White Victory in Russia; Horrible?

When I was younger I always had the idea a victory for White Russian forces would restore the tsar or liberal democracy and life would go on as usual.

Realistically speaking though, unless you were the owner some mine in Siberia, it would be a shitty outcome.

Liberal elements did indeed exist in the white coalition - but as always, the people with guns have the real power.

Rabid anti semites like Denikin were just the tip of the ice berg - some white army commanders had megalomania rivaling modern day takfiri groups, such as backward warlords like Avalov, Semyonov, and of course, Ungern Von Sternberg. Granted that was only a portion, but a well armed portion, and the more “moderate” elements weren’t savory either.

Assuming a white victory happens, chances are warlord fiefdoms form, with no real central power, kerensky merely being basically mayor of Moscow.

Jews would probably face rapid persecution, but the very reactionary white army would next probably target intellectuals, the middle class and the industrial class.

It’s next to impossible Russia regaining Ukraine or even Belarus, likely both being influenced by Germany and Poland.

Siberia will be essentially open for Japanese expansion.

Kaiserreich sort of downplays just how bad a White Russian victory would be in all honesty. There wouldn’t be any chance for Russia to get a Savinkov and industrialize, to day the least.

Possibly a Chiang Kai Shek style figure could unify Russia, but that’s a big maybe.
 
Well, for starters, 50-60 million people won't die under Stalin.
I suppose that's a good thing.


10 M, per Timothy Snyder’s count. Let’s be realistic here—if Stalin really killed 1/3 of the USSR’s entire population, there wouldn’t have been enough people to carry guns against the Germans later.

And what Stalin did to the Ukrainians, a White regime would do to Jews and Poles. Especially after the Red movement is crushed, since both of those groups had strong representation in the leftist groups in Muscovy.
 
Total victory for the White Russians would not be a paradise, but they would have to be trying before they were as bad as the Reds.

Regarding the Poles? Stalin wasn't a friend to Poland either, so they're screwed either way.

I suppose it largely depends on how absolute their victory was. If they absolutely crush everybody else and install themselves without serious opposition, things could get bad quickly, in various ways, but the more likely outcome is that they win but are badly bleeding at the end, having had to enlist the aid of other factions to secure victory. The need to keep ideologically differing supporters happy could help moderate any extremist tendencies in the new postwar government.
 
10 M, per Timothy Snyder’s count. Let’s be realistic here—if Stalin really killed 1/3 of the USSR’s entire population, there wouldn’t have been enough people to carry guns against the Germans later.

And what Stalin did to the Ukrainians, a White regime would do to Jews and Poles. Especially after the Red movement is crushed, since both of those groups had strong representation in the leftist groups in Muscovy.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn estimated 60 million and he knew first hand the conditions in a gulag.
Other scholars say 20 million minimum with a 60 million maximum.
Source is below.
 

Falk

Banned
I'll have to agree with Polish Eagle. If you take the purported death toll plus the Soviet death toll in WWII you would get roughly 1/3 of the country being killed. That is highly unrealistic.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn estimated 60 million and he knew first hand the conditions in a gulag.
Other scholars say 20 million minimum with a 60 million maximum.
Source is below.

One thing you have to beware of is that these estimates frequently like to spice up the numbers by adding the "birth deficit". IE they also count what the population should have looked like based on old population growth charts. There were some critics of the Soviet government that would take pre-1914 population projections of the Russian Empire and use that as proof of a massive "genocide".
 
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn estimated 60 million and he knew first hand the conditions in a gulag.
Other scholars say 20 million minimum with a 60 million maximum.
Source is below.

estimated that the death toll directly attributable to Stalin’s rule amounted to some 20 million lives (on top of the estimated 20 million Soviet troops and civilians who perished in the Second World War), for a total tally of 40 million.

Attribute soldiers and civilians murdered by Germans to Stalin. Seems legit. Even the 20 M figure is obsolete, written as it was in 1989, before a systematic study of the Soviet archives could be performed. More recent studies, by Snyder, Conquest, Pipes, and others, do not exceed 15 M, and generally hover under 10 M.

Solzhenitsyn was a Russian chauvinist who engaged in the blatantly dishonest tactic of attributing everything good about the Soviet Union to Christian Slavs and everything bad to Jewish Bolsheviks. More importantly, he did his work before the fall of the USSR and the opening of actual state archives. Everything written since about 2000 has gone for a lower figure.
 
It depends a lot on who comes to the top and how, but I'd say that Whites would be bad as Reds.
After facing a civil war whoever wins always passes through a period of "consolidation" which means dealing with everyone that might even remotely be considered a possible menace.
When the end result is a dictatorship this is even more true.
 
Also, the Whites (depending on the general) wouldn't be as focused on modernization and industrialization as Stalin was. Most of them were hardcore reactionaries, and wanted a return to (what they considered) Russia's golden years. They wouldn't be as keen on building up the industrial base to catch up with the West.

Granted, without Communism, Hitler's rise to power wouldn't be as certain, and he wouldn't have the extra propaganda push of fighting "filthy communists". But if he still had his Lebensraum dream, then Russia is going to be in a lot more trouble than it was IOTL.
 
Solzhenitsyn was a Russian chauvinist who engaged in the blatantly dishonest tactic of attributing everything good about the Soviet Union to Christian Slavs and everything bad to Jewish Bolsheviks. More importantly, he did his work before the fall of the USSR and the opening of actual state archives. Everything written since about 2000 has gone for a lower figure.

Since he blamed a lot on Stalin and Stalin wasn't Jewish, and in fact hated Jews, this is a massive overstatement. Nor were most Communists in the
Stalinist era Jewish, Stalin purged most of them out.
 
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Attribute soldiers and civilians murdered by Germans to Stalin. Seems legit. Even the 20 M figure is obsolete, written as it was in 1989, before a systematic study of the Soviet archives could be performed. More recent studies, by Snyder, Conquest, Pipes, and others, do not exceed 15 M, and generally hover under 10 M.

Solzhenitsyn was a Russian chauvinist who engaged in the blatantly dishonest tactic of attributing everything good about the Soviet Union to Christian Slavs and everything bad to Jewish Bolsheviks. More importantly, he did his work before the fall of the USSR and the opening of actual state archives. Everything written since about 2000 has gone for a lower figure.
There are the people who died in famines engineered by Stalin, repatriated Soviets who were executed, etc.
If's not like they could tallied how many died in those events.
And Stalin was the same guy who said that one death is tragedy and a million is a statistic.

Soldiers and civilians murdered by Germans can indirectly be attributed to Stalin.
The Great Purge is what weakened the USSR to the point that OP Barbarossa became so successful for the Germans.
And Hitler himself said that the Great Purge was one of the reasons that OP Barbarossa was even considered.
No Great Purge means that even if the Nazis launched OP Barbarossa it wouldn't have ended up as it did OTL.

And are the Soviet archives really a reliable source?
I doubt recording how many they people they killed was at the top of their to-do list.
 
Since he blamed a lot on Stalin and Stalin wasn't Jewish, and in fact hated Jews, this is a massive overstatement. Nor were most Communists in the
Stalinist era Jewish, Stalin purged most of them out.
Fortunately he wasn't really successful in purging Soviet Jews.
The Politburo decided enough was enough (they didn't want to get purged) and they got rid of him in 1953.
 
Fortunately he wasn't really successful in purging Soviet Jews.
The Politburo decided enough was enough (they didn't want to get purged) and they got rid of him in 1953.

From top party positions they largely were. There were far fewer Jews in the Politburo and Central Committee etc. in the Stalinist era than in the Leninist.
 
From top party positions they largely were. There were far fewer Jews in the Politburo and Central Committee etc. in the Stalinist era than in the Leninist.
That was because of the Great Purge, I believe.
And I assume that Stalin's Jewish purge was the post WW2 one that he was never able to execute fully.
Which is a positive for lots of people in the USSR at the time.
 
And are the Soviet archives really a reliable source?
I doubt recording how many they people they killed was at the top of their to-do list.

Considering how many true believing Communists there were still left it would be surprising if there weren't millions of documents deliberately destroyed as well.
 
That was because of the Great Purge, I believe.
And I assume that Stalin's Jewish purge was the post WW2 one that he was never able to execute fully.
Which is a positive for lots of people in the USSR at the time.

I was referring to the Great Purge. If you don't think he was targeting Jews even then you don't know him.
 
I was referring to the Great Purge. If you don't think he was targeting Jews even then you don't know him.
I knew he targeted Jews but I thought that was the purpose of the 2nd purge.
To me, the Great Purge seemed to be more of a consolidation of power thing, similar to the Night of Long Knives.
 
I knew he targeted Jews but I thought that was the purpose of the 2nd purge.
To me, the Great Purge seemed to be more of a consolidation of power thing, similar to the Night of Long Knives.
It was, but he was also killing two birds with one stone IMO. He might as well get rid of the Jews along with his other supposed enemies, right? It wasn't THE purpose but it played a significant part IMO.
 
Could beat the nazis? dunno, too many butterflies... maybe socialism is not discredited thanks fucking SU so is a net gain
 
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