WI:Stalin escaped to America in 1906

Shackel

Banned
What if Stalin, instead of escaping to Baku in 1906, he escaped to Chicago, America? At the moment I can't think of a perfect reason, but let's just assume he didn't want to be found.
 
What if Stalin, instead of escaping to Baku in 1906, he escaped to Chicago, America? At the moment I can't think of a perfect reason, but let's just assume he didn't want to be found.

Didn't Turtledove write a short story about this?
 
He finds that robbing banks requires a whole different set of skills in a new country.
 
Why is it everyone, myself included, immediately thinks Joe Stalin would become a mobster?

Personally, I see him working as an enforcer for Al Capone.
 
Didn't Turtledove write a short story about this?

Yes and no. HT's story had Stalin's parents moving to California in the 1870s, which meant that Stalin was born an American citizen, which meant he was allowed to run for the presidency in the 30s.

He couldn't run for president if he moved to the USA after being born and raised in Georgia (theirs not ours).
 

Shackel

Banned
Maybe the two would have a rivalry so powerful that it keeps Stalin alive until 1969.

Gangfight on the John Hancock, anyone?
 
I don't know that he'd necessarily have had a life outside the law. By no means is this a defense of one of the most brutal dictators the world has ever seen, but one has to wonder if his early "career" wasn't a product of circumstances.

OK, assuming the same proclivities and assuming emigration to the US around 1906 or so, I'd guess he'd wind up with maybe one or two scrapes with the law. But he wasn't stupid, so he may well have learned fairly fast that the US prison system of the day wasn't exactly vacation time. I'm going to guess he'd have largely gotten squared away, found some semi-white collar occupation (perhaps he'd have been a cog in the Cook County Democrats' machine, working some supervisory job in the county or city government), and likely would have died in semi-obscurity sometime in the 1950s. I doubt that his name would be noted by history outside a footnote or two in a very exhaustive, little-read scholarly treatment of Chicago politics in the mid-20th century.
 
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