WI: Lenin lives longer?

What effects might a longer living Lenin have on the Soviet Union and the world in general? The POD could be that he simply lives longer despite his injuries, or it could be that he doesn't get injured in the 2nd assassination attempt/it doesn't happen.
 
It is said that Lenin had reservations regarding Stalin and had wished to oust him from the post of Party Secretary. If Lenin had lived longer and wielded power, it is likely that Stalin would have been purged and met the same fate that he had prescribed to many of his comrades in OTL. Such a scenario releases a whole horde of butterflies and the possibilities are unlimited. Will Trotsky become the right hand man and eventual successor of Lenin? If not, who will succeed him? The possibilities are many and interesting.
 
It is said that Lenin had reservations regarding Stalin and had wished to oust him from the post of Party Secretary. If Lenin had lived longer and wielded power, it is likely that Stalin would have been purged and met the same fate that he had prescribed to many of his comrades in OTL. Such a scenario releases a whole horde of butterflies and the possibilities are unlimited. Will Trotsky become the right hand man and eventual successor of Lenin? If not, who will succeed him? The possibilities are many and interesting.

Yes, and what kind of SU will we see under Trotsky's leadership? Will it become a nightmare like Stalin's rule OTL, or slightly less so?
We cannot know, of course, because Trotsky never got the chance. But one thing we can be pretty sure of, is that the SU would continue to be an oppressive dicatorship, just less insane and paranoid than Stalin's SU.
I'm thinking it'd butterfly at least some of the purges in the 1930.
 
I’m under the impression that Lenin living longer would have meant the continuation of the NEP. Upon Lenin’s inevitable death, the next dictator would have inherited a much richer and powerful SU instead of the dirt-poor cage Stalin got. Perhaps this dictator could have insisted on continuing the NEP, gradually turning the SU into some middle-of-the-road Yugoslavia or Sweden style country, but I highly doubt it.



In any case, the SU would have been much more assertive in the ’20 and ’30.
 
Trotsky didn't have a lot of political skills, so him taking over from Lenin is rather dubious.

Also, Lenin having Stalin removed as Party Secretary doesn't necessarily mean he's going to have Stalin killed. He might still be around to make a bid for power later.

I agree that the longer Lenin lives, the longer the NEP will continue.
 
Trotsky didn't have a lot of political skills, so him taking over from Lenin is rather dubious.

On the other hand, Trotsky was arguably Lenin's chosen successor, and he had the Red Army behind him.

That said, this has been discussed to death in the past, and I think the general consensus is that Trotsky wouldn't be less brutal, just less arbitrary. And he'd get into war sooner rather than later due to his attempts to export the revolution.
 
Hmm...here's an interesting question. Suppose Lenin lives to at least the mid 1930's (anytime between 1933 and 1939) What situation might the Soviet Union be in as the time of WW2 draws near? Or would a SU still under Lenin sit by while Hitler's power grows?
 
the thing is, most of the stalin policy - industrialization, collectivization, and the adoption of socialism in one country as the best way to continue the revolution - was shared by the rest of the party.

so leaving aside individual figures (while there may be some slight differences i doubt they would be significant, even when it comes to the famed purges - stalin did not create the conditions for the traitormania singlehandedly, and there were some actual german and japanese agents in the country) you have to sort out what the consequences would be when it comes to which political line would be followed.

the NEP was designed to allow a bit of breathing space, to let productive forces build themselves up for a bit (similar to the PRC's use of domestic capitalists in the 50s) in the aftermath of the civil war. in the countryside, this had the effect of empowering the wealthy farmers, the kulaks. by 1928, in some areas they were more powerful than the party.

i doubt lenin would have had a particularly different reaction to this trend than stalin, although there may have been some differences in the methods used to end the NEP and collectivize the country.

and the countryside had to be got under control somehow, because the ussr needed something for foreign export in order to build up its industrial capability - something that was necessary, as stalin noted, in order to be able to fight off the next invasion from the west. again most of the party agreed with this conclusion, again the specifics of implementation may have been different.

the question of a successor is murkier, but there are three tendencies - the bukharin emphasis on the peasantry, trotskys emphasis on foreign revolution, and stalin's socialism-in-one-country/industrialization. not to say each of these men invented those ideas, but their names are good shorthand.

if lenin has more influence in choosing his own successor, i doubt bukharin or someone of that tendency will be chosen - lenin disparaged him as being non-marxist and insufficiently rigorous. if it does happen though i would imagine the result would be a wealthier countryside, but similarly less industrialization by, say, 1936. and there's the question of kulak power in the countryside - can they be co-opted back into the party, as bukharin believed, or would their greater power necessitate a mini-civil war to restore party control to those areas?

similarly, i doubt trotsky himself would be selected, nor would someone else following the trotskyist line on foreign revolution - and of course, since the 20th century has shown us that anti-capitalist revolutions tend to take place in the periphery of the world capitalist system, this is probably a good thing for the ussr, since it wouldn't be holding its breath waiting for revolutions in the west that never came. on the peasants and industrial policy, the trotsky position was similar to the stalin position, although trotsky was less eager for any sort of class alliance with the peasantry (rather than just opposed to alliance with the kulaks).

my conclusion is that stalin or someone with similar ideas would end up at the helm. the details may change, but the broad trends - collectivization, industrialization - probably will not.
 
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