White Victory in Russia; Horrible?

I doubt that such a statement would be treated as leniently as Stalinist appologetia.
More leniently amongst scholars, “responsibility to protect” is considered an unshameful international relations discourse. This is dependent upon considering ir to be scholarly.
 

sonofrome

Banned
I really, really, really doubt that the initial goal of the Soviet Union- despite what it developed into- was dictatorship. That's like saying the American revolution's aim was invading Iraq for oil.
Of course the aims of the majority of those involved in the initial revolution were in good spirit; but unfortunately it was never going to end a democratic socialist paradise. The nature of communism is to get as many people who feel they've been opressed(peasant workers, ethnic minorities) on the side of the revolution as possible and then to use all powers at hand to crush the original societal structures, whether they be kulaks, bourgeoisie etc. This continues until every threat to government has been liquidated, then there is no longer any reason to keep those formally oppressed minorities on your side once total societal control has been achieved. Then someone like Stalin comes along and total dictatorship for the sake of dictatorship is established after many millions of deaths. This has been what socialist revolutions have led to every time they've happened. It even bears stiking similarity to the fall of the roman republic and the reign of terror in France, it never went in any other direction OTHER than totalitarianism.

Lets hope people are never stupid enough to do it all over again.
 

Falk

Banned
The Russian revolution was perhaps the most tragic event in recent history, just because of what it led to. Also saw this video from the channel that actually led me to this site. I agree with it, other than WW2 happening as it did but that has already been discussed enough as it is.

Eh, using that logic one can argue that the unification of the German states in the 19th century was one of the most tragic events since it led to the bizzaro European alliance system that led to WWI that led to the Russian revolution.
 

sonofrome

Banned
This site has more communists than I thought, yikes. The level of support for people like Lenin and the idea that decolonization is more important than tens of millions not dying on here is staggering. (The person I asked didn't deny it😬)

Is it because of high college student demographic or does alternate history just attract people who hate the way the world is. Tbh I don't know.

Anyway this discussion is getting too close to what I think Chat is for and opinions aren't being changed so I'm gonna leave for now.
 
This site has more communists than I thought, yikes. The level of support for people like Lenin and the idea that decolonization is more important than tens of millions not dying on here is staggering. (The person I asked didn't deny it😬)

Nobody's supporting Communism. What's been denied here is that a White victory would be in any way better for the people of Russia. My own opinion is basically: whoever won in the RCW? The ordinary Russian people would get screwed, especially ethnic minorities.
 

Sorry to say, but no it's not. The US and China propped up the Khmer Rouge as a way of hurting the Soviet-backed Vietnamese regime and the post-KR regime they propped up in Cambodia, as links provided by other posters have shown. Which...the People's Republic of Kampuchea did some pretty appalling things according to Amnesty International, no denying that, but at least they didn't shoot people because they wore glasses and must thus be intellectuals, which the KR did...

Also worth nothing the US cosying up to China under Mao, when Mao was far more hardline Communist than anyone in Moscow at the time (and had caused deaths at least on a par with anything the USSR had).

TL;DR: For all the Red Scares and warnings against Communism, during the Cold War it was all about containing the Soviet Union specifically. Anyone could be aligned with in that cause...even non-Soviet Communists.
 
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See my previous posts from the Fascist Russia discussion thread three years back:
That scenario avoids the Bolshevik Revolution, Civil War and War Communism so Russian industrial development will never have dropped significantly below 1914/1929 levels OTL. That means that (very roughly speaking, obviously 1920s white goods, cars and lorries, aircraft are more primitive than 1930s, likewise tractors) by 1923 the Russian Republic should have experienced at least NEP level growth rates and be at approximately the OTL 1935 level. By 1929, roughly at the 1941 level OTL. As I explained above, a Russia engaged in the world economy and needing capital to modernise/industrialise will increase the size of the world economy by 15-20% (and probably increase centralising pressures in China too -less of a Warlord era -even a relatively weak Russian Republic is a more threatening neighbour than one wracked with civil war and recovery from same as OTL 1917-29) thus maybe even 25%, and will reduce the asset bubbles of too much capital chasing returns of OTL 1929. So the alt Great Depression won't hit until around 1934 or 1935. By which point Hoover would be midway through his second term and the NSDAP would have collapsed into bankruptcy. And Russia's economy would be at around (allowing for WWII devastation) 1953 levels OTL. And the American Dust Bowl probably not quite so bad if Russia/independent Ukraine is still exporting grain (no Holodomor) and more buffalo grass retained for stockraising rather than ploughed up. If Russia goes Fascist at that point unquestionably stronger than OTL Stalinist Russia. But would it? Russians have historically shown great capacity to endure hardship And Russian Republic now nearly twenty years old and has been delivering relatively steady economic growth 1917-35. There could have been corruption scandals of course. And popular resentment at Russia not achieving all her war aims.
You need to bear in mind that Imperial Russia had introduced a pretty decent education system (based on Denmark's if memory serves) and, in the under 30 age group, literacy levels were (more or less) identical to those in Britain or Germany. 1914 was almost 50 years post the emancipation of the serfs and Tsarist Russia was well aware that in needed bureaucrats, engineers, doctors etc. Remember that virtually all of Stalin's key scientists, engineers and aircraft designers received their education during the reign of Tsar Nicholas. Tsarist Russia's literacy levels were already broadly comparable to Germany never mind Soviet Russia. Yes, if you were a Kola Peninsula Lapp or a Yakut in Eastern Siberia you might have slipped through the educational net, but there would have been in absolute terms more educated Russians than educated Germans at any time in the twentieth century. And Russian industrial capacity was fast catching up with Imperial Germany by 1914, the Germans in 1914 were looking at a declining window of opportunity to fight a winnable war with Russia (even if they exaggerated the timescale of Russian modernisation and improvements to their military capacity they were broadly right that Russia would eventually outmatch Germany). Stalin did achieve some remarkable results in respect of industrialisation, it wouldn't be fair not to acknowledge that but Western supplies also played a big part in WW2 (other threads have discussed this in exhaustive detail) and the Cold War USSR was never as strong as the West thought it was
 

ferdi254

Banned
Yep and who made Mao the ruler of China?

And the denial that a non Stalin Russia would have been worse is based on..... yes absolutely nothing. 10 million people getting killed by a paranoid dictator but it could have been worse needs a lot of well founded reasoning. I have not seen any here? Did I miss something?
 
In the contest if megadeaths between Stalin and Hitler, Mao said 'hold my beer'
His toll dwarfs the other two, combined.

I thought so, but decided to err on the side of caution.

Yep and who made Mao the ruler of China?

Well...he managed to win a Civil War against a fairly feckless regime that might have been able to hold onto power if they'd been a bit more intelligent...

And the denial that a non Stalin Russia would have been worse is based on..... yes absolutely nothing. 10 million people getting killed by a paranoid dictator but it could have been worse needs a lot of well founded reasoning. I have not seen any here? Did I miss something?

It's based on the fact that a lot of the stuff that the Soviets were infamous for - gulags, secret police, victimisation of minorities - had all been done by the Tsarist regime before. Not with the same death toll, but the infrastructure and ideas of oppression were already there. And a White regime coming back to power would have wanted to make damn sure nobody ever rose up again, so it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that there'd have been a death toll of millions.

As I've said before: one can say that without defending the Soviets. As I've also said before: ordinary Russians were the losers no matter who won. The only thing that could have saved them is if actual democracy had been installed by the victor, but either side bringing genuine democracy to Russia would require ASB intervention.
 
choose to believe the historians with lower body count estimates and aggressively assert their opinion to the point of fanaticism just so they can say "it was actually 5 million less than". But "muh archives"!!! They are irrelevant, millions of people died, and what is getting people to believe less died going to achieve?

It's not about achieving for some ideological battle, it's about delving into the period from a proper historiographical vantage point and accounting for facts from inside the regime and the country - here, you're straight up admitting you don't care about proper historical scholarship and are content with your ideological viewpoint...

We all agree it was bad (well.. most of us anyway), straight up saying you don't care whether it was 15 million or 60 million because it's b-b-BAD is a terrible standpoint to hold if you're actually interested in discussing history. To me, it sounds like you're far more interested in just holding blank ideological standpoints for the sake of it.

(and if you seriously think the argument about the deaths boils down to "high estimate historians" and "low estimate historians"..... please read scholarship of Soviet history written past 1991.)
 
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ferdi254

Banned
Even if one assumes the death rates of a white Russia would be 10 times of those of the Tsars one would still be a couple million short of Stalin.

And Mao without Stalin?
 

sonofrome

Banned
It's not about achieving for some ideological battle, it's about delving into the period from a proper historiographical vantage point and accounting for facts from inside the regime and the country - here, you're straight up admitting you don't care about proper historical scholarship and are content with your ideological viewpoint...

We all agree it was bad (well.. most of us anyway), straight up saying you don't care whether it was 15 million or 60 million because it's b-b-BAD is a terrible standpoint to hold if you're actually interested in discussing history. To me, it sounds like you're far more interested in just holding blank ideological standpoints for the sake of it.

(and if you seriously think the argument about the deaths boils down to "high estimate historians" and "low estimate historians"..... please read scholarship of Soviet history written past 1991.)
I don't see how I'm going to convince a communist that a communist desperately trying to lower perceived death tolls of a communist regime (avoiding other arguments relative to discussion) is literally the definition of apologia.

No one has yet addressed the fact that I showed WWII wouldn't happen ITTL and therefore its a better timeline(other than some guy who said as long as decolonization happened 10 years earlier its worth it). Read ShortsBelfast's quotes yourself, imperial Russia isn't some DRC-type illiterate capitalist slave-peasant ignorant reactionary shithole like YOUR communist persuasion makes you believe. Any more talk about death-tolls now is just avoiding these points. Fine I'll let you have your way and admit it was just 9 or 10 million people because of demographics or whatnot, you happy?
 
I don't see how I'm going to convince a communist that a communist desperately trying to lower perceived death tolls of a communist regime (avoiding other arguments relative to discussion) is literally the definition of apologia.

No one has yet addressed the fact that I showed WWII wouldn't happen ITTL and therefore its a better timeline(other than some guy who said as long as decolonization happened 10 years earlier its worth it). Read ShortsBelfast's quotes yourself, imperial Russia isn't some DRC-type illiterate capitalist slave-peasant ignorant reactionary shithole like YOUR communist persuasion makes you believe. Any more talk about death-tolls now is just avoiding these points. Fine I'll let you have your way and admit it was just 9 or 10 million people because of demographics or whatnot, you happy?

I'm not quite sure why you're treating me like I'm a Stalinist or something... does anything in my posting here indicate this? All I'm doing here is combatting some of the sort of ridiculous pop-culture notions about the Soviet Union floating around that recent scholarship has proven to be blatantly false or at least misconceived - you can correct skewed ideas about a regime without being "an apologist" or communist or whatever man: if it's wrong it's wrong.

None of the scholars I've cited are self identifying communists to my knowledge either - there are certainly bullshit politically driven "books" about Stalinist Russia like those by the infamous Grover Furr, but what I am referring to is peer reviewed and published professors. No matter how desperately you try to paint any revisionist histories since the Cold War as just communists trying to cover, that isn't based in reality - like at all.

No one has yet addressed the fact that I showed WWII wouldn't happen ITTL and therefore its a better timeline(other than some guy who said as long as decolonization happened 10 years earlier its worth it).

I'm pretty sure this was thoroughly discussed pages ago - it wouldn't happen as ITTL but you didn't really show that it couldn't happen, it could easily happen depending on the political route of nations outside of Russia and geopolitics. All you did was outline one possible route..
 
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I thought so, but decided to err on the side of caution.



Well...he managed to win a Civil War against a fairly feckless regime that might have been able to hold onto power if they'd been a bit more intelligent...



It's based on the fact that a lot of the stuff that the Soviets were infamous for - gulags, secret police, victimisation of minorities - had all been done by the Tsarist regime before. Not with the same death toll, but the infrastructure and ideas of oppression were already there. And a White regime coming back to power would have wanted to make damn sure nobody ever rose up again, so it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that there'd have been a death toll of millions.

As I've said before: one can say that without defending the Soviets. As I've also said before: ordinary Russians were the losers no matter who won. The only thing that could have saved them is if actual democracy had been installed by the victor, but either side bringing genuine democracy to Russia would require ASB intervention.
Stalin prevented KMT troops from entering Manchuria and then handed the whole place to the ChiComs

and all the Japanese equipment that the Soviet seized were promptly handed to the ChiComs as well

If that's not assistance, then what is assistance?
 

ferdi254

Banned
Mao the guy in China with the great leap forward that guy who was able to surpass Stalin in domestic killings.
 

sonofrome

Banned
I'm not quite sure why you're treating me like I'm a Stalinist or something... does anything in my posting here indicate this? All I'm doing here is combatting some of the sort of ridiculous pop-culture notions about the Soviet Union floating around that recent scholarship has proven to be blatantly false or at least misconceived - you can correct skewed ideas about a regime without being "an apologist" or communist or whatever man: if it's wrong it's wrong.

None of the scholars I've cited are self identifying communists to my knowledge either - there are certainly bullshit politically driven "books" about Stalinist Russia like those by the infamous Grover Furr, but what I am referring to is peer reviewed and published professors. No matter how desperately you try to paint any revisionist histories since the Cold War as just communists trying to cover, that isn't based in reality - like at all.



I'm pretty sure this was thoroughly discussed pages ago - it wouldn't happen as ITTL but you didn't really show that it couldn't happen, it could easily happen depending on the political route of nations outside of Russia and geopolitics. All you did was outline one possible route..
In a white victory scenario, Russia would still be allied with France, so, even going by the highly unlikely scenario that Nazi Germany still rises to power, the moment Germany declares on France or Russia they would be in a two front war immediately and would be crushed. France isn't going to surrender as easily and will have more faith having the ally in the east. Not to mention the amount of war material sent by USSR to Nazis IOTL, which would mean a Germany without soviet lent fuel.

Because of this, and I'm sure Wehrmacht Generals aren't suddenly retarded, Germany cannot start a European war; with no prospects and no crusade against Bolshevism to undertake, there would be no appetite for war. The most they can do is make war with Poland and maybe Sudetenland, but otherwise they are stuck. No WW2 in this scenario. WOW that's a lot less deaths than OTL. Maybe people can now accept that this TL is better; or is there still ideological stumbling blocks?
Read this please and tell me how in Gods name a European war could occur. I'm not accusing you of being a Stalinist. It's clear that once the death toll surpasses 3 million of so it is too much for you to defend as being for a good cause. I know your going to vehemently deny this but I really couldn't care less. You know well and good what your dreamy revolutions result in and there is no point in arguing about it. Just admit that Germany cannot start a European war without getting crushed within a year, unless France disappears or Germany gets lazer guns or something.
 
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