Why didn’t the Soviet Union just annex it’s puppet states?

Why just the Baltic states and not the other Eastern European states (and Mongolia) that they effectively controlled?

Legitimacy. Not only does it look REALLLY bad if you annex half of Europe instead of making them puppets, basically guaranteeing that the Cold War starts in 1945, but you also loose a TON of seats in the UN. One vote for the warsaw pact as opposed to 14 or 15?
 
Legitimacy. Not only does it look REALLLY bad if you annex half of Europe instead of making them puppets, basically guaranteeing that the Cold War starts in 1945, but you also loose a TON of seats in the UN. One vote for the warsaw pact as opposed to 14 or 15?
it would cause more problems than it is worth you would think that bringing all the puppets of the Warsaw Pact and Mongolia and everyone else into the Soviet Union would help but in actuality would just bring more division within the country leading to a quicker collapse more territory to protect more people to feed yada yada yada
 

Don Quijote

Banned
Legitimacy. Not only does it look REALLLY bad if you annex half of Europe instead of making them puppets, basically guaranteeing that the Cold War starts in 1945, but you also loose a TON of seats in the UN. One vote for the warsaw pact as opposed to 14 or 15?
While I agree with your main point, the UN seats may not be an issue. The Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSRs were both UN members in their own right.
 
While I agree with your main point, the UN seats may not be an issue. The Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSRs were both UN members in their own right.
that was a compromise, Stalin wanted all of the SSRs to be members but had to haggle down to just those two being members alongside the USSR as a whole.

as for the whole why didn't it annex all its buffer/puppet states, the USSR wanted a buffer zone around itself as a way of avoiding another Op. Barbarossa, and annexing everyone would hinder that greatly. Not to mention it wouldn't be a good look and would delegitimize the USSR as a whole on the global stage and vindicate every fear the west/cauciously soviet-alligned states had.
 
Why just the Baltic states and not the other Eastern European states (and Mongolia) that they effectively controlled?

You asked pretty much this question several months ago. https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-union-annexes-all-of-the-warsaw-pact.464098/ As I answered then (with a few changes):

***

I once paraphrased this idea: "Let's help right-wing anti-Communist parties win elections in the West, get NATO and the western arms build-up started earlier, make the unification of the western zones in Germany into a remilitarized capitalist republic happen even earlier than in OTL (and the West German state will now be able to claim to dissatisfied east Germans "We are the only independent German state!"), cause unnecessary resentment even among those east Europeans who are sympathetic to Communism, deal a serious blow to the West European Communist Parties, harm Communism's potential of appealing to nationalist sentiment in the Third World, and lose several seats in the UN. And gain nothing in return, since Soviet military and police presence would be enough to keep the "people's democracies" loyal in any event. Hey, that makes sense..."

There is just no advantage to this for the USSR. Absolutely everything Stalin wants in the "people's democracies" from purge trials to military and economic integration of the bloc, can be (and was) accomplished without this crazy idea.

In any event, Stalin was actually less anxious to expand the borders of the USSR than Lenin had been. In 1920 when it seemed like the Red Army was about to being Communism to Poland amd Germany, Stalin insisted that even in that event, those nations must remain independent: "I said [to Lenin] - and this is all preserved in the archives of the Central Committee – that that would not work. If you think the nationalities of former Russia will stay in a framework of federalisation – that is understandable enough, but if you think that Germany will at some point come to you to join a federation with the same rights as Ukraine – you are mistaken. If you think that even Poland, which has taken the form of a bourgeois state with all its attributes, will enter into the composition of a union with the same rights as Ukraine – you are mistaken. That is what I said then. And comrade Lenin sent out a long letter - that is chauvinism, nationalism, we need a centralized world economy, run from a single organ."
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/if-bolesheviks-conquered-poland.407915/#post-14031591

Stalin was consistent on this. Note what he said in 1930:

"Lenin never said that national differences must disappear and that national languages must merge into one common language within the borders of a single state before the victory of socialism on a world scale. On the contrary, Lenin said something that was the very opposite of this, namely, that "national and state differences among peoples and countries ... . will continue to exist for a very, very long time even after the dictatorship of the proletariat has been established on a world scale" (Original Comment: JVS: My italics) (Vol. XXV, p. 227). How can anyone refer to Lenin and forget about this fundamental statement of his?" https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1930/aug/27.htm

Observe that he is quoting Lenin to the effect that national and state differences among peoples will persist long after the word-wide establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat (and that last event had not remotely come about by the late 1940's anyway). To try to squeeze all the "peoples' democracies" into the Soviet Union would be a flagrant violation of this. (As I noted, Stalin was in fact more consistent on this than Lenin was, as their 1920 disagreement on Poland shows.)

The Baltics were a special case because they had been part of the Russian Empire. Stalin wanted to incorporate into the USSR the territories that had been part of the Russian Empire--and did not even annex all of those (Poland and Finland--though maybe Kuusinen's Democratic Republic of Finland would have applied for admission to the USSR if the Soviets had won the Winter War more quickly and decisively). But I just don't see any evidence that he even considered the idea for eastern Europe in general (indeed when Gottwald allegedly once suggested it for Czechoslovakia, Stalin summarily rejected the idea [1]) and I don't see any reason for him to do so.

[1] Admittedly, Gottwald was drunk at the time, if one can believe Khrushchev:

"In 1948 Klement Gottwald was vacationing in the Crimea with Stalin. Stalin called me up and said: “Gottwald is here. Come join us.” The next day I flew there. We gathered at Stalin's place for dinner. Gottwald had drunk a great deal (he had that weakness) and began to say, "Comrade Stalin, why are your people stealing our patents? Just tell us and we'll give them to you for nothing. When your people steal them and we see it, we feel offended. We can give you more than just patents. Take us in as part of the Soviet Union. We'd be happy to join the Soviet Union and then everything we have will be common property.” Stalin refused to take them in, and he got angry over the thieving. But that was only in words, because we continued to steal, sometimes just out of old habit, like the gypsy who was asked: “If you were king, what would you do?” He answered: “I'd steal me a herd of horses and disappear."..." https://books.google.com/books?id=uv1zv4FZhFUC&pg=PT242

This incident, if one can take it seriously, fits a pattern: most proposals to incorporate satellites into the USSR came from the satellites themselves and were rejected by the USSR. E.g., Mongolia (where annexation would have unnecessarily upset the Chinese, both Nationalist and Communist) https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/ahc-mongolian-ssr.352879/#post-10705074 and Bulgaria (though I doubt Zhivkov's alleged offer was meant seriously). https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-eastern-bloc-into-ssrs.413844/#post-14546885
 
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How can you gain the support of anti-colonial nationalist Third World revolutionaries if you directly annex every country in Eastern Europe?
 
While I agree with your main point, the UN seats may not be an issue. The Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSRs were both UN members in their own right.

It was one thing for Churchill and FDR to agree to allow the Ukrainian and Belorussian SSR's to be admitted to the UN. But they would no more accept allowing all the east European countries into the UN if they became parts of the USSR than they would admit all the Union Republics of OTL (as Stalin originally wanted).

Weird fact: the US memorandum against admitting the Union Republics to the UN was written by...Alger Hiss! (This fact has sometimes been used as evidence that Hiss was not a Communist but it proves nothing of the sort. Hiss was a lawyer, and he knew what the US government's position was at the time and he knew that he had to write a memorandum justifying it if he wanted to keep his job.)
 
One vote for the warsaw pact

Uhh. Read more.

and this is all preserved in the archives of the Central Committee

While normally we accept Stalin's vascillations at the time of pronouncement at indicative, post-hoc pronouncements by stalin are less well accepted.

A combination of anti-polish bigotry, UN seat desire, mistrust of stay behind commos in the fraternal parties and, quite frankly, suspicion of the soviet working class are in play.

While in the to Stalin ideal world the Soviet Union should have two vetos and 40 UN votes, he'd settled for the liquidation of genuine communists in the east first. And foremost. And fuck the UN. Kill people who really try to enact the abolition of value.

yours,
(from bourgeois state safety)
Sam R.
 
Legitimacy. Not only does it look REALLLY bad if you annex half of Europe instead of making them puppets, basically guaranteeing that the Cold War starts in 1945, but you also loose a TON of seats in the UN. One vote for the warsaw pact as opposed to 14 or 15?

and each country get an embassy so lots more place to base spies.
The lack of a common language is also a problem.
 
As for Mongolia, I don't know.

It would anger the Chinese, both Nationalist and Communist.

The Chinese in fact found it difficult enough to accept even the independence of Outer Mongolia, let alone its incorporation into the USSR. During the interwar period, the USSR theoretically recognized Outer Mongolia as part of China:

"Since the Russian intervention was not against China but against the widely distrusted White Russians, Soviet diplomats were able to finesse the issue of Mongolia in their negotiations with China. In May 1924 the new Sino-Soviet treaty recognized Chinese sovereignty (i.e., full control) in Mongolia, all the while knowing that the Chinese government, divided among jealous warlord factions, was incapable of enforcing its claims. From this time until 1945, while the Chinese government would periodically protest manifestations of Mongolia’s independence, these protests had no real bearing on Sino-Soviet relations. Due to Moscow’s nominal recognition of China’s theoretical claim to Mongolia, however, Soviet agreements with Mongolia were always “agreements” or “protocols” and never treaties, and its diplomats in Mongolia were “political representatives,” not ambassadors. Although the Mongolian government found these concessions to Chinese claims galling, they had little recourse except to accept the assurances of Moscow’s men in Mongolia that Moscow’s concessions were purely nominal." Article "Soviet Union and Mongolia," p. 514 in Christopher P. Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire (New York: Facts on File, 2004). http://shora.tabriz.ir/Uploads/83/c...ncyclopedia of Mongolia and Mongol Empire.pdf

As I explained at https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/unificaton-of-outer-and-inner-mongolia-1945.338036/ Chiang Kai-shek did recognize the independence of Outer Mongolia in 1945--with obvious reluctance, because it was necessary to get a treaty with Stalin and perhaps to prevent Stalin from agreeing to Mongolian Premier Choibalsang's request that Outer and Inner Mongolia be unified. (Chiang did insist on a plebiscite in Outer Mongolia, which to nobody's surprise went unanimously for independence.) Anyway, Chiang eventually went back on the agreement and as late as the 1960's it was politically impossible for the US to recognize the Mongolian People's Republic because Chiang insisted it was part of the Republic of China.

So much for Chinese Nationalist attitudes. As for the Chinese Communists, "on September 29, 1949, at another informal meeting at Sochi on the Black Sea, Stalin tested Choibalsang's reaction to Mao Zedong's recent request to Moscow that Inner and Outer Mongolia be unified as an autonomous part of China. Choibalsang protested that he supported unification but only with the resulting united Mongolia as an independent state. Stalin agreed, but asked Choibalsang to be patient; Lenin had allowed Finland and Poland to become independent, but Mao Zedong was no Lenin. In any case, he assured the Mongolian leader, the Bolsheviks would always stand for the unification of nations. The idea of unification had become just another topic of idle political speculation." Atwood, p. 157. So the PRC obviously was not too happy even with the idea of an independent MPR, let alone have it join the USSR.

The idea of Mongolia joining the USSR does seem to have been floated from time to time--but more by Mongolians than by the Soviets:

"Given Mongolia's profound dependence on the Soviet Union, Mongolians had several times proposed that Mongolia join the Soviet Union, yet Soviet leaders, wary of accusations from China, were not supportive. In the late 1920s, radical western Mongols...resented Khalkha domination and proposed that western Mongolia and Tuva together join the Soviet Union. In the 1940s and early 1950s the Soviet-trained technocrats under Choibalsang repeatedly questioned whether socialism could be built in Mongolia without joining the Soviet Union. The procurator B. Jambaldorj raised the possibility in 1944, when Tuva joined the Soviet Union, and Daramyn Tomorochir and Yumjaagin Tsedenbal raised it again late in Choibalsang's life. Choibalsang himself violently opposed such ideas, but after his death the Mongolian Politburo in 1953 approved unification, only to be rebuked by V. M. Molotov for their 'simple-minded error.' In the mid-1970s the Soviet ruler Leonid Brezhnev sounded out his Mongolian counterpart Tsedenbal about this issue. By then, however, the very success of Mongolian industrialization with Soviet aid had decreased Mongolia's perceived need for unification, and the issue was dropped." Article "Soviet Union and Mongolia," p. 515 in Christopher P. Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire (New York: Facts on File, 2004). http://shora.tabriz.ir/Uploads/83/cms/user/File/657/E_Book/History/Encyclopedia of Mongolia and Mongol Empire.pdf

As I have tried to explain in this post, "wary of accusations from China" pretty much sums up why the Soviets were generally cool to the idea.
 
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