WI Stalin is overthrown in 1936 and replaced with Bukharin?

Dorozhand

Banned
Let's say Stalin is assassinated by a Old Bolshevik coup in 1936, supported by the half-purged army, and Bukharin is installed as Party Chairman, who promptly reorganizes the government so that the General Secretary no longer has power of appointments, and begins a program to introduce some aspects of representative democracy in the USSR, and decentralization of the economy in favour of the local Soviets. Could such a thing happen, and if so, what would happen next?
 
By '36, you'd need an assassination of Stalin to keep Bukharin alive. I'm not sure he would be in the best place to jostle for power post-Stalin and think it likely that at least initially power would be shared among several "equals". I suppose Kirov is still dead as per OTL? But assuming Bukharin becomes Party Chairman, I could see some motions towards a liberalized economy, less bellicose foreign policy rhetoric, and more cartoons penned by Bukharin (apparently a talented cartoonist):
Bukharin-Stalin-1929.jpg


I don't see any real movement to a representative democracy. Not by this point in time.
 

Cook

Banned
If this was in early 1936 it would be before the Great Purge, so the Red Army would still have Marshal Tukhachevski in command. The Soviet Union would not go into the most dangerous confrontation in its history having lost three of its five marshals, 13 of its 15 army commanders, 50 of its 57 corps commanders and 154 of its 158 divisional commanders. It would have the largest army in the world commanded by experienced officers who had embraced the doctrine of maneuver and mechanized warfare and who would readily assimilate the lessons learned by the Red Army officers seconded to the Spanish Civil War.

Soviet industry would likewise not have been near-fatally undermined by the purging of experienced managers and engineers on trumped up charges. Soviet factories would still proudly display banners reading “Do it the Ford Way, because the Ford Way is Best!” Promotion would come from hard work rather than denouncing your superior.

Consequently the Soviet Union would go into the European Crisis not only militarily and industrially stronger, but also considered stronger by the other European powers, which in the diplomatic terms would be equally if not more important; after the Munich Crisis when the British had to decide between Poland and the Soviet Union for an alliance because they could not ally with both, they chose the former because the latter was not considered militarily viable.

Without the heightened concerns over Bolshevism generated by Stalin’s purges, and with the already mentioned stronger state of the Red Army, the British might not have so readily written off the option of an anti-Nazi Grand Alliance of Britain, France and the soviet Union. With Stalin gone and a reasonably stable Soviet government, and with the redoubtable Maxim Litvinov as foreign minister, such a thing would be a very real possibility.

begins a program to introduce some aspects of representative democracy in the USSR
The people were democratically represented - by the Party; any move towards bourgeoisie concepts would be a step backwards. Anyone proposing such a move following a sudden and highly worrying readjustment of power in the Politburo would come under a great deal of suspicion. It is one thing to remove a tyrant who was undermining the Party and the legacy of Lenin, it is quite another to deliberately destroy that legacy yourself.
 
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By '36, you'd need an assassination of Stalin to keep Bukharin alive. I'm not sure he would be in the best place to jostle for power post-Stalin and think it likely that at least initially power would be shared among several "equals". I suppose Kirov is still dead as per OTL? But assuming Bukharin becomes Party Chairman, I could see some motions towards a liberalized economy, less bellicose foreign policy rhetoric, and more cartoons penned by Bukharin (apparently a talented cartoonist):

I don't see any real movement to a representative democracy. Not by this point in time.
Bukharin was a far more dedicated marxist theoritician than Stalin and also wrote about the difficulties of translating that theory into practice. He wrote in 1931: "The capitalist economic order is a system of unorganised elementally developing, and as a whole irrational economic life ("anarchy of production," competition, crises, etc.). The Socialist economic order is a system of organised, planned, and anti-exploiter economy, in which little by little there disappears the division between town and country, intellectual and physical labour."

Bukharin is nothing but detirmined to utilise a planned economy.
 
Bukharin was a far more dedicated marxist theoritician than Stalin and also wrote about the difficulties of translating that theory into practice. He wrote in 1931: "The capitalist economic order is a system of unorganised elementally developing, and as a whole irrational economic life ("anarchy of production," competition, crises, etc.). The Socialist economic order is a system of organised, planned, and anti-exploiter economy, in which little by little there disappears the division between town and country, intellectual and physical labour."

Bukharin is nothing but detirmined to utilise a planned economy.

Yes, but not in a ham-fisted fashion. Witness his support for the N.E.P. after it had fallen out of favor among most of the other establishment. A theoretician and a dedicated Marxist, yes. But a pragmatic (by the lights of the time and place) one.
 
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