WI: Lenin died in 1918?

OTL August 1918, Lenin was shot in the head by an Anarchist in Moscow.

He lived, but barely.

But WI Lenin died on that night?

What would that mean for the Civil war?

the communists?
 
Reds without Lenin

This is a fascinating question for fans of Russian history like myself.

Lenin was the key figure among the Bolshevik leadership due to his authority and his ability to keep the lid on among the different factions and conflicting personalities. If he had been killed in August 1918 by Fanny Kaplan (whether or not she was the actual shooter is a whole other question!), I would argue that the Reds would end up losing the Civil War due to disagreements at the top over strategy and tactics. For example, Trotsky and Stalin went at it over the issue of hiring former Tsarist officers as military specialists to help the Red Army - that was a big fight that Lenin mediated. There were lots of other arguments over many other issues as well as personality clashes. Without Lenin at the helm, I could see gradual splits and frictions tear the Bolshevik leadership apart into increasingly hostile factions until their command and control comes undone.

Trotsky would undoubtedly play the leading role in a post-Lenin Red leadership, which would accelerate the formations of anti-Trotsky factions among his colleagues. Given his popularity with the troops, a "Red Napoleon" scenario becomes more likely then, as Trotsky takes over a failing Revolution encircled by enemies. However, he can't do it alone and the Red fronts break and fail one by one.

So we would then have a White victory sometime in 1920 or even 1921...and a whole new timeline.
 
Bolshevik factions

The ban on factionalism was announced by Lenin in 1921, at the same time as NEP. There were open factions up until then, including the Workers' Opposition, etc.
 
The ban on factionalism was announced by Lenin in 1921, at the same time as NEP. There were open factions up until then, including the Workers' Opposition, etc.

sorry about that. Anyway, would we see a polypartisan SovNarKom?

And how would Lenin's death affect the NEP and War Communism.
 
No Lenin, no NEP...Know Lenin, know NEP

I would argue that there wouldn't be a NEP without Lenin, assuming the Bols held on. If they did, then Trotsky would almost certainly be calling the shots, as the head of the presumably victorious Red Army...his vision for postwar Russia was a harsh militarization of life, including "labor armies" and "labor fronts"...He would have imposed a harsh barracks socialism on Soviet-ruled areas...which would have produced probably even stronger reactions from disaffected peasants and minorities (see the Antonov rebellion in Tambov, for example). My guess is, a Trotsky-ruled militarized USSR was not viable for several reasons, economic, political, and social...However, who would have replaced him? Trotsky would have purged Stalin most likely, as well as Zinoviev and Kamenev, his opponents IOTL; Sverdlov was dead from Spanish flu; perhaps Bukharin? My guess is, a wholesale collapse of the young Soviet system and something else taking shape altogether...Much work needs to be done here.
 
Yeah, with Trotsky's idea of "World Wide Revolution and Right Now" Russia would probably be attacked by almost everybody.
 
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