WI: Isolationist, "Un"expansionist Soviet Union

About the Bolsheviks causing conditions for the worldwide working class to be improved, it's true that fear of radicalizing the workers did lead to improvements in many places.

However, OTL saw the Square Deal in the United States and Bismarck's co-opting the Socialists (not the Bolsheviks) by establishing a welfare state. All of this was before Red October.
 
Now does anyone have any thoughts on an early death of Lenin leading to a USSR that doesn't attempt to conquer Poland or aid Communist movements abroad, instead focusing its efforts solely into building a workers' paradise at home?

If we sit around arguing about the orthodox view of the Cold War vs. the revisionist view of the Cold War for the umpteenth time, this thread will get moved to Chat.

Another possibility is that the Bolsheviks are less intolerant of internal opposition and don't purge the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionarise. The USSR will be leftist, but it will be much less authoritarian. Killing off Lenin post-Red October might accomplish that goal too.
 
It would be less apologetic if he didn't go on about how without the Bolsheviks Russia and the worldwide working class would have been at the mercy of other powers. And I edited the post to be less inflammatory--I didn't attribute motives to Shevek23 at all.

As I read and endorsed it, he said that if we make the Bolsheviks, or *Bolsheviks, less ruthless and so unwilling to participate in the inherently ruthless game of great-power politics and warfare, and don't at the same time make everyone else into nicer people, we're basically saying that the people in the Russian Empire - and, by extension, the colonised and the working classes - should shut up and take it.

If the Bolsheviks, in behaving like their enemies, get a special character of "aggression", is the implication not that the Russian Empire's peoples, the working classes, or the imperialised are somehow wrong to meet violence with violence, with no blame attaching to the other people who used violence?

There's a difference between explaining the historical context of Molotov-Ribbentropp (such as the failure of Munich) and crediting the Bolsheviks with improvements for non-bourgeois (sp?) worldwide.

I wouldn't do that. There's no point denying that the fear of revolutionary socialism that animated political developments - bad as well as good - in other countries was given a new edge; or the fascination that Russia held for the working classes in some of those countries. But that's not to say that the Bolsheviks deserve credit for the NHS or something.

How I read it was, as I say, that if the Bolsheviks and revolutionary socialism are singled out for being stripped of ruthlessness, what are the working classes going to do where they are being oppressed? Sing?

Imperial capitalism or the Czarist regime? Not every Western government was as abusive to its own citizenry as the Imperial regime in Russia, even if many of them were abusive to others (colonialism).

It's silly to say that such distinctions don't matter, of course they do. They just don't matter morally. :p

The "British Empire" was a device for violently oppressing native peoples. That its structure and internal logic eventually empowered people in Great Britain who had no interest in holding up a violent empire is to its credit, but it doesn't change the oppression, does it?

Re: "imperial capitalism," Teddy Roosevelt and the Square Deal show that statement to be incorrect.

If there was any dictatorial behavior going on, it was TR imposing his will on capital and labor both, and he had a democratic mandate for that and it was done through legal channels.

What about African Americans, or people in the imperialised countries of the Caribbean basin, or women in some states, come to that? They were all disenfranchised by the American way of organising power.

I don't believe in sharp distinctions between democracy and dictatorship. There are all sorts of democratic and dictatorial ways to organise power all around the world.

But anyway America was not the top or only imperial capitalist. Its history and interests were different from those countries that were more properly the 'imperial powers'.

About the Bolsheviks causing conditions for the worldwide working class to be improved, it's true that fear of radicalizing the workers did lead to improvements in many places.

However, OTL saw the Square Deal in the United States and Bismarck's co-opting the Socialists (not the Bolsheviks) by establishing a welfare state. All of this was before Red October.

Bismarck was trying to defang the socialists, robbing their message of urgency among Germany's working class so that he could destroy their political threat. The Liberal reforms in Britain would be a better example. A note of anxiety was not absent their either, but the people carrying them out were less averse to the idea of working-class people organising themselves politically.
 
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Now does anyone have any thoughts on an early death of Lenin leading to a USSR that doesn't attempt to conquer Poland or aid Communist movements abroad, instead focusing its efforts solely into building a workers' paradise at home?

Lenin is a dominant figure in this period of history and if the Russian Revolution happened without him you would have very difficult circumstances to start with. Poland, for instance, might never have an opportunity to invade, if *Petlyura is on the side of the Russian regime.

I don't think, however, that a softer leftist Russia would have any reason not to practice great-power politics, including support for sympathisers abroad. It might have less cause to go around annexing places, but why not try to undermine the empires of its rivals?
 
Lenin is a dominant figure in this period of history and if the Russian Revolution happened without him you would have very difficult circumstances to start with. Poland, for instance, might never have an opportunity to invade, if *Petlyura is on the side of the Russian regime.

I don't think, however, that a softer leftist Russia would have any reason not to practice great-power politics, including support for sympathisers abroad. It might have less cause to go around annexing places, but why not try to undermine the empires of its rivals?

1. I wasn't suggesting Red October happen without him, I was suggesting he die of the result of the assassination attempt before the Polish-Soviet War.

2. That depends. They might be more cautious and not want to provoke a war, or have "gradualist" views like the Mensheviks or even Social Democrats. They might think European countries were evolving toward socialism on their own and might not NEED their assistance or fear their assistance could be counterproductive.
 
And for the record, "Bolshevism" and "revolutionary socialism" are not the same thing.

IIRC the Mensheviks overthrew the government of Georgia established by Brest-Litovsk and ran it in a democratic-socialist fashion into the Bolsheviks invaded and took over.

Hell, one can have the workers not being oppressed without socialism--have stronger enforcement of rule of law in a classical liberal society so that peaceful protesters/strikers aren't abused by company goons, frex, or don't outlaw unions.
 
The easiest way to do this is to avoid WWII. Stalin will prefer Socialism in One Country and his successors will also become focused on an isolationist USSR more than an expansionist one from simply being militarily outweighed by the rest of Europe, including whatever dictatorship other than the Nazis rules Germany.
 
Now does anyone have any thoughts on an early death of Lenin leading to a USSR that doesn't attempt to conquer Poland or aid Communist movements abroad, instead focusing its efforts solely into building a workers' paradise at home?

Actually, keeping Lenin alive longer might lead to a more insular Soviet Union in the future. Many here argue that a Lenin lives scenario would lead to a longer NEP. Such development compared to Stalin's industrialization may not orientate the Soviet Union towards arms production or war making capabilities.

Given this, Lenin's successors may depart from his direction if he lives longer. I think many historians, both pro-Soviet and anti-Soviet, overestimate Lenin's potential. It's entirely likely that the Bolsheviks can be disillusioned with his plans and force him into a quiet retirement. Perhaps after an unsuccessful venture into Finland or back into the Baltics, who are backed by the Western powers given that they aren't as trusting of Lenin as they were of Stalin. A scenario like this could lead to Lenin's retirement and a push internally for a new Soviet direction, lead by Bukharin who pushed for plans not too dissimilar to that of the Chinese economic direction currently. Basically, the Soviet Union would be a Chinese analogue at least 40 years earlier. A peaceful rise instead of the dramatic story of the Soviet Union as we know it.
 
That's a stronger case, although the split within Germany's socialist movement happened quite by itself during the war, and their antipathy came from the events of the German revolution.

Indeed ill feeling caused by the short-live Batavian Soviet Republic and the fact a Social Democrat government had used tens of thousands of Freicorps nihilists to suppress the Communists. I have my doubts on them ever working together
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The KDP hardly needed encouragement from Moscow to hate & fear the Social Democrats...



About the arms for the KPD, The New History of the Third Reich.. It's a fairly huge book. I only read part before I had to return it.

Given the fact that all major Communist/KDP uprisings took place during the Russian Civil War and at no time afterwords did the KDP mount any real armed uprisings. I have my doubts about any major Soviets arms shipments being sent to them...
 
Here's the Amazon entry:

http://www.amazon.com/Third-Reich-New-History/dp/080909326X

Here's the Google Books entry:

http://books.google.com/books?id=q3BfUcJIYtQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

This is the book where I found out the Social Democratic Party had its own brute squad--before, I'd only thought the Nazis and Communists had them.

Heh, every party/faction in Germany had goon-squads, given the circumstances inside Germany at the time, it would have been literal suicide for them not to. The army and the police weren’t neutral actors either…

I don’t know why people seem to have this mono-focus on the Communists & Nazis as through other extremists or even democratic parties weren’t willing to use violence for their own cynical ends. Europe was a crazy & violent place in the early 20th century far more so than is often credited nowadays.
 
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