WI: No PR China - Stalin decides to merge all Communist countries in a hyper-USSR?

Let's consider a scenario where the Communist Revolution fails in China and only a few part (maybe Manchuria) is controlled by the Communists while 90% of China remains under the rule of the Republic of China.

With only the USSR as the big Communist power, Stalin decides to merge all Communist countries in a single hyper-USSR: the Eastern European block (maybe excluding the GDR), Mongolia and the little Communist China (maybe DPR Korea would be out, as the case of GDR).

Which impact would have this move in the 20th century politics?
 
Well, assuming that roughly ten percent of China's population becomes part of this state, plus the Eastern Bloc countries becoming SSRs... the Soviet Union almost doubles in population. I'm assuming that Yugoslavia stays out of this.

This is going to put huge strain on Soviet resources. Puppet states weren't just valuable demographically, they made the administration of the Soviet sphere vastly easier by simplifying problems like the language question, infrastructure development and containing the expression of nationalism.
That will be vastly more difficult in this timeline, and that's before adding approximately 65 million Chinese, Mongolians and North Koreans who will be far harder to accommodate. Oh, and all of this is happening while the entire union has to recover from the war with Germany (and in the east, Japan and the KMT.)

I won't begin to speculate on exactly how this affects the leadership in the Kremlin, save to say that in this scenario Soviet paranoia will be increased with the knowledge that you have literally thousands of nationalist communist leaders who have to be convinced that their best interest lies in staying within the USSR. You might convince some of the Slavs of this; Mao, or Lin Bei, or Zhou Enlai or whoever the Chinese leader is will know that they will never get to the top in this system and will be looking for an excuse to jump.

Once Stalin dies, then his successor will doubtless try and unwind the horrible tangle. That probably won't be Khrushchev. In this scenario most of the existing Soviet leadership will probably have been purged after not going along with the ultracentralisation scheme. But that will put the Soviets under enormous strain- the status quo will be completely untenable, but trying to grant autonomy to the ethnic minorities risks a terrible unravelling of the entire system, especially for those minorities who made up the original minor SSRs (the Ukraine and Georgia, for instance,) not to mention those regions with separatist traditions within 'Russia' itself like Dagestan and Chechenya.

I'd expect the Cold War to end in the sixties with a human tragedy to rival World War II, as the super state tears itself apart in a struggle that stretches from Germany to the Pacific. It'll be horrible.
 
It becomes vastly more difficult for the Communists to become involved in decolonisation because the West can simply point at this act and say "They are the Imperialists, look what happened in Europe. The Russians have built an empire and want to add *************** to it."
 
Alternatively, we see a USSR that fuses the worst of Stalinism with the worst of Maoism, perhaps sparked by the Chinese Communists who, realizing Stalin is not long for this world, focus on claiming succession as Stalin had with Lenin. Rather than de-Stalinization, we see the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution span from Beijing to Berlin.
 
I can't see the Chinese taking the reins without prompting a coup, or major secessions.
Russia and the USSR was already stereotyped as being an 'Asiatic' tyranny- if leadership of the (majority European) superbloc passes to the leadership of the Manchurian SSR, the nationalist movements in Europe will have field day. Hungary in 1956 would be nothing in comparison.
 
I can't see the Chinese taking the reins without prompting a coup, or major secessions.
Russia and the USSR was already stereotyped as being an 'Asiatic' tyranny- if leadership of the (majority European) superbloc passes to the leadership of the Manchurian SSR, the nationalist movements in Europe will have field day. Hungary in 1956 would be nothing in comparison.

Pretty much. It would fall apart within two years tops.
 
The would-be resistance but Stalin knew how to handle resistance.
After Stalin's death the whole cost and difficulty of keeping the Soviet hyper-state together would become a burden. Considering how Stalin assembled it civil unrest would be quite common, that will eventually lead to an earlier collapse of the Soviet Union.
 
A hyper-USSR would become a nightmare for every post-Stalin leader of the Soviet Union. Also, if Albania and Manchuria are member states of the USSR, they may try to secede due to ideological differences (Soviet-Albanian split and the Sino-Soviet Split of OTL), which will lead to an earlier and more violent implosion of the USSR
 
Wasn't the whole point of communism about equality? Stalin wasn't Russian, why couldn't there be contributors from communist Asia?

If Stalin is doing a one world nation with all of communism under a communist UN variant then you'd expect propaganda to follow suite.

It'd surely be quite difficult for communist parties to go justify wanting their nation independent without examples to back up philosophically. But then communism otl managed to justify being the opposite of communism with rhetoric so maybe I'm being naive
 
Let's consider a scenario where the Communist Revolution fails in China and only a few part (maybe Manchuria) is controlled by the Communists while 90% of China remains under the rule of the Republic of China.

With only the USSR as the big Communist power, Stalin decides to merge all Communist countries in a single hyper-USSR: the Eastern European block (maybe excluding the GDR), Mongolia and the little Communist China (maybe DPR Korea would be out, as the case of GDR).

Which impact would have this move in the 20th century politics?

I have already pointed out that for Stalin to incorporate all the Soviet satellites into the USSR would be a bizarre decision that would accomplish absolutely nothing (since the Soviet military and police presence was enough to give Stalin whatever he wanted from these countries anyway), would have countless disadvantages, and would be totally out of conformity with his whole record (starting in 1920 when he actually quarreled with Lenin on this point, saying that a Red Poland and a Red Germany could not join a federation with Russia the way Ukraine could). Indeed, insofar as there were any movements to incorporate satellites into the USSR, they were more likely to come from the satellites themselves and be rejected by the USSR! https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-all-of-the-warsaw-pact.464098/#post-18636109 Including part of China in this would be even crazier since it would undermine the "patriotic" appeal which both Stalin and Mao knew was an inestimable advantage for the CCP. (And it would also undermine relations with Chiang Kai-shek--after all, if Stalin were convinced the CCP could not win in China as a whole, he wants to have as good relations with Chiang as possible. For that purpose, it makes more sense to have "autonomous" pro-Soviet governments in areas the Soviets considered of special interest, while keeping these areas nominally part of China. This is exactly what he did with the "Three Districts" in Xinjiang after the Ili Rebellion. True, he did force Chiang to officially recognize the loss of one formerly Chinese territory, Outer Mongolia. But everyone realized that China had had no real power there since 1924, and anyway even Outer Mongolia was not incorporated into the USSR.)
 
Let's consider a scenario where the Communist Revolution fails in China and only a few part (maybe Manchuria) is controlled by the Communists while 90% of China remains under the rule of the Republic of China.

With only the USSR as the big Communist power, Stalin decides to merge all Communist countries in a single hyper-USSR: the Eastern European block (maybe excluding the GDR), Mongolia and the little Communist China (maybe DPR Korea would be out, as the case of GDR).

Which impact would have this move in the 20th century politics?

Troubles in the new Hyper-URSS due to the various population, communist leadership included, really don't want to give up even their nominal independence so i expect the surviving anti-communist group receiving more support and riots starting more or less everywhere, with the red army needed to suppress them as the locals are not that trustworthy now.
Troubles in the west, as now the various communist party will have a lot of problem to justify giving up independece to willingly join the URSS and many of the rank and file while supporting communist were also nationalist, basically an earlier big strain in the west-est intracommunist relationships and the various communist party losing influence in the respective nations.

THe only way that this will happen is if Stalin had a minor stroke after the war, one that doesn't hinder his general autonomy but hit his mental capacity making him less restrained and thoughfull and at the same time more aggressive and even less capable to listen to anyone
 
I can't see this happening unless the USSR felt it was either in a) a position to lead the postwar order (no US/Western superpower), or b) that it had so little chance of being able to spread communism to other countries that it decided to simply grab what it could and build socialism in isolation (while waiting to rise another day). IOTL the USSR established nominal federalization instead of Chinese-style centralized administration in part because in the 1920s it seemed to many that the capitalist world was on its last legs and that they might soon have to welcome Polish, German, Romanian, Turkish, etc. SSRs into the family.

Post-World War II, a is not going to be the case with the US being what it is, so b is the likeliest option, assuming the non-Soviet powers are vehemently anti-communist. I don't know what could cause this; perhaps a concerted strategy on the part of the western Allies to undermine Soviet influence in Europe and Asia starting in 1944 (after success of Overlord) could be such a blow to the USSR's postwar position that it decides to knuckle down on whatever territory it has claiming the need for collective self-defense or something. Surely the CPSU is capable of the ideological airbrushing needed to portray this as something other than an imperialist project.

Such a USSR would be much more repressive and likely to maintain its totalitarian system for a longer period of time. I can see it maintaining a relatively low profile internationally while moving to take advantage of splits between other world powers.

Internally, the enlarged USSR would have several more SSRs, including a Chinese (Manchuria and possibly Xinjiang) SSR. This USSR would have permanently bad relations with the Republic of China for not only keeping Manchuria communist, but also having it annexed into the USSR. In Eastern Europe, I can see the Soviets holding less postwar territory as a result of Western conspiracy late in the Second World War, perhaps being confined to Poland, Finland, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania.

The Soviets would have a big headache assimilating these large populations not traditionally controlled by the Russian Empire, but it could be done with a good amount of violence couched in the rhetoric of anti-landlordism and anti-nationalist chauvinism, similar to the "de-extremification" campaigns used in OTL mainland China to justify persecution of the Uyghurs. I can see local resistance in Manchuria — 40 million people, basically a Ukraine of the East — being worn down through man-made famine and campaigns of "de-feudalization" carried out by the existing communist Chinese cadres, and accompanied by a Soviet-led period of reconstruction and urbanization to mold a politically obedient middle class. It is possible, if not likely, that all languages spoken in the USSR including Mandarin will be reformed to use Cyrillic.
 
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