WI no Leninist coup aka Great October Revolution?

I suspect that it does not butterfly Hitler. Fear of revolution or working class revolt would still be there.

Would the extreme reaction in the US to the left be avoided?

Would Russia be @ Versailes
 
Russia would probably resemble a combination of the Weimar Republic and 1911-1949 China without the October Revolution and ensuing civil war. There would be a left-leaning elected parliament and/or head of government, probably dominated by the SRs. The elected government would constantly be undermined by a military and bureaucracy with reactionary sympathies, as well as local strongmen and minority separatist/nationalist groups (Ukrainians, Balts, Finns, Central Asian Muslims, Armenians, Azeris, Georgians, etc.).

I disagree with your prognosis on Hitler. Nazism wouldn't be recognizable without the boogeyman of Judeo-Bolshevism that emerged out of the Russian Revolution and Civil War. Ethnic Germans emigres who had been part of the Baltic German nobility and the pre-war Czarist elite like Alfred Rosenberg and Max von Scheubner-Richter played a major role in the early Nazi movement.
 
I think one has to ask what the alternative to "October" is. A continuation of Kerensky's by-then-extremely-unpopular government? Unlikely. A right-wing coup? Hard to do after Kornilov's failure. A peaceful transfer of power to a socialist governnment backed by all the parties in the soviet? Even some Bolsheviks (Zinoviev and Kamenev) wanted that, but it is hard to see such a coalition lasting, because of disagreements about the war--Lenin had a hard enough time getting even the Bolsheviks to agree to Brest-Litvsk--see my post at https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ever-happened-in-russia.470714/#post-19264454

(One can argue however that the refusal of a socialist coalition government--including some Bolsheviks as well as the Menshevik and SR "social patriots"--to agree to Brest-Litovsk would not be such a disaster. Sure, the Germans can take Petrograd and even Moscow without much trouble. But they are just not capable of occupying all of Russia. In OTL, "General Max Hoffmann, the German commander on the Eastern Front, noted bitterly in his diary that despite the fact that his forces faced no opposition whatever, he would have to call an end to their advance. 'I should have no objection', he wrote, 'to pushing farther and farther eastwards. I should like to get to India except that the distances grow more immense, and our army does not.'" http://web.archive.org/web/20030310182535/http://scottreid.com/lenin.htm#anchor244115 So theoretically, a socialist coalition government could simply retreat to the Urals or beyond and wait for the German puppet government in European Russia to collapse after the German defeat, and then return after that collapse. There are of course a few problems with that. First of all, in the spring of 1918 it was far from clear that there would be a German defeat. Second, maybe the German puppet government tries to come to terms with the victorious Allies ("we were only pretending to back Germany to mitigate the harshness of its occupation. We were really hoping for your victory all the time, and surely we will be preferable from your viewpoint to those awful socialists.") Finally, even if the socialists make it back to Moscow, in the meantime Russia may have largely disintegrated, with Ukraine and other areas having declared their independence.)

As for the effects on Hitler: yes, there will still be a right wing in Germany that will be afraid of working class revolution and seek a dictatorial regime. But it is hardly inevitable that Adolf Hitler will ultimately become the leader of German "anti-Marxism" or that he will come to power in 1933. Those things depended on a huge number of contingencies, some of which would likely never have happened with a non-Bolshevik Russia.

First of all, saying there will still be a far right in Germany does not mean its level of popular support is predetermined. To quote an old post of mine:

***

Yes, the German Right would have hated the Social Democrats with or without the Bolshevik revolution. But the extent of the German Right's popular support was not predetermined, and direct and indirect effects of the Bolshevik Revolution may have been one of the things affecting it. In January 1919 a large portion of the German bourgeoisie was willing to vote for a genuinely liberal party, the DDP, which got 18.6 percent of the vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_German_federal_election I think it's clear that some portion of the bourgeoisie did not look with alarm on the Republic or on a coalition government including Social Democrats. By 1920, there was already a clear swing to the Right among the bourgeoisie (and to a lesser extent a swing to the Left within the working class): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_German_federal_election Maybe a reaction to the Spartacist Uprising and the Bavarian Soviet Republic had something to do with it? (Of course part of it was a reaction to Versailles, but the DDP after all had refused to sign the Treaty.)

Now you might say, "the leftward course of the German Revolution in 1919--and its suppression by the Majority Social Democrats and the Army--would have come about with or without the Bolshevik Revolution." But it might not have taken such extreme forms. For example, Rosa Luxemburg herself thought the Spartacist uprising premature. But much of the far left felt "we can seize power, just as was done in Russia." Without the example of "October", cooler heads may have prevailed. As for the Bavarian Soviet Republic, well, it did after all call itself a soviet (council) republic, and it's pretty odd to claim that it wasn't influenced by the examples of the Russian and Hungarian Soviet Republics. https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...appened-in-russia.470714/page-5#post-19303127

***

Second, "there would still be a powerful far right" =/= "Adolf Hitler would have come to power in 1933." To quote another post of mine:

***

Two propositions:

(1) "Even without the Bolshevik Revolution and the German events it helped to inspire--the Spartacist Uprising, the Bavarian Soviet Republic, etc.--the German far right would still have hated the Social Democrats and longed for right-wing authoritarian rule." This is obviously true.

(2) "Without the events in (1) the German far right would have gained just as much popular support as it did in OTL." This is far from obvious. (Note: I am not saying the far right would have no popular support--that's a straw man. But I do think that the fact that far-left socialists had seized power in Russia, that they had inspired far-left attempted revolutions in Germany in 1919, etc. did lead some people to support the far right who would not have supported it simply out of discontent with the moderate Social Democrats.)

I might add that even if you accept both propositions (1) and (2), it still would not follow that without the Bolshevik Revolution, Hitler would have come to power. There are effects of the Bolshevik Revolution that facilitated his rise--not speculative far-fetched "butterfly effects" but fairly clear and direct ones. Without the Bolshevik Revolution, there would have been no KPD. (Yes, I know the Independent Social Democrats had split off from the SPD, but that split was about the war, and could have been healed after the war. Most of the Independent Social Democrats were not proto-Bolsheviks and did not dream of "converting the imperialist war into a civil war." They could have once again lived in the same party with SPD moderates as they did before 1914.) Without the KPD, as I have noted, Hindenburg would almost certainly not have been elected Reich President in 1925. (Thälmann's 6.4 percent was more than twice Hindenburg's margin over Wilhelm Marx.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1925_German_presidential_election Given Hindenburg's role in undermining Weimar democracy--and given that after all, he was the man who appointed Hitler Chancellor--one has to be pretty dogmatic to assert that his election made no difference. (The division of the Left into the SPD and KPD helped Hitler in other ways, too, but I am just mentioning what seems to me the most obvious.) https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...appened-in-russia.470714/page-4#post-19282226

***

A couple of other thoughts:

(a) Hitler got his start in politics investigating possible subversive groups in Bavaria for the army. It's not altogerher clear to me that he would have been assigned this task without the concerns in the army generated by the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, which as its very name indicates was inspired by "October." Even if he is hired, he may never happen to come across Drexler's German Workers Party and make an impression on Drexler the way he did on the day he came across them in OTL.

(b) Without the rise of Mussolini, Hitler may never have come to power. It is arguable that Hitler would never have come to power without the Beer Hall Putsch--despite its utter failure--because of the attention it brought him (thanks to the Putsch and the subsequent trial he was no longer merely a local, Bavarian, figure) and the lessons it taught him. And the Beer Hall Putsch was modeled on the March on Rome. (As Philip Morgan writes, the Putsch "was to be Hitler's 'March on Berlin,' in the event a ham fisted and inaccurate reading of the 'March on Rome,' but a reading, nevertheless. Only after the failed coup did Hitler take on board the full sense of the strategy behind the 'March on Rome,' its compelling and effective blend of legal and illegal manouevring for power." Fascism in Europe 1919-1945, p. 162-3 https://books.google.com/books?id=mz8hLnFiz8wC&pg=PA162 So arguably, "no Mussolini, no Hitler"--at least as a major political figure in Germamy.

Would Mussolini have come to power without a Bolshevik Russia? If you see fascism as a reaction to the biennio rosso, it is hard to deny that the Bolsheviks' triumph played a major role in that "red biennium." Not just left-wing Socialists but Anarchists were emboldened: "This enthusiasm for the Russian Revolution even reached Individualist Anarchists like Joseph Labadie, who like many other anti-capitalists, saw "the red in the east [giving] hope of a brighter day" and the Bolsheviks as making "laudable efforts to at least try some way out of the hell of industrial slavery."" https://anarchyinaction.org/index.php?title=Anarchists_in_the_Italian_Factory_Occupations

For both Italy and Germany I think people who say that the rise of the far left (and the accompanying right-wing backlash) would have happened anyway underestimate the extent to which (a) the triumph of the Bolsheviks induced an "anything is possible" attitude on the far left and led them to conduct they might not otherwise have undertaken, and (b) the backlash became stronger because the far right could point out to the bourgeoise "We aren't just saying that the Left will take away your property and subject you to repression. It has already happened in Russia and has already inspired imitators here."

One final point: While Hitler's anti-Bolshevism took time to develop, it did become an essential element of his ideology. He had not at first been hostile to Russia:

"To begin with he was not hostile towards Russia, and saw Britain and France as Germany's main enemies. Indeed, during 1919, he blamed Germany's pre-war politicians for supporting Austria-Hungary against Russia.

"But by 1920 he was arguing that 'an alliance between Russia and Germany can come about only when Jewry is removed', and, by 1924, when he came to write Mein Kampf, he had concluded that Russia would be the target for Germany's drive to acquire Lebensraum. So how did this change of approach come about?

"Hitler's views on Russia during these early years were strongly influenced by Alfred Rosenberg, who had joined the Nazi party in 1920 and became the editor of its newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter. Rosenberg was a Baltic German who was studying in Moscow when the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917, and left Russia for Germany in November 1918.

"Thus he had experienced the Bolshevik revolution at first hand and became convinced that it was the work of the Jews. Hitler considered Rosenberg an expert on Russia and became equally persuaded of the link between Bolshevism and the Jews.

"By 1922, it was becoming apparent that the Bolshevik regime in Russia was there to stay. Indeed, it is clear from an interview Hitler gave in December 1922 that by then he had decided that an alliance with a Bolshevik Russia was out of the question. Germany would be better off working with Britain and Italy, which appeared to be resisting French hegemony in Europe, against Russia, which could in turn provide Germany's necessary Lebensraum. Hitler's views on Russia had been further hardened by his contacts with Baltic German exiles in Munich. Notable among these was Max-Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, a contact of August Winnig, the German Commissioner in the Baltic provinces responsible for organising the Free Corps, and General Ludendorff, the former leader of Oberost.." http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/hitler_lebensraum_01.shtml

So again, anti-Bolshevism was not just something Hitler adopted to catch votes. It was a real and vital part of his ideology (linked in his mind to his anti-Semitism). And it became so largely as a result of right-wing exiles from Russia who presumably would never have lived in Germany or had contact with Hitler without the Bolshevik victory in Russia.
 
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Russia would win wwi

Well, if the PG managed to hang on or was replaced by a non-Bolshevik socialist coalition government, Russia would be treated as one of the winners at Versailles (however disastrous Russia's actual military performance in 1917-18). But it's hard for me to see what it would have "won." It would even have lost some territory it held at the start of the War: The Western Allies, especially Wilson, were insistent on the independence of Poland, and the PG had already agreed to that on March 31. Russia could get eastern Galicia (assuming that a non-Bolshevik Russia could prevent the independence of Ukraine) but I'm not sure that was worth "about 5.5 million out of 16 million soldiers killed and wounded...500,000 soldiers missing, 3 million prisoners of war, 1.1 million disabled, 6 million refugees and tens of thousands of civilian victims..." https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/war_losses_russian_empire
 
Entente won Russia part of entente. Horrible results but still victory. Same as France win wwii.
 
Entente won Russia part of entente. Horrible results but still victory. Same as France win wwii.

As I said, I agree that Russia would formally have been one of the winners at Versailles. I just don't see what as a practical matter she would have "won." Even German reparations to Russia would probably just go to repaying French and other foreign bondholders.
 
Would the extreme reaction in the US to the left be avoided?
Yes. In the early 1900's in the US, socialism meant labor union advocacy. Without the Bolshevik example, communism would be associated with the many short-lived, faith-based communal towns in the US. Marx would be classified as a utopian dreamer and not a threat to organized religion. The American fear of socialism was more based on its attack on religion (USSR) than the economic ramifications. If the most socialistic countries were like Sweden, the fear of leftism would not be there.
 
Yes. In the early 1900's in the US, socialism meant labor union advocacy. Without the Bolshevik example, communism would be associated with the many short-lived, faith-based communal towns in the US. Marx would be classified as a utopian dreamer and not a threat to organized religion. The American fear of socialism was more based on its attack on religion (USSR) than the economic ramifications. If the most socialistic countries were like Sweden, the fear of leftism would not be there.
Any revolution is bad socialism and communism should come thru evaluation.
 
Any revolution is bad socialism and communism should come thru evaluation.
Evaluation or evolution?
(The only thing which comes about through evaluation, at least at the institutions I've worked in, is bloated bureaucracy.)
Yes. In the early 1900's in the US, socialism meant labor union advocacy. Without the Bolshevik example, communism would be associated with the many short-lived, faith-based communal towns in the US. Marx would be classified as a utopian dreamer and not a threat to organized religion. The American fear of socialism was more based on its attack on religion (USSR) than the economic ramifications. If the most socialistic countries were like Sweden, the fear of leftism would not be there.
Not entirely sure. The intense impression I've gotten from reading lots of bits and pieces from 1918/1919 is that the fear is not so much based on an attack on religion, and more centered around a very violent overthrow of the political system, replacing the age-honored republican traditions of the US with bloody mob rule. There was a social dimension of it, it's true, but I don't think it was specifically centered around religion, to me it seems like lots of dimensions of a general overturning of all social norms was something which a deeply conservative society feared a lot. Economic system change (or replacement of a system with nothing that had ever been successfully tried) was a part of that, too. I remember a really bad piece of propaganda fiction in which Bolshevik caricatures are portrayed as inverting any sane social norms, sharing their womenfolk and ending up having wasted and destroyed everything, with some late heroes realising the failure and having to struggle to escape from the whole crap.
 
1918/1919 is that the fear is not so much based on an attack on religion, and more centered around a very violent overthrow of the political system, replacing the age-honored republican traditions of the US with bloody mob rule. There was a social dimension of it, it's true, but I don't think it was specifically centered around religion, to me it seems like lots of dimensions of a general overturning of all social norms was something which a deeply conservative society feared a lot. Economic system change (or replacement of a system with nothing that had ever been successfully tried) was a part of that, too. I remember a really bad piece of propaganda fiction in which Bolshevik caricatures are portrayed as inverting any sane social norms, sharing their womenfolk and ending up having wasted and destroyed everything, with some late heroes realising the failure and having to struggle to escape from the whole crap.
That's true for the red scare of 1918. But those issues did not penetrate to the public the way they did after WW2. That's when the emotional, faith-based fear of communism took hold in the US. In 1954, they put "under God" in the pledge of allegiance and in 1957 put "In God We Trust" on more of the currency.
 
Let's say the Russian Revolution remains a violent overthrow of government, but without Lenin, makes no connection with Marx or socialism. You have coups of various types in other countries. Some are more violent than others. Russia might end up with a very "strained" version of semi-democracy, the way some Latin American countries did. Americans would still see it as something that could not happen at home.

Now, after WW2, Americans were rather easily led into "foreign fear" (OTL Red Scare). If a different cold war fear was instigated (Joe McCarthy), it could be a right wing threat. Of course, as this thread goes, there might not be the same WW2 as we know it. Of course, if Orwell writes a different version of 1984, the victimized working class will not be "proles."
 
That's true for the red scare of 1918. But those issues did not penetrate to the public the way they did after WW2. That's when the emotional, faith-based fear of communism took hold in the US. In 1954, they put "under God" in the pledge of allegiance and in 1957 put "In God We Trust" on more of the currency.
The 1918 Red Scare seems to have been anti-Italian/anti-Slavic/Anti-Yiddish while the 1950s Red Scare seems to have been anti-academia, anti-media, anti-atheist, anti-feminist, and segregationist.
 
If the most socialistic countries were like Sweden, the fear of leftism would not be there.

Well, if there's no October Revolution, is Sweden at all socialistic? My understanding is that the revolution in Russia was a major factor provoking the Swedish system to embrace a robust system of redistribution to ensure that the country wouldn't be rocked by similar unrest.

While the extreme conservatism of 19th Century Sweden must change, it could well change into something much different in a TL like this.

Of course, it's also true that endogenous factors could still be enough to drive Socialist victories in all the areas they won in OTL. So it's not for sure that Sweden would have a much different economy, I'm just saying it shouldn't be taken for granted.

fasquardon
 
My current working draft is that the war was pushing the Tsar off the cliff, the whole system was at breaking, thus unless the Tsar can get a favorable peace or pursues the war any longer we get the revolution in February that was in many ways the release previously back stopped in 1905. After that I think the PG is sort of inevitable. I say that because I cannot find any good way for the people surrounding Nicholas to swallow an armistice and peace. So the change for me is no USA intervention likely or foreseen, that should steer the PG to seeking an armistice. If the Germans are "winning" the likelihood of them sending Lenin with gold is less likely too. We should see a last offensive to halt the Germans, gain respect and position for a serious negotiation, so OTL looks quite parallel (minus Lenin agitating). If the offensive fails and German does not get victory disease, we can cobble together an armistice and peace with the PG clinging to legitimacy and power. At least that is where I put the tiller.

Now I think we might still get a "civil war", likely a more successful version of the Spartikist Revolt as we saw in Germany, I think Russians were closer to the brink than Germans and here there is no stalwart Army or veterans to snuff it out at the beginning. But this would not be the same as the October Revolution. Indeed, the "right" might be rebelling too at the defeat and the peace and all the things. That is where I get fuzzy. Best case I can get the lefty elements to prevail and impose a Republic, not unlike how the SDP did with its other leftward tilted partners who were still committed to a democracy, palatable to the right, not committed to persecution and murder to cement their power. If one can thread the needle, I think you get a sort of Weimar Republic Russia with much the same dysfunction.

I think this bolsters the social democrat ethos of take over from within and allows for such parties to sink deeper roots, take up majorities in most polities and transform most states into the generally same state directed, socially welfare and managed versions of OTL. The far left is not seen as a genuine threat or option, the far right is less virulent, it evolves to look more or less like the liberal versus socialist yo-yo. But I can allow for a remainder nationalism, slower progressivism, delayed anti-colonialism, lingering racism, sexism and economic inequality the world around, weaker welfare states, meeker democracy, and what may or may not look like a less libertine society. Pulling away the Soviet Union unravels a lot, raising a capitalist and democratic nation in its place invites many butterflies.
 
I think one has to ask what the alternative to "October" is. A continuation of Kerensky's by-then-extremely-unpopular government? Unlikely. A peaceful transfer of power to a socialist governnment backed by all the parties in the soviet? Even some Bolsheviks (Zinoviev and Kamenev) wanted that, but it is hard to see such a coalition lasting, because of disagreements about the war--Lenin had a hard enough time getting even the Bolsheviks to agree to Brest-Litvsk--see my post at https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ever-happened-in-russia.470714/#post-19264454

(One can argue however that the refusal of a socialist coalition government--including some Bolsheviks as well as the Menshevik and SR "social patriots"--to agree to Brest-Litovsk would not be such a disaster. Sure, the Germans can take Petrograd and even Moscow without much trouble. But they are just not capable of occupying all of Russia. In OTL, "General Max Hoffmann, the German commander on the Eastern Front, noted bitterly in his diary that despite the fact that his forces faced no opposition whatever, he would have to call an end to their advance. 'I should have no objection', he wrote, 'to pushing farther and farther eastwards. I should like to get to India except that the distances grow more immense, and our army does not.'" http://web.archive.org/web/20030310182535/http://scottreid.com/lenin.htm#anchor244115 So theoretically, a socialist coalition government could simply retreat to the Urals or beyond and wait for the German puppet government in European Russia to collapse after the German defeat, and then return after that collapse. There are of course a few problems with that. First of all, in the spring of 1918 it was far from clear that there would be a German defeat. Second, maybe the German puppet government tries to come to terms with the victorious Allies ("we were only pretending to back Germany to mitigate the harshness of its occupation. We were really hoping for your victory all the time, and surely we will be preferable from your viewpoint to those awful socialists.") Finally, even if the socialists make it back to Moscow, in the meantime Russia may have largely disintegrated, with Ukraine and other areas having declared their independence.

Regarding a survival of Kerensky's government: I think that it could have survived if Kerensky had not launched his disastrous offensive against the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empore, instead deciding to hold the line against them and maybe launching some small scale attacks against the Ottoman Empire. What do you think of that?
As for a government led by socialist parties: If Lenin had died, maybe by drowning on the Karelian Isthmus as you suggested in https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/a-drowning-on-the-karelian-isthmus-july-1917.475825/, could the Kronstadt sailors have overthrown the Provisonal Government, by themselves, as was suggested in https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-the-russian-civil-war.432998/#post-16391739? What do you think of that?
 
Yes. In the early 1900's in the US, socialism meant labor union advocacy. Without the Bolshevik example, communism would be associated with the many short-lived, faith-based communal towns in the US. Marx would be classified as a utopian dreamer and not a threat to organized religion. The American fear of socialism was more based on its attack on religion (USSR) than the economic ramifications. If the most socialistic countries were like Sweden, the fear of leftism would not be there.
William McKinley's assassination was only 20 years before the first red scare, well within the living memory of people in 1918-1919. The image of the bomb-throwing anarchist was connected to left-wing radicalism and anti-capitalism in the minds of much of the American public at the time.
 
Russian political history looks more latin american.
I've heard that. Somebody said that if the Mensheviks had succeeded, the result would have been a strained, Latin-American style democracy.
William McKinley's assassination was only 20 years before the first red scare, well within the living memory of people in 1918-1919. The image of the bomb-throwing anarchist was connected to left-wing radicalism and anti-capitalism in the minds of much of the American public at the time.
Without the Soviet example, Czolgosz would have been fixed as an anti-government anarchist. I question how much the public would have associated him with union-activist socialism or faith-based communal-society "communism." I think that in a different time line, Marx would have been regarded more as a blue-skied naturalist had the Bolsheviks had not embraced his doctrine.
 
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