WI: Nikita Khruschev assassinated in Poland

[A Piece of History]

In 1948, a man named Stanislaw Joros was arrested by the Citizens' Militia (the national police force of the Polish People's Republic) for stealing 100 bullets from a factory. During his captivity, he was tortured. He was sentenced to two years in prison. When he was released in 1951, he began a campaign of sabotage against the Polish government.

In the same year, he blew up telephone facilities in Dabrowa Gornizca. Then, using stolen ammonite, he blew up a utility pole at Sosnowiec Steelworks, as well as an excavator at the Kazimierz Coal Mine in Sosnowiec. To celebrate Stalin's death in 1953, Jaros planted a bomb under a transformer at the Joseph Stalin Coal Mine (formerly known as Renard Coal Mine) in Sosnowiec.

In 1959, he attempted to assassinate not just the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers Party (and head of the Polish communist government) Wladyslaw Gormulka and First Secretary of the local branch of the Party, while the trio were visiting the Dabrowa Basin. Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev. Khruschev was there to celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the Polish People's Republic.

On July 5, 1959, the Worker's Tribune daily published a map of the route of the motorcade, so that people would be able to greet the leaders. The officials travelled along Red Army Street, the main artery of Zagórze. To honour the guests, local authorities adorned the street and buildings along it with flowers. Jaros had several kilograms of ammonite – explosive used for mining purposes – six hundred detonators, and 24 rings of mining fuses, which he had stolen from a coal mine in Upper Silesia. He placed the bomb on a lime tree. next to a police station. The bomb detonated one hour before the delegates arrived.

Joros would make another attempt on the life of First Secretary Gormulka, but this attempt also failed. He was arrested and executed on January 5 1963.

What if Stanislaw Joros had successfully assassinated not just First Secretary Gormulka, but Premier Khruschev on his first attempt?

 

[Lalli]

At least we would avoid Cuban Missile Crisis. Probably Kruschev's successor would follow politics of his predecessor and Kruschev would had seen as martyr.

 

[David T]

As of 1959, I think Frol Kozlov was considered Khrushchev's most likely successor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frol_Kozlov Though he had supported Khrushchev against the "Anti-Party Group" in 1957, he was considered considerably more hard-line and "Stalinist" than Khrushchev.

 

[chankljp]

I strongly suspect that things will get extremely ugly for the people in Eastern and Central Europe for at lease a few years, with the Soviets enacting a general crackdown on all dissidents they can get their hands on, while tightening the leash that they have on the local governments.

After all, this would have happened a mere 3 years after the Hungarian Uprising, and now you just have a lone-wolf bomber publicly assassinating a high ranking Soviet political leader.

The USSR with it's institutional paranoia after their experience in WW2 simply CANNOT tolerate such a display of weakness in front of not just their own satellite states, but also the West. Since this could embolden them to view this as a clear sign of Soviet weakness, and their inability to keep their own bloc in check.

You might see stuff like the remnant hold-outs of the Forest Brothers in the Baltic SRs that did not take the offer of amnesty getting hunted down and wiped out and a show of force. The same goes for the Goryani in Bulgaria, and the insurgency in Romania.

 

[Historyman 14]

I strongly suspect that things will get extremely ugly for the people in Eastern and Central Europe for at lease a few years, with the Soviets enacting a general crackdown on all dissidents they can get their hands on, while tightening the leash that they have on the local governments.

After all, this would have happened a mere 3 years after the Hungarian Uprising, and now you just have a lone-wolf bomber publicly assassinating a high ranking Soviet political leader.

The USSR with it's institutional paranoia after their experience in WW2 simply CANNOT tolerate such a display of weakness in front of not just their own satellite states, but also the West. Since this could embolden them to view this as a clear sign of Soviet weakness, and their inability to keep their own bloc in check.

You might see stuff like the remnant hold-outs of the Forest Brothers in the Baltic SRs that did not take the offer of amnesty getting hunted down and wiped out and a show of force. The same goes for the Goryani in Bulgaria, and the insurgency in Romania.

Pretty much. You see an early rise of the Stalinists - Suslov, Brezhnev, Podgorny, Shelest, the ones behind Khrushchev's coup, to power. You can kiss any Prague Spring and stuff like it goodbye given the following crackdown and purges by the Soviets and people fleeing westward. (Setting them back and the USSR back for who knows for how much.)

Interesting the Cuban Revolution just ended at this point, North Vietnam well soon invade Laos as well with the insurgency in South Vietnam taking root, and the Sino-Soviet split taking shape as Mao felt Khrushchev was untrustworthy, among other things.

A lot of fun to play with this.

 

[Whiteshore]

the Sino-Soviet split taking shape as Mao felt Khrushchev was untrustworthy, among other things.

Maybe the Communist bloc remains united longer ITTL?

 

[chankljp]

Pretty much. You see an early rise of the Stalinists - Suslov, Brezhnev, Podgorny, Shelest, the ones behind Khrushchev's coup, to power. You can kiss any Prague Spring and stuff like it goodbye given the following crackdown and purges by the Soviets and people fleeing westward. (Setting them back and the USSR back for who knows for how much.)

Maybe the Communist bloc remains united longer ITTL?

I am not so sure about that.... In OTL, Mao's China actually vehemently condemned the invasion of Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of the Prague Spring (Despite he himself having condemned the Prague Spring as revisionist earlier), since for Mao, he considered the Brezhnev doctrine to be an imperialistic move, as it basically means that the Soviets gave themselves the right to invade any fellow communist country they they deem to not fit within the Kremlin's approval.... Countries such as say, the PRC with it's own brand of communism.

Even with something like the Prague Spring averted, the general crackdown and tightening of control by the Soviets across the Eastern Bloc might still end up worrying Mao, as he had absolutely no intention for the PRC to end up becoming a second Poland under Moscow's orbit instead of being an ideological equal.

At least we would avoid Cuban Missile Crisis.

And now that I think about it... Without the Cuban Missile Crisis, there would also be no 'Moscow–Washington hotline', nor would there be the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and the US would have have given their public assurance to never invade Cuba. As such, all it might end up doing was for there to be another alternate flashpoint for the Cold War instead.

 

[Historyman 14]

Maybe the Communist bloc remains united longer ITTL?

I am not so sure about that.... In OTL, Mao's China actually vehemently condemned the invasion of Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of the Prague Spring (Despite he himself having condemned the Prague Spring as revisionist earlier), since for Mao, he considered the Brezhnev doctrine to be an imperialistic move, as it basically means that the Soviets gave themselves the right to invade any fellow communist country they they deem to not fit within the Kremlin's approval.... Countries such as say, the PRC with it's own brand of communism.

Even with something like the Prague Spring averted, the general crackdown and tightening of control by the Soviets across the Eastern Bloc might still end up worrying Mao, as he had absolutely no intention for the PRC to end up becoming a second Poland under Moscow's orbit instead of being an ideological equal.



And now that I think about it... Without the Cuban Missile Crisis, there would also be no 'Moscow–Washington hotline', nor would there be the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and the US would have have given their public assurance to never invade Cuba. As such, all it might end up doing was for there to be another alternate flashpoint for the Cold War instead.

The Sino-Soviet split was always going to happen. Can you delay it? Yes, and it would do wonders for China. (Like stopping the Cultural Revolution.) But this POD won't be the case for said delay.

Cuba always come up in these kind of deals. I doubt there be missiles in Cuba of any kind, and lot more depends on if Kennedy wins 1960s and the Bay of Pigs.

Berlin comes to mind...

 

[chankljp]

Pretty much. You see an early rise of the Stalinists - Suslov, Brezhnev, Podgorny, Shelest, the ones behind Khrushchev's coup, to power. You can kiss any Prague Spring and stuff like it goodbye given the following crackdown and purges by the Soviets and people fleeing westward. (Setting them back and the USSR back for who knows for how much.)

I was reading another thread that reminded me of this one... With me starting to suspect that we might all in fact be WAY underestimating how far the Soviets would go in this situation with Khruschev getting assassinated in Poland.

In OTL 1985, Hezbollah made the MASSIVE mistake of kidnapping four Soviet diplomats in Beirut, with one of the consular attaché ended up getting killed. The Kremlin responded by sending in their top counter terrorism unit, Alpha Group.... The next thing you know, they started snatching a dozen Hezbollah members and their relatives off the street, followed by torture via meatgrinders and and liquid oxygen in the back of an ice cream truck, ending in ears, fingers, and limbs getting chopped off, and mailed back to the hostage taker's families until the three remaining Soviet hostage were released unharmed.

https://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/04/us/soviet-hostage-crisis-very-un-washingtonlike.html

Say what you will about the USSR, but they DO NOT screw around when it comes to people threatening their political representatives when they are overseas due to them being the embodiment of the Soviet government itself. There is not such thing as 'collateral damage', only 'Secondary targets eliminated'.

Keep in mind, this was the USSR until Gorbachev the reformer that did this!

Now, imagine instead of a bunch of relatively low-ranking diplomats, you publicly killed the HEAD OF THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT, while the Great Patriotic War was still on everyone's living memory....

Let's just say I do NOT want to be a Polish person in TTL. Expect at the very minimal Stalinist methods of retaliation such as everyone even remotely associated with assassin to be liquidated, a quota of random Polish people to be executed/imprisoned, etc.

.... And thank the GODS this did not happen in East Germany instead, or things would have gone even worst.