WI soviets lose Russian revolution

Mrstrategy

Banned
if the soviets lose the Russian revolution who would be in charge of Russia?would Russia be a monarchy or republic?

  • Grand Duke Kirill (Cyril) Vladimirovich of Russia
  • Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky
  • ???
 
Keresnsky could be. The rodia could have General Denkin as a Horthy style regent, for the Tzar. Perhaps even the man baron of Mongolia.
 
That's actually an interesting POD.

A Non-Soviet Russia would not have been an international pariah. It would have probably avoided the Holodomor. Would it have industrialized as quickly?

Would lack of fear of Bolshevism have weakened the National Socialists in Germany? Perhaps Hitler would not have come to power?

Even if Hitler had come to power, would France or England have been more willing to make alliance with Russia?

Or would a resurgent Russian Republic be cozying up to Hitler in order to retake the Baltics, Poland, etc.? And would that Russian Republic have been easier to overrun than the Soviet?

Or would the Russian Republic be the new home of militant Fascism out to rewrite Europe?
 
It would have been Kerensky, General Kornilov, General Alekseev, or some combination of those three in charge of Russia. Assuming that the Bolsheviks have lose specifically the October revolution, and not the Civil War in one of its later stages.

It definitely wouldn't be Grand Duke Cyrill, since the former Emperor and Grand Duke Michael are still alive at the time. But chances are very low for the restoration of monarchy, anyway. Russia would probably be a republic of some kind.
 

Mrstrategy

Banned
I put cyrill because the emperor and Michael were executed because anti soviet troops are near where they are prisioners which probably happen anyway at least for the emperor
 
Its a period of quite substantial complexity and it really depends on exactly when and how things fall apart for the Soviets. Certainly following the Russian revolution the maxim that revolutionaries have to beware that they will be overthrown by even more radical elements is demonstrated; as much as one might want the Constituent Assembly to be revived the likelihood is at least in the short term that an extreme outcome is going to take place; either heavily revolutionary (Socialist Revolutionaries, Ethnic conflict, or Soviets) or heavily reactionary (Vozhd Kolchak or the like).
 
I would say no to a Revanchist Russia, they willing to give up Poland in the post-war period, maybe even the Baltics.
 
Would there be state-sanctioned pogroms from one end of the country to the other in the event of a White victory?
 
It really depends on why they are defeated, but the Social Revolutionaries were the leaders of the Provisional Government.


Perhaps an early victory against the Ottomans, say with an Iskenderun landing instead of Gallipoli, could prop up Russian will to fight and add a million men to the German front.


This could lead to less Bolshevik popularity among the soldiers and especially the peasantry. This combined with British and American shipping being able to make it to Black Sea ports could lead to a more cohesive and better-supplied White(SR) Army.
 

Mrstrategy

Banned
If the whites win who would they chose as head of Russia some were monarchist and some were anti monarchy but anti soviet
 
Well, that depends on *which* anti-Bolshevik force defeats the Bolsheviks. Geoffrey Swain in his *The Origins of the Russian Civil War* (1996) claims that "Kolchak's actions ended a war which the moderate socialists might have won and started a war the Whites would inevitably lose, putting the real civil war, the forgotten first civil war, on ice until 1920. By the time fighting resumed in Kronstadt and Tambov, the majority of Russians, after seven years of war, were no longer prepared to take up arms." p. 8 In defense of his argument that the moderate socialists might have won, he admits that the capture of Kazan in September and Samara in October certainly put the People's Army on the defensive, "but as the SRs constantly stressed during the last days of the directory, after an initial rout, volunteer units were staging a successful counter-offensive by the first fortnight in November 1918. On 5 November 1918, an offensive aimed at recapturing Samara was begun, and on 12 November 1918 the SR administration in Ufa could boast that a whole Bolshevik regiment had been taken prisoner. The successful recapture of Samara was expected with some confidence." p. 252 Personally, I think Swain lets his sympathy for the moderate socialists (which I largely share--though recognizing they messed things up pretty badly between February and October 1917) lead him to overestimate their prospects. Even if they did recapture Samara, that would hardly guarantee victory. Also, his recommendation on how the democrats could avoid a Kolchak coup--he thinks they should have taken a leaf from the Bolsheviks' book and used political commissars to assure that the army remained committed to the Constituent Assembly--might simply have provoked an earlier coup. And anyway, there was a widespread and justifiable belief that politicization of the army in 1917 had been one of the chief reasons things went wrong.

As for the Whites as usually understood--Denikin, Kolchak, etc.--I doubt they could have won (the closer Denikin got to Moscow the weaker his forces became). If they did, their official position was that they were not committing Russia to any particular form of government, whether republic or monarchy--such questions would be determined by a future freely elected Constituent Assembly. No doubt this was largely because they knew that such questions as monarchy versus republic would divide them, so talking about the Constituent Assembly was a convenient way of putting them off until the future. As Denikin wrote in 1918, "If I raise the republican flag, I lose half my volunteers, and if I raise the monarchist flag, I lose the other half. But we have to save Russia." "For this reason, the army's slogan was not any specific form of government, but 'great Russia, one and indivisible.'" https://books.google.com/books?id=NAZm2EdxKqkC&pg=PA209

However, whether they would really allow such an Assembly to be freely elected is doubtful. Kolchak's testimony seems to indicate the Constituent Assembly the Whites had in mind (or at least that he had in mind, but I doubt that Denikin would think differently) was not the democratic one elected in 1917 (and which was overwhelmingly dominated by self-described socialists of one sort or another, as IMO any democratically elected Constituent Assembly in Russia at the time would be):

"The general opinion...was that only a government authorized by the Constituent Assembly could be a real one; but the Constituent Assembly which we got...and which from the very beginning started in by singing the 'Internationale' under Chernov's leadership, provoked an unfriendly attitude...It was considered to have been an artificial and a partisan assembly. Such was also my opinion. I believed that even though the Bolsheviks had few worthy traits, by dispersing the Constituent Assembly they performed a service and this act should be counted to their credit." (Quoted in Orlando Figes, *A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924*, p. 588) http://www.rulit.net/books/a-people-s-tragedy-the-russian-revolution-1891-1924-read-232715-217.html

Genuinely free elections in Russia could simply not produce the kind of government the Whites wanted, which is why they could not in fact allow them to take place. The peasants would vote for the SR's, and the non-Russians would vote for parties that would endanger "Russia one and indivisible." Not just the Constituent Assembly elections of 1917 but the First and Second Duma elections showed the dangerous (to the Whites) radicalism of the Russian electorate--only the restrictive suffrage laws instituted by Stolypin could produce the conservative Third and Fourth Dumas.
 
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David T's reply is on the money. This is why my idea is to strengthen the SRs, who could be seen as a force for Democracy in Europe and further the Entente propaganda of the fight against Tyranny. The SRs are in a default leadership position to negotiate Entente aid against the Bolsheviks in 1917 and if they gain that aid in Ukraine and the Caucasus they hold a good enough power base to possibly win.
 
I might note that my prior post dealt in effect with "who could defeat the Bolsheviks in 1918-19?" So far as 1917 itself is concerned, "If the Soviets lose the Russian revolution" (to use the language of the original post) is somewhat ambiguous. There is a difference between the *Bolsheviks* and the *soviets.* The most likely alternative to the Bolshevik coup of OTL in 1917 is in fact a peaceful transfer of power to a multiparty socialist government (I mean genuinely multiparty, not the "soviet" government of OTL, which consisted of Bolsheviks and--temporarily--a few Left SR's as window dressing) backed by the soviets. In fact, this idea was supported by many moderate Bolsheviks; see https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/sRxwzgRL6NM/94HZ9IbElCgJ
 
The tough part about this is it really depends on what the actions of the white army are immediately after they take Petersburg or Moscow, the Bolsheviks at least were centralised in their power structure and had political commissars to keep the army in line,

The White army was composed of several generals, factions, militias and foreign armies who had differing views on many things operating with almost complete independance of each other. The potential for a bloody power struggle after victory is enormous.

Most likely is that some form of reactionary junta composed of yudenich deniken wrangel and kolchak will take power in st Petersburg, what happens after that is hard to figure out it really depends on who wins the power struggle but best case scenario they create some sort of rigged democracy with a strong man as tsar/president worst case scenario they try and recreate autocracy and reclaim the parts of the empire that declared independance.

Ukraine will probably Gain independance and other national/religious minorities will be much more poorly treated by the whites meaning that they will probably lose much more of the former Russian empire than the USSR did.

In the short term in the 1920s Russia will probably be very unstable in comparison to Bolshevik rule. But keeping some sort of market economy will probably serve Russia well in the long run.
 
So its a high risk of a "War lord" era in Russia following a defeat of the Bolscheviks?

Yes. The White Movement was that fractured, and the monarchists, republicans and all others are going to fall out rather quickly at the post-Civil War structure.
 
How much support did the original revolution have?

Could revolutionary sentiment be caught early enough for the tsar's forces to stamp it out?
 
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