a wonderfully written TL, just overall isn’t a great representation of a “realistic” American communist/socialist revolution. Revolutions tend to lead to authoritarian regimes that are just as bad or even worse then the regime it overthrew, Reds! just ignores historical precedent and cranks the American exceptionalism to 11.
 
Reds! IMO, despite being a wonderfully written TL, just overall isn’t a great representation of a “realistic” American communist/socialist revolution. Revolutions tend to lead to authoritarian regimes that are just as bad or even worse then the regime it overthrew, Reds! just ignores historical precedent and cranks the American exceptionalism to 11.

Revolutions turn authoritarian when they come under threat. France at the peak of the Terror was literally being attacked by almost every European Great Power and facing insurgency from within, and even then you could fill a single cemetery with all the people killed in the Terror. It'd take a lot more to fill the graves of people killed in the *millennia of feudalism that came before it*

As for the Russian Revolution, they got it even worse than France did: Russia had eight foreign great powers trying to strangle Bolshevism in the cradle. Every revolt that rose up in solidarity was crushed except for places that flat out didn't matter for Russia's position like Mongolia, and even fellow leftists broke with the Bolsheviks at critical moments. If you still cling to power despite all that but are basically completely alone in the world... is it really that surprising the USSR turned out like it did?

Even the American Revolution cracked down hard on deserters, and yet you'll never hear handwringing about how authoritarian the founding fathers were.

In comparison the revolution in Reds! is much less severe: no significant foreign powers intervening, the wars over in a few months and it's a very decisive victory rather than a slow bloodbath. Even then the TL authors have made it clear up until shortly after WW2 it's debatable exactly how democratic the UASR is and it's not supposed to be an ideal polity by any means.

The whole point of AH is that things do not have to turn out like they did OTL. Why then is there such resistance to the fact that maybe the historical "victory" of liberalism over communism is less one that was inevitable because some ideologies are inherently superior to others and more a product of historical circumstances that could have been different? Cause AH types love to restore monarchies that have no reason to be restored and were very much dead in the water, but a successful socialist state? Nope, sorry too unrealistic.

(and this comes from someone who is an anarchist: our whole shtick is anti-statism, even if they fly a red banner)
 
In comparison the revolution in Reds! is much less severe: no significant foreign powers intervening, the wars over in a few months and it's a very decisive victory rather than a slow bloodbath. Even then the TL authors have made it clear up until shortly after WW2 it's debatable exactly how democratic the UASR is and it's not supposed to be an ideal polity by any means.
This is definitely one of the strengths of the Reds! timeline in that yes it unashamedly sets out to convey the possibilities of a communist America but does so in such a way that recognises that revolution is not a dinner party.
 
I can see the ceremonial premier or other such title being held by Paul Robeson, an incredibly eloquent orator, popular figure due to his artistic talents and dear friend of the Soviet Union.
 
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