WI no Stalin

Interesting POD. Does the USSR still even happen? My view is that the October Revolution was an extremely fragile event.
 
Interesting POD. Does the USSR still even happen? My view is that the October Revolution was an extremely fragile event.

The Revolution still happens, Stalin's role was minor at best. With no other butterflies, my guess is that most things go as OTL, maybe less police powers, and perhaps the General Secretary position isn't created until later. After Lenin dies, Trotsky would most likely take over in 1924-1925. From there, I'm not sure what would happen, but Trotsky's views on world revolution don't bode well.

Although being born a girl would be a more interesting question. He was sent to an Orthodox seminary as a kid, what would happen to Josefina (?) in this ATL?
 
... After Lenin dies, Trotsky would most likely take over in 1924-1925. From there, I'm not sure what would happen, but Trotsky's views on world revolution don't bode well. ...

This subject came up on a English language forum o the Soviet military. The consensus of two Russians and a Ukrainian was Trotsky would have definitely been more dangerous and destructive than Stalin. He was considered just as smart, less cautious/or more aggressive, and more nuanced. That is he would have been more selective & less heavy handed in eliminating opponents, not damaging the military with widespread purges. He was also thought to have a better track record at military operations & would not have made as many boneheaded decisions, or been paralyzed at the most critical moments.
 
Interesting POD. Does the USSR still even happen? My view is that the October Revolution was an extremely fragile event.

Actually, Stalin seems to have been one of those who, while paying lip service to Lenin's call for an insurrection, wanted to wait for the Congress of Soviets (which Lenin thought would be a fatal mistake). As Stalin wrote for the October 24 issue of Rabochii Put: "organize meetings, elect your delegations and through them, lay your demands before the Congress of Soviets...the stronger and the more organized and powerful your action, the more peacefully will the old government make way for the new." (Quoted in Robert Slusser, Stalin in October: The Man Who Missed the Revolution, p. 241) This editorial is also quoted in Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd. https://books.google.com/books?id=HzRiDJnTTG4C&pg=PA252 Rabinowitsch also notes that on the afternoon of October 24 at a caucus of Bolshevik party delegates, Stalin said, "Within the Military Revolutionary Committee, there are two points of view. The first is that we organize an uprising at once, and the second is that we first consolidate our forces. The Central Committee has sided with the second view."

For why waiting until the Congress met would have made a difference, see my post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/sRxwzgRL6NM/94HZ9IbElCgJ Fortunately for the Bolsheviks, Kerensky's attempted crackdown in the early morning of the 24th allowed them to portray their insurrection as a "defensive" measure.
 
By the way, I don't think Trotsky comes out ahead in a world of female Stalin or no Stalin at all. One of the reasons Stalin rose as high as he did was that he was Not Trotsky. The Old Bolsheviks were by and large intellectuals with an obsession towards history, to them Trotsky was such an obvious Bonaparte that they felt he had to be stopped. Trotsky was also too much of an obvious heir to Lenin for the liking of a lot of folks near Lenin, who remembered when they were all neo-equals, smuggling newspapers in their underwear across the borders of European kingdoms. He was also a man who was very, very smart and knew just how smart he was and enjoyed showing people the level of his intelligence. Being the smartest kid in class even among Bolsheviks was not always a stellar thing. His personality was gloriously abrasive and he gloried in the dramatics, including how he dressed and dressed people in his posse (he had a custom uniform for men of his armored car unit - all leather and shaded scarlet, babe). He looked and acted too much like The Man of the Hour before his hour had come to become The Man of the Hour.

I can see Kamenev, Bukharin and Zinoviev forming a block to stop Trotsky. But I am not sure if they had the guts to truly stand up to him. They would have needed a goon in their midst to go and say and do the things that had to be done to stop Trotsky. Someone who knew that they could go into the hallway after a Trotsky speech and whisper, "Ya know he's a Christ-killing Jew, ain't he? Just saying, comrades. Just saying." And then walk off and let the Russian anti-Semitism whirlwind. Given there were no shortage of amoral killers in the Bolshevik ranks, I'd like to nominate Lander for this position, if push comes to shove, but he was a schismatic. So maybe Beria could have shown up and learned how to suck up to someone in charge and do their work. Yagoda was good for a shooting and character assassination, so long as you left him alone to enjoy pornography and sex toys afterwards.
 
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