WI soviets lose Russian revolution

So its a high risk of a "War lord" era in Russia following a defeat of the Bolscheviks?

There has to be some risk, but I'm not convinced it's a high one. I suspect the "hardcore" monarchists don't really have a leg to stand on. And the leaders of the major White factions seem to have all been on the same page, if maybe not always in the same paragraph. So an ideologically driven breakdown into warlords isn't likely. Another option is personality-driven warlordism, but it's not that likely either.

So the most likely outcome would be a more or less united Russian government (with plenty of intrigue and jockeying for influence between different White factions) alongside a small number of weak would-be warlords linked to separatist movements - like Semyonov in Transbaikal. These would eventually be crushed or forced to step down once the central government is back on its feet.
 
Re-establishing the monarchy was never a goal of the Whites. By the time the Bolsheviks seized power, the Romanovs had become completely irrelevant. Perhaps if Grand Duke Michael had more forcefully accepted his inheritance of the throne (or Nicholas II spent more time and effort preparing the transition), then he could have become a kind of constitutional monarch that could have defeated the Bolshevik takeover. But that POD needs to be in 1917 if not earlier.

The Whites were basically the Kadets faction which could not accept the need for vast agrarian reform. This killed their ability to mobilize the peasants, and was probably the biggest reason they lost. So you have to ask yourself in this scenario how did the Whites win? Did they win by rallying the non-Kadets factions and increasing their popular support? Or did they win a military victory somehow without making the compromises to win over the other factions?

I don't see the Whites effectively allying with other factions, nor do I see them winning along without them. If the Whites somehow did it, they'd likely have a much longer civil war on their hands as various peasant rebellions would replace the Bolsheviks. The civil war might last for decades more even if they succeeded in defeating the Bolsheviks.
 
That's actually an interesting POD.

A Non-Soviet Russia would not have been an international pariah. It would have probably avoided the Holodomor.

"probably"???? The Holodomor was the result of tremendous effort by a totalitarian state run by fanatical believers who thought it was necessary to their goals. One might as well suggest that if Moslems had overrun France in the Dark Ages, there "probably" would be no Chartres Cathedral.
Would it have industrialized as quickly?

That's an interesting question. The Soviets accomplished a great deal with their policy of "forced-march" industrialization, but at enormous and disproportionate cost. The politicization of everything, and the resulting endless purges of everyone even suspected of dissent dstroyed lots of human capital. Huge resources were dumped into projects of very limited value by the directive of planners in Moscow.

The chief "benefit" of the Soviet economic system was the forced diversion of national income to investment in heavy industry. So it is probable that the USSR had more steel production than otherwise, and some other things. But overall, I think it was a losing proposition.

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

We assume that the Civil War ends with the defeat of the "revolutionary" Bolsheviks; that removes an example and incentive for revolutionaries elsewhere, and a threat to the established order. There was a genuine feeling in 1918-1920 that the Bolshevik success in Russia was the beginning: The Revolution was imminent everywhere, the Red Tide was about to sweep the world. Even in the U.S., the Red Scare was rampant, and there were numerous incidents of "revolutionary" violence, such as the Wall Street Bombing.

If there is no Bolshevik triumph in Russia, that whole phenomenon dies out. There is less reactionary sentiment in Germany, and (ironically) that sentiment benefited Hitler. While there never was any real chance of Communist takeover, the fear of it caused some to accept Hitler in 1933.

However, I think the real knock-on is economic: does the non-Bolshevization of Russia prevent the Great Depression? Because it was the Depression that brought Hitler to power: until 1930. the NSDAP was a fringe party with less than 5% of the vote.

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

1) ITYM "Britain", not "England".

2) If Russia has a "normal" government, not a revolutionary regime pledged in theory to the overthrow of every other government in the world, there would be no great difficulty about anti-German alliances.

Or would a resurgent Russian Republic be cozying up to Hitler in order to retake the Baltics, Poland, etc.?

Russia and Germany could have become "Revisionist" allies. ("Revisionist" is a label applied to those European countries unhappy with the post-WW-I settlement.)

And would that Russian Republic have been easier to overrun than the Soviet?

Probably les militarized, but more likely to have a professional military not lobotomized by purges. And far less likely to be under the thumb of an absolute dictator who could be as wrong as Stalin was in 1941.

Or would the Russian Republic be the new home of militant Fascism out to rewrite Europe?
Russian fascism is a distinct possibility.
 
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