WI: Clement Attlee Establishes *Special Relationship* with USSR?

For one reason or another, some people have a hard time grasping how anti-Soviet most of the Socialist parties of the West were in the early days of the Cold War. Examples: Ernst Reuter's career as Mayor of West Berlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Reuter In France, Guy Mollet said that French Communist Party was "not on the Left but in the East." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Mollet As I noted, there was Nye Bevan advocating meeting the Berlin blockade with an armored column. And in the US, of the five presidential candidates in 1948--Harry Truman, Thomas Dewey, Strom Thurmond, Henry Wallace, and Norman Thomas--it was the Socialist Norman Thomas who had been the most critical of the USSR during the war...
 

Japhy

Banned
Judging by the reaction in this thread, I can't imagine what the responses would be in an atl in which Hitler died or got overthrown prior to 1939 and someone started a thread saying "WI Hitler lives, negotiates economic cooperation and near-alliance with USSR?"

That was an amoral dictatorship, not a democracy. The comparison doesn't hold. Especially when OPs basis for the split with the west, from a wartime ally is a sudden rejection of the system the British had helped develop at the Breton Woods Conference.
 
For one reason or another, some people have a hard time grasping how anti-Soviet most of the Socialist parties of the West were in the early days of the Cold War. Examples: Ernst Reuter's career as Mayor of West Berlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Reuter In France, Guy Mollet said that French Communist Party was "not on the Left but in the East." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Mollet As I noted, there was Nye Bevan advocating meeting the Berlin blockade with an armored column. And in the US, of the five presidential candidates in 1948--Harry Truman, Thomas Dewey, Strom Thurmond, Henry Wallace, and Norman Thomas--it was the Socialist Norman Thomas who had been the most critical of the USSR during the war...

Was there any particular reason for this?
 
Was there any particular reason for this?

Partly a genuine dislike of a dictatorship clothing itself in rhetoric about the workers whilst grinding them into the dust, and partially a need to differentiate themselves from the Soviets very clearly in the eyes of their electorate, I imagine.
 
Partly a genuine dislike of a dictatorship clothing itself in rhetoric about the workers whilst grinding them into the dust, and partially a need to differentiate themselves from the Soviets very clearly in the eyes of their electorate, I imagine.
My understanding was that it related to the tendency of the Soviets to beast anyone who wasn't willing to tow there line both in the USSR and at times abroad, no?
 
Was there any particular reason for this?
It originates out of the historic split in the Second International and the establishment of Communist Parties and Comintern across Europe but also generally the relationship between social democrats and communists throughout the interwar period was soured by various events.
 
Was there any particular reason for this?

In large part it was from observation of what was going on in eastern Europe--especially the way the Social Democratic parties there were in effect liquidated (technically, "merged" with local Communist parties to form parties like the Polish United Workers Party, the Socialist Unity Party in East Germany, etc. which were really just the communist party under a new name). See for example *The curtain falls : the story of the Socialists in Eastern Europe* edited by Denis Healey, foreword by Aneurin Bevan. http://www.amazon.com/The-curtain-falls-Socialists-foreword/dp/B000IU0FSY
 
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European mainstream leftist parties were indeed anti-Soviet. But, if we might consider an earlier POD, perhaps the Soviet Union could be more democratic and less totalitarian, could this give it a better standing with Western European socialists? How early of a POD would be needed for that? A non-totalitarian USSR is probably difficult to achieve without invalidating a WWII similar to that of OTL, though. Is there any way this scenario could happen?
 
Judging by the reaction in this thread, I can't imagine what the responses would be in an atl in which Hitler died or got overthrown prior to 1939 and someone started a thread saying "WI Hitler lives, negotiates economic cooperation and near-alliance with USSR?"

Germany at least had pre-existing military and economic ties to the Soviet Union.

Was there any particular reason for this?

After WW1 and the success of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, Socialist parties across the world faced a civil war between those who thought it best to emulate the Bolsheviks and those who remained committed to pursuing socialist goals by democratic means. This left the vast majority of Social Democrats deeply bitter since the struggle in most cases undid decades of work.

Further, between WW1 and WW2, Moscow constantly interfered with leftist parties, usually to the detriment of Socialism in whatever country concerned in their quest to obtain advantage for the USSR. This created plenty of bitter former idealists who'd seen their parties used and discarded by Lenin and Stalin.

And then, people of leftist politics were more likely to travel to the Soviet Union and see it for themselves. Some of those, of course, liked what they saw, but plenty came away ardent anti-Soviets. Some also never came back at all. Yet another name in the long list of victims murdered by the Soviet regime (Stalin absolutely gutted the leadership of foreign socialist movements during his purges - if a less murderous regime had been in charge history - particularly in the 3rd world, would have been very different).

Add to that, most socialists also tended to care for the interests of their nation and most nations were not so positioned that they would profit from taking the Soviet side when most of the world's trade moved across oceans that were controlled by the US navy.

For Britain that last point is particularly salient, since Britain was an island nation whose day could be decisively ruined by the USN and for whom trade with the US itself was particularly large. As such, even if Attlee were for some reason to become very pro-Soviet, it is hard to see him following a policy which was strongly pro-Soviet unless this is also a world in which the US is for some reason isolationist.

fasquardon
 
Here's a scenario that might work for a special relationship:

Have the left-wing of the Labour party grow in influence (possibly also keeping Mosley in the Labour party).

Find some way to bring the Conservative government down in some time around 37-38, resulting in an early election.

Have Labour win with a comfortable majority, with them entering into a united front with other left-wing parties (as some left-wing members advocated doing in 1939 OTL).

In 1938 the Labour government (either under Cripps or with him as Foreign Secretary) decides to implement Bevan's proposed Anglo-Soviet alliance, and send troops to support the Republicans in Spain. As a result this butterflies away the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and when war with Germany inevitably breaks out the war will end much quicker due to fighting on two fronts from the beginning and access to fewer resources. As a result the Nazis are defeated before the US gets directly involved in the war, which at least delays their entry onto the world-stage as a superpower. (Although if you want to extend WW2 in this scenario, I could see France breaking with Britain over their "reckless endangerment of peace and support for extremism").

In the post-war elections swings a bit to the right to avoid alienating moderates, Labour wins and Atlee becomes PM. He decides to continue cooperating and building ties with the Soviet Union on the principle that the left can talk to the left. Perhaps throw in a breakdown in relations with France and a still isolationist US to add a little Realpolitik to the equation. Subsequent Conservative governments also maintain the relationship as a means of counterbalancing US influence when they eventually take to the world stage.

Not sure how the Empire will fare, given that decolonisation would be high on the agenda of a left-Labour UK allied to the Soviet Union, but then again with a less devastating WW2, and the USSR telling their supporters in the colonies to tone things down a bit there is a greater potential to hold onto it, provided the political will exists.

As the Cold War begins to break out the UK moves towards the non-Aligned movement, but retains favourable relations with the USSR, not unlike India.

Of course getting all this to happen is a lot easier said than done.
 
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