What if the White Army had won the civil war instead of the Red Army? What kind of Russian government would it be? Democratic or Authoritarianism? How would it go through 1920's and 1930's period? Will the Great Depression still happens and affect Russia? Will Hitler still rise to power and what side would a different Russia be and how would it react? What would happen for the rest of 20th century and modern day after WW2 in this timeline? Also Kolchak, the leader of the White Army called himself as a "Supreme Ruler".
What kind of government would Russia have if the Whites won the Civil War
- Thread starter Shadow1080
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I chose authoritarian because that's what happened in most countries bordering the USSR in the interbellum period IOTL, e.g. in Poland, the Baltic countries, Hungary, Romania, with Czechoslovakia being the only real democrancy east of the Rhine by 1933.
I'm just as interested in if any of the non Russian nation's are reasorbed into this new Russian nation's. From Uzbekistan to Finland.
The Whites would have to govern dictatorially, whether they wanted to or not. Yes, they paid lip service to a Constituent Assembly. They kept on saying that everything--the status of the monarchy, the land question, etc.--would ultimately be determined by such an Assembly. (No doubt this was largely because they knew that such questions as monarchy versus republic would divide them, so talking about the Constituent Assembly was a convenient way of putting them off until the future. As Denikin wrote in 1918, "If I raise the republican flag, I lose half my volunteers, and if I raise the monarchist flag, I lose the other half. But we have to save Russia." "For this reason, the army's slogan was not any specific form of government, but 'great Russia, one and indivisible.'" https://books.google.com/books?id=NAZm2EdxKqkC&pg=PA209)
However, whether they would really allow such an Assembly to be freely elected is doubtful. Kolchak's testimony seems to indicate the Constituent Assembly the Whites had in mind (or at least that he had in mind, but I doubt that Denikin would think differently) was not the democratic one elected in 1917 (and which was overwhelmingly dominated by self-described socialists of one sort or another, as IMO any democratically elected Constituent Assembly in Russia at the time would be):
"The general opinion...was that only a government authorized by the Constituent Assembly could be a real one; but the Constituent Assembly which we got...and which from the very beginning started in by singing the 'Internationale' under Chernov's leadership, provoked an unfriendly attitude...It was considered to have been an artificial and a partisan assembly. Such was also my opinion. I believed that even though the Bolsheviks had few worthy traits, by dispersing the Constituent Assembly they performed a service and this act should be counted to their credit." (Quoted in Orlando Figes, *A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924*, p. 588) https://webcache.googleusercontent....n/a-peoples-tragedy-russian-revolution/41.php
Any free election would give a victory to socialist parties (and the Whites hated the moderate socialists almost as much as they did the Bolsheviks) and to non-Russian parties (also largely socialist) advocating extensive autonomy if not outright independence for the groups they represented. This was against everything the Whites believed in. (On the national question, there was one exception, Kornilov, who was even willing to accept a self-governing Ukraine, https://books.google.com/books?id=irWQQCXwhwwC&pg=PA42 but the other Whites considered him hopelessly naïve where politics was concerned, and anyway he died early in the civil war.)
You don't even have to look to the OTL Constituent Assembly elections to show that free elections in Russia were likely to produce results unsatisfactory to the right, even the center-right. Look at the election to the Second Duma in 1907...
However, whether they would really allow such an Assembly to be freely elected is doubtful. Kolchak's testimony seems to indicate the Constituent Assembly the Whites had in mind (or at least that he had in mind, but I doubt that Denikin would think differently) was not the democratic one elected in 1917 (and which was overwhelmingly dominated by self-described socialists of one sort or another, as IMO any democratically elected Constituent Assembly in Russia at the time would be):
"The general opinion...was that only a government authorized by the Constituent Assembly could be a real one; but the Constituent Assembly which we got...and which from the very beginning started in by singing the 'Internationale' under Chernov's leadership, provoked an unfriendly attitude...It was considered to have been an artificial and a partisan assembly. Such was also my opinion. I believed that even though the Bolsheviks had few worthy traits, by dispersing the Constituent Assembly they performed a service and this act should be counted to their credit." (Quoted in Orlando Figes, *A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924*, p. 588) https://webcache.googleusercontent....n/a-peoples-tragedy-russian-revolution/41.php
Any free election would give a victory to socialist parties (and the Whites hated the moderate socialists almost as much as they did the Bolsheviks) and to non-Russian parties (also largely socialist) advocating extensive autonomy if not outright independence for the groups they represented. This was against everything the Whites believed in. (On the national question, there was one exception, Kornilov, who was even willing to accept a self-governing Ukraine, https://books.google.com/books?id=irWQQCXwhwwC&pg=PA42 but the other Whites considered him hopelessly naïve where politics was concerned, and anyway he died early in the civil war.)
You don't even have to look to the OTL Constituent Assembly elections to show that free elections in Russia were likely to produce results unsatisfactory to the right, even the center-right. Look at the election to the Second Duma in 1907...
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Would the government be an evil dictatorship like Germany's or Italy's or less evil like Poland? Would Hitler still rise to power and be against Russia?
Deleted member 1487
Probably like a more brutal version of Czardom given the likely purges. Probably significantly worse than Latin American style dictatorships, but less genocidal than Nazism. Though that depends on where they fall on their views on Jews.
Deleted member 1487
Probably more like a lot of uncomfortable parallels with Nazi Germany.
Possibly similar to Pinochet's Chile, minus the support of the US.
Authoritarian all the way. Stalin might even have had the chutzpah to choose the winning side and take over right on schedule (okay, that's a stretch). This would be slightly less of a stretch IMO, in a world where the White Movement won. As I mentioned here, I had no idea Bob Novak was a conservative pundit as of 1-18-04.
FillyofDelphi
Banned
Most of those Generals would need the benefit for foreign backing to make a reasonable showing long-term against those who lacked forgien backing though, and in the immediate post-War world the only source you have is the former Entente (Mostly Britain, France, and Japan; America is going back into Isolationist mode and woulden't want to be involved long-term in the building of a Russian state). If you can get all three of those powers to co-ordinate their policies and be willing to supply modern weapons/advisors to their favored factions (Though I imagine an Anglo-Nipponese split would start forming over Japan wanting a SOI in the Far East exclusively, personally, and you could see other splits over the number and borders of successor/splinter states which would be allowed/formed between all the powers), Warlords who wanted to go it alone/impose themselves against the international will would slowly get squeezed out under the weight of superior resources. This would be one way to avoid a warlord era.
However, one IS a very real possability, and Russia by default has so much internal pressure that its surface cracking and splintering into said warlord states would be the default if they're not forced together by outside forces and attention until it can be stabilized and domestic tensions cooled. Are Britain, France, and Japan willing to put aside their individual differences and ambitions and dedicate the resources nessicery to avoid the collective problem of a giant blob of chaos stewing in and sending bursts of instability throughout the centeral Eurasian landmass?
samcster94
Banned
This "Slavic Fascist" Russia needs a leader. Who would it be??? I can't see them go back to monarchy though.
More to the point, Russia had zero tradition of anything remotely approaching democracy.
Even a hardline integrist regime would have to work hard to replicate the body count and sheer paranoia that Stalin managed.
I also find White Russia falling to warlordism, like China, plausible. Imagine -- A very large portion of the Asian landmass under the control of multiple warlord cliques not answering to their supposed central governments...
FillyofDelphi
Banned
If you can keep the instability in China going on long enough, and waffle enough in Russia that the entire situation breaks down into an ungovernable mess, its far more likely to stick: the anarchy and violence hitting a critical self-sustaining mass where no warlord would ever be able to get enough power to run the risk of subduing one neighbor for risk of one of the others taking advantage of the opening, while the prospect of outside intervention is stiffled both due to the fact that any intervention would require a long-term, substantial dedication of military resources (even more than their supposed client) so that it woulden't fly domestically in the long term, and the internal diplomacy being far too complex for them to grasp from the outside. Sure, nations like Poland and Japan would nibble around the edges and establish corridors of friendly nations (Warsaw's Prometheus plan, I imagine, would find traction) but no Lenin or Chaing-Kai would be able to rebuild their shattered nations for decades. It'd be like the Sengoku Jihdi in Japan.