What if Trotsky had been a little tougher and decided to quash Stalin while he still had the opportunity through use of the Red Army? Specifically, I know that Trotsky was more into spreading communism than supporting a lone, communist nation. Would a Premier Trotsky have become a warmongerer or supported communist uprisings in other nations? How else would Trotsky have ruled differently than Stalin?
WI: Trotsky instead of Stalin
- Thread starter Dspoh001
- Start date
The question is whether he would be able to get there. If you take it that he can, for the sake of argument, he would not engage in overly aggressive foreign ventures because the Soviet Union cannot afford to do so. Even if the Red Army by some chance manages to take Poland without everyone else dogpiling it, that is as far west as he could plausibly go, and Trotsky would be keenly aware of that.
Thank goodness someone is raising an original topic here! 
**
OK, seriously, a few points:
(1) I find it very doubtful that Trotsky could use the Red Army to come to power. See my post at https://soc.history.what-if.narkive.com/GOcJcA0i/a-trotsky-military-coup-in-the-1920-s#post1
The question has sometimes been raised [1] whether Trotsky could have used
his positions as commissar of war and chairman of the Military
Revolutionary Council to launch a successful military coup against his
factional opponents during the 1920's. The Zinoviev-Kamenev-Stalin
triumvirate very likely had some fears on this score in the mid-1920's; as
early as January 1924 they removed Trotsky's ally Vladimir Antonov-
Ovseyenko as head of the Political Directorate of the Red Army and
replaced him with Andrei Bubnov. (Bubnov had also been a Trotsky
follower--he had signed the "Declaration of the Forty-Six" though with
some reservations [2]--but had gone over to the triumvirate's side.)
Trotsky was to write in 1935 that a military coup would have been easy--
indeed he makes it sound *incredibly* easy--but that he had rejected it
for principled reasons:
"There is no doubt that it would have been possible to carry out a
military coup d'état against the faction of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin,
etc., *without any difficulty and without even the shedding of any blood*;
but the result of such a coup d'état would have been to accelerate the
rhythm of this very bureaucratization and Bonapartism against which the
Left Opposition had engaged in struggle." [my emphasis--DT]
Likewise, Victor Serge--who retained his admiration of Trotsky even after
breaking with him politically--in his *Memoirs of Revolutionary* (pp.
234-5) wrote that Trotsky could easily have defeated his opponents by
relying on the Red Army:
"...[A] coup against the Politbureau of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin
would have been possible, and in our Oppositional circles we had weighed
this possibility. The army and even the G.P.U. would have plumped for
Trotsky if he had wished; he was always being told this. I do not know if
there were any formal deliberations on this subject among the leaders of
the Left Opposition, but I do know that the question was discussed (end of
1925, beginning of 1926) and it was then that Trotsky deliberately refused
power, out of respect for an unwritten law that forbade any recourse to
military mutiny within a Socialist regime; for it was all too likely that
power won in this way, even with the noblest intentions, would eventually
finish in a military and police dictatorship, which was anti-Socialist by
definition." http://books.google.com/books?id=zgqahLS2NFwC&pg=PA234
Serge goes on to quote the 1935 Trotsky statement cited above (with a very
slightly different translation), and adds:
"Rarely has it been made more sharply obvious that the end, far from
justifying the means, commands it own means, and that for the
establishment of a Socialist democracy the old means of armed violence are
inappropriate." http://books.google.com/books?id=zgqahLS2NFwC&pg=PA235
Before we accept this portrait of Trotsky--out of principled opposition to
bureaucratization and Bonapartism, nobly sacrificing a chance to come to
power--we should ask whether a military coup would have been that easy, or
indeed even possible. Here I would tend to agree with Roy Medvedev, *Let
History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism* (1989), pp.
133-136:
"... The idea of a military solution to the internal party conflict
occurred to some members of the Trotskyist opposition. Zinoviev, Kamenev,
and Stalin had some apprehensions in this regard, which explains the
changes made on the Revolutionary Military Council as early as 1924 and
the removal of Antonov-Ovseyenko as head of the Political Directorate of
the Red Army and his replacement by Bubnov.
"It must be said quite emphatically, however, that at the time of the
discussion in the party there was never any real threat of a military
coup, if only because the Red Army was never just a 'docile' instrument in
Trotsky's hands. Trotsky could rely fully on the soldiers of the Red Army
when he gave the order to march on Warsaw, but he could not have raised
the Red Army against the Central Committee and the Politburo...
"If Trotsky in 1924 thought as he wrote in 1925, it would have been one
more of his illusions... [A] military ouster of the triumvirate and the
party apparatus loyal to it would have been an extremely difficult and
uncertain undertaking--an adventure with very little chance of success. If
Trotsky refrained from such a step, one can assume that what held him back
was not concern over Bonapartism but uncertainty of his control over the
Red Army.
"The German edition of Serge's memoirs contains a foreword by the
prominent German revolutionary Wollenberg, who went to live in the Soviet
Union after the failure of the German revolution and in the thirties fled
to the West from the persecution of the NKVD and the Gestapo. Wollenberg
convincingly disputes the version of events presented by Serge:
"'What a colossal mistake in assessing the concrete situation that had
arisen in the land of the Soviets within a few months after Lenin's death!
I must add that at the time Lenin died I was still on military duty in
Germany. As a specialist in civil war I held a prominent post in the
German Communist Party. At that time I thought along more or less the
same lines as Serge and as Trotsky apparently thought about all these
matters for another decade or more.
"'But when I moved to Moscow, I saw my error. In Moscow I was forced to
realize that the leading figures on the Red Army general staff, such as
Tukhachevsky, with whom I became friends, admired Trotsky greatly as the
organizer of the Red Army, as a man and a revolutionary, but at the same
time they took a critical attitude toward his general political position.
"'...I had very close contact with the army in general, and, through it,
with the Russian village. There could be no doubt that the top military
command had full confidence in the party leadership.... And in the entire
party there was an unquestionable majority in favor of the triumvirate,
that is, the leading threesome formed after Lenin's death: Zinoviev,
Kamenev, and Stalin. That was the order in which the importance of the
three members was estimated at the time--with Stalin last.
"'If the Soviet constitution could have been changed for a plebiscite to
be held, it is impossible to say which of Lenin's successors would have
gathered the most votes. But it can be said for certain that, given the
hostility of the peasants and the middle class (which was reappearing in
the first half of the 1920s) in relation to Trotsky, who was considered an
'enemy of NEP,' the outcome would have been rather unfavorable for him.
"'It is necessary to state this with full clarity because to this day
Trotskyists of all varieties, as well as Soviet experts in West Germany
and other countries, continue to spread the tale in speech, in print, on
radio and on television that after Lenin's death Trotsky supposedly missed
a 'sure bet.' Apparently Victor Serge believed this too right up to his
death.'"
(2) If Trotsky couldn't come to power by a military coup, how could he come to power? (Please don't say by using Lenin's "Testament"--it was critical of Trotsky and all the other Bolshevik leaders as well as Stalin, and even if its proposal to remove Stalin as General Secretary had been implemented, it hardly follows that Trotsky would be the beneficiary. In 1923, Zinoviev and Kamenev seemed more likely to benefit.) One possibility I mentioned in an old post:
One thing that is often forgotten is that there actually was a pro-Trotsky Secretariat for a while! From December 1919 to March 1921 the "Responsible Secretary" was Trotsky's ally Nikolai Krestinsky. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay_Krestinsky (Also in the Secretariat was Preobrazhensky, who was to become the chief theorist of Trotsky and the "Left Opposition" on economic matters later in the 1920's.) Krestinsky was removed from this position (as well as his Politburo and Orgburo positions) in March 1921 for having sided with Trotsky against Lenin on the "trade union dispute." Perhaps if Lenin had died before 1921, Krestinsky could have used the powers of the Secretariat to bolster Trotsky's position.
You may say that the Secretariat was not nearly as powerful then as it would be once the position of General Secretary was created and given to Stalin. True, but to some extent the powers of an office are what the holder makes of them. Krestinsky never seems to have tried to use the Secretariat to build up a personal or pro-Trotsky factional power base. Maybe with a healthy Lenin still around he couldn't have done so even if he had tried. In any event, even in 1920-21 the Secretariat was by no means solely a technical office without political significance. It was in 1921--well before Stalin's General Secretaryship--that Bukharin made his famous quip that "the history of humanity is divided into three periods: the matriarchate, the patriarchate, and the Secretariat." http://books.google.com/books?id=BUg-lWpZcsIC&pg=PA154
(About the "trade union dispute": Calling for open statification of trade unions and militarization of labor was another of Trotsky's political mistakes which helped to give him a reputation as authoritarian and a "splitter" while driving Lenin closer to Stalin. Of course Lenin did not favor independent trade unions any more than Trotsky--but as Robert Service notes, "Whereas Lenin hoped to control the trade unions by stealth, Trotsky wanted to do it to the accompaniment of bells and whistles." http://books.google.com/books?id=mbD8jRUdAjsC&pg=PA279 Bukharin's attempt to form a "buffer group" simply annoyed both Lenin and Trotsky; the "Workers' Opposition" objected to both Lenin's and Bukharin's positions but saved their strongest criticism for Trotsky; and Stalin, whom Lenin had criticized after the Polish war, now organized Lenin's faction during the dispute. It seems that, as Service remarks, Trotsky relished a good dispute too much to care about the consequences...) https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/R8y9UR6NylI/EXMm-sTFe20J
(3) The idea of Trotsky as the champion of "world revolution" vs. Stalin as the champion of "socialism in one country" is IMO absurdly overplayed.
"Socialism in one country" was an attempt to keep up the morale of the Bolsheviks after the failure of Europe to undergo successful Communist revolutions in 1918-23. If did *not* mean that the USSR would give up on encouraging revolutions abroad, only that as of circa 1925 there seemed little immediate chance that such revolutions would succeed (at least in Europe) and in the meantime the USSR could build socialism even without such revolutions.
I agree with Leszek Kolakowski, *Main Currents of Marxism*, "It is possible that if Trotsky had been in charge of Soviet foreign policy and the Comintern in the 1920s he would have taken more interest than Stalin did in organizing Communist risings abroad, but there is no reason to think his efforts would have had any success. Naturally he used every defeat of Communists in the world to accuse Stalin of neglecting the revolutionary cause. But it is not at all clear what Stalin could have done if he had been actuated by the internationalist zeal which Trotsky accused him of lacking. Russia had no no means of ensuring a German Communist victory in 1923 or a Chinese one in 1926. Trotsky's later charge that the Comintern failed to exploit revolutionary opportunities because of Stalin's doctrine of socialism in one country is completely devoid of substance." https://books.google.com/books?id=qUCxpznbkaoC&pg=PA807
(4) Related to the above: For some reason, when Trotsky's position in the 1920's is discussed, people almost always ignore his explicit statement in 1925 that (1) he regarded "permanent revolution" as pertaining solely to the past and (2) did not think the future economic advance of the Soviet Union depended on accelerated revolution in the West:
***
3. The question of the estimation of the peasantry in this connection is of the greatest political importance. I absolutely deny that the formula “permanent revolution,” which applies wholly to the past, in any way caused me to adopt a careless attitude towards the peasantry in the conditions of the Soviet Revolution. If at any time after October, I had occasion for private reasons to revert to the formula, “permanent revolution,” it was only a reference to Party history, i.e., to the past, and had no reference to the question of present-day political tasks. To my mind, the attempt to construct an irreconcilable contradiction in this matter is not justified either by the 8 years’ experience of the revolution, through which we have gone together, or by the tasks of the future.
Equally I refute the statements and reference to my alleged “pessimistic” attitude towards the progress of our work of Socialist construction in the face of the retarded process of the revolution in the West. In spite of all the difficulties arising out of our capitalistic environment, the economic and political resources of the Soviet dictatorship are very great. I have repeatedly developed and argued this idea on the instructions of the Party, particularly at international congresses, and I consider that this idea preserves all its force for the present period of historical development.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1925/01/ccletter.htm
***
(5) Another old post of mine:
I don't think a Trotsky-ruled USSR is very likely at any time after Stalin was named as General Secretary (Zinoviev-Kamenev prevailing over Stalin in 1923 or Bukharin prevailing in 1928 are actually more plausible alternatives to Stalin IMO) but if somehow it happens, here is an interesting possibility: the USSR takes the lead in nuclear physics and develops the first a-bomb? Consider what Trotsky said in 1926:
"The phenomena of radio-activity are leading us to the problem of releasing intra-atomic energy. The atom contains within itself a mighty hidden energy, and the greatest task of physics consists in pumping out this energy, pulling out the cork so that this hidden energy may burst forth in a fountain. Then the possibility will be opened up of replacing coal and oil by atomic energy, which will also become the basic motive power. This is not at all a hopeless task. And what prospects it opens before us!" https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1926/03/science.htm
WI: Trotsky leads the USSR instead of Stalin?
I mean that in this case, the PoD is that Trotsky gets wind of Lenin's testament and uses it to discredit Stalin before he has a chance to do any serious damage. What would the implications be for human history, and how would this change WW2? Would it mean a realistic C&C: Red Alert 1 scenario...
www.alternatehistory.com
Leon Trotsky succeeds Lennin
What if Lennin was more vocal in his opposition of Stalin, at least vocal enough to discredit Stalin? I think that had this happened, Leon Trotsky would have succeeded Lennin. Why? Because he was supposed to in OTL. Had Trotsky become the leader of the Soviet Union, they would have definitely...
www.alternatehistory.com
How would life in the Soviet Union under Leon Trotsky be any different than it was under Stalin?
I know Leon Trotsky was no angel, so the Soviet Union would probably retain a degree of government oppression (such as Stalin-esque policies regarding industrialization which led to the OTL Holodomor), but aside from that, how would life under Trotsky be any different than what life was under...
www.alternatehistory.com
DBWI: What if Stalin took power instead of Trotsky?
I was just watching that comedy film "Death of Trotsky" about when all of the major communist leaders fought over the Soviet Union when Trotsky died. It reminded me of one of Trotsky's political enemies from when he was first made General Secretary by the name of Joseph Stalin. What do you think...
www.alternatehistory.com
PC: No Hitler and Trotsky instead of Stalin leads to USSR starting WW2
If Hitler didn't come to power and Trotsky instead of Stalin succeeded Lenin, how plausible is it that WW2 could be started by the Soviet Union? I think I've heard Trotsky believed in spreading the revolution all over the world by force perhaps.
www.alternatehistory.com
AHC: Make Trotsky Defeat Stalin
IOTL, after Lennin's death in 1924, Stalin & Trotsky engaged in a struggle for leader- ship of the Soviet state. Stalin won, & Trotsky was exiled & later murdured. The challenge here is- Arrange events to work out differently so that Trotsky, not Stalin, wins this struggle.
www.alternatehistory.com
WI Trotsky wins the power struggle against Stalin
I want to know what would happen.
www.alternatehistory.com
Trotsky and not Stalin
Apparently, it would have been a safe bet to say that Trotsky would have succeeded Lenin in 1924. The famous letter counted against Stalin. Maybe more importantly, Trotsky's insistence of 'global revolution' may have been seen as unrealistic by many, whereas Stalin's "Socialism in one...
www.alternatehistory.com
Leon Trotsky instead of Stalin?
What if Leon Trotsky remained ruler of the Soviets instead of Stalin? How would history have been different? How differently would he have dealt with European politics?
www.alternatehistory.com
what if stalin had died in the red white civil war and Leon Trotsky sucseeded lennin
whithout stalin Leon Trotsky takes lenin old postion what doe he do how doe the USSR turn out? what is russia like today?
www.alternatehistory.com
Trotsky instead of Stalin
What would have been the repercussions if Leon Trotsky had gained power instead of Joseph Stalin? Say, Lenin lived long enough to pass power to Trotsky. Or, Stalin died earlier. So I guess this would be two different possible outcomes, i.e. if Stalin lived to challenge Trotsky or if Trotsky had...
www.alternatehistory.com
Trotsky not Stalin
What if Trotsky not Stalin had succeeded Lenin? What are the effects? How does the Soviet Union emerge, I have read that Trotsky despised the bureaucracy and the closed party. Would a Trotsky USSR be more democratic? What does it mean for Europe?
www.alternatehistory.com
**
OK, seriously, a few points:
(1) I find it very doubtful that Trotsky could use the Red Army to come to power. See my post at https://soc.history.what-if.narkive.com/GOcJcA0i/a-trotsky-military-coup-in-the-1920-s#post1
The question has sometimes been raised [1] whether Trotsky could have used
his positions as commissar of war and chairman of the Military
Revolutionary Council to launch a successful military coup against his
factional opponents during the 1920's. The Zinoviev-Kamenev-Stalin
triumvirate very likely had some fears on this score in the mid-1920's; as
early as January 1924 they removed Trotsky's ally Vladimir Antonov-
Ovseyenko as head of the Political Directorate of the Red Army and
replaced him with Andrei Bubnov. (Bubnov had also been a Trotsky
follower--he had signed the "Declaration of the Forty-Six" though with
some reservations [2]--but had gone over to the triumvirate's side.)
Trotsky was to write in 1935 that a military coup would have been easy--
indeed he makes it sound *incredibly* easy--but that he had rejected it
for principled reasons:
"There is no doubt that it would have been possible to carry out a
military coup d'état against the faction of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin,
etc., *without any difficulty and without even the shedding of any blood*;
but the result of such a coup d'état would have been to accelerate the
rhythm of this very bureaucratization and Bonapartism against which the
Left Opposition had engaged in struggle." [my emphasis--DT]
Leon Trotsky: How Did Stalin Defeat the Opposition? (1935)
Leon Trotsky: How Did Stalin Defeat the Opposition? (November 1935)
www.marxists.org
Likewise, Victor Serge--who retained his admiration of Trotsky even after
breaking with him politically--in his *Memoirs of Revolutionary* (pp.
234-5) wrote that Trotsky could easily have defeated his opponents by
relying on the Red Army:
"...[A] coup against the Politbureau of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin
would have been possible, and in our Oppositional circles we had weighed
this possibility. The army and even the G.P.U. would have plumped for
Trotsky if he had wished; he was always being told this. I do not know if
there were any formal deliberations on this subject among the leaders of
the Left Opposition, but I do know that the question was discussed (end of
1925, beginning of 1926) and it was then that Trotsky deliberately refused
power, out of respect for an unwritten law that forbade any recourse to
military mutiny within a Socialist regime; for it was all too likely that
power won in this way, even with the noblest intentions, would eventually
finish in a military and police dictatorship, which was anti-Socialist by
definition." http://books.google.com/books?id=zgqahLS2NFwC&pg=PA234
Serge goes on to quote the 1935 Trotsky statement cited above (with a very
slightly different translation), and adds:
"Rarely has it been made more sharply obvious that the end, far from
justifying the means, commands it own means, and that for the
establishment of a Socialist democracy the old means of armed violence are
inappropriate." http://books.google.com/books?id=zgqahLS2NFwC&pg=PA235
Before we accept this portrait of Trotsky--out of principled opposition to
bureaucratization and Bonapartism, nobly sacrificing a chance to come to
power--we should ask whether a military coup would have been that easy, or
indeed even possible. Here I would tend to agree with Roy Medvedev, *Let
History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism* (1989), pp.
133-136:
"... The idea of a military solution to the internal party conflict
occurred to some members of the Trotskyist opposition. Zinoviev, Kamenev,
and Stalin had some apprehensions in this regard, which explains the
changes made on the Revolutionary Military Council as early as 1924 and
the removal of Antonov-Ovseyenko as head of the Political Directorate of
the Red Army and his replacement by Bubnov.
"It must be said quite emphatically, however, that at the time of the
discussion in the party there was never any real threat of a military
coup, if only because the Red Army was never just a 'docile' instrument in
Trotsky's hands. Trotsky could rely fully on the soldiers of the Red Army
when he gave the order to march on Warsaw, but he could not have raised
the Red Army against the Central Committee and the Politburo...
"If Trotsky in 1924 thought as he wrote in 1925, it would have been one
more of his illusions... [A] military ouster of the triumvirate and the
party apparatus loyal to it would have been an extremely difficult and
uncertain undertaking--an adventure with very little chance of success. If
Trotsky refrained from such a step, one can assume that what held him back
was not concern over Bonapartism but uncertainty of his control over the
Red Army.
"The German edition of Serge's memoirs contains a foreword by the
prominent German revolutionary Wollenberg, who went to live in the Soviet
Union after the failure of the German revolution and in the thirties fled
to the West from the persecution of the NKVD and the Gestapo. Wollenberg
convincingly disputes the version of events presented by Serge:
"'What a colossal mistake in assessing the concrete situation that had
arisen in the land of the Soviets within a few months after Lenin's death!
I must add that at the time Lenin died I was still on military duty in
Germany. As a specialist in civil war I held a prominent post in the
German Communist Party. At that time I thought along more or less the
same lines as Serge and as Trotsky apparently thought about all these
matters for another decade or more.
"'But when I moved to Moscow, I saw my error. In Moscow I was forced to
realize that the leading figures on the Red Army general staff, such as
Tukhachevsky, with whom I became friends, admired Trotsky greatly as the
organizer of the Red Army, as a man and a revolutionary, but at the same
time they took a critical attitude toward his general political position.
"'...I had very close contact with the army in general, and, through it,
with the Russian village. There could be no doubt that the top military
command had full confidence in the party leadership.... And in the entire
party there was an unquestionable majority in favor of the triumvirate,
that is, the leading threesome formed after Lenin's death: Zinoviev,
Kamenev, and Stalin. That was the order in which the importance of the
three members was estimated at the time--with Stalin last.
"'If the Soviet constitution could have been changed for a plebiscite to
be held, it is impossible to say which of Lenin's successors would have
gathered the most votes. But it can be said for certain that, given the
hostility of the peasants and the middle class (which was reappearing in
the first half of the 1920s) in relation to Trotsky, who was considered an
'enemy of NEP,' the outcome would have been rather unfavorable for him.
"'It is necessary to state this with full clarity because to this day
Trotskyists of all varieties, as well as Soviet experts in West Germany
and other countries, continue to spread the tale in speech, in print, on
radio and on television that after Lenin's death Trotsky supposedly missed
a 'sure bet.' Apparently Victor Serge believed this too right up to his
death.'"
Let History Judge
The most comprehensive and revealing investigation of Stalinism and political developments in the Soviet Union from 1922-1953, this edition is an extensively revised and expanded version of a classic work. The internationally known historian Roy Medvedev has included more than one-hundred new...
books.google.com
(2) If Trotsky couldn't come to power by a military coup, how could he come to power? (Please don't say by using Lenin's "Testament"--it was critical of Trotsky and all the other Bolshevik leaders as well as Stalin, and even if its proposal to remove Stalin as General Secretary had been implemented, it hardly follows that Trotsky would be the beneficiary. In 1923, Zinoviev and Kamenev seemed more likely to benefit.) One possibility I mentioned in an old post:
One thing that is often forgotten is that there actually was a pro-Trotsky Secretariat for a while! From December 1919 to March 1921 the "Responsible Secretary" was Trotsky's ally Nikolai Krestinsky. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay_Krestinsky (Also in the Secretariat was Preobrazhensky, who was to become the chief theorist of Trotsky and the "Left Opposition" on economic matters later in the 1920's.) Krestinsky was removed from this position (as well as his Politburo and Orgburo positions) in March 1921 for having sided with Trotsky against Lenin on the "trade union dispute." Perhaps if Lenin had died before 1921, Krestinsky could have used the powers of the Secretariat to bolster Trotsky's position.
You may say that the Secretariat was not nearly as powerful then as it would be once the position of General Secretary was created and given to Stalin. True, but to some extent the powers of an office are what the holder makes of them. Krestinsky never seems to have tried to use the Secretariat to build up a personal or pro-Trotsky factional power base. Maybe with a healthy Lenin still around he couldn't have done so even if he had tried. In any event, even in 1920-21 the Secretariat was by no means solely a technical office without political significance. It was in 1921--well before Stalin's General Secretaryship--that Bukharin made his famous quip that "the history of humanity is divided into three periods: the matriarchate, the patriarchate, and the Secretariat." http://books.google.com/books?id=BUg-lWpZcsIC&pg=PA154
(About the "trade union dispute": Calling for open statification of trade unions and militarization of labor was another of Trotsky's political mistakes which helped to give him a reputation as authoritarian and a "splitter" while driving Lenin closer to Stalin. Of course Lenin did not favor independent trade unions any more than Trotsky--but as Robert Service notes, "Whereas Lenin hoped to control the trade unions by stealth, Trotsky wanted to do it to the accompaniment of bells and whistles." http://books.google.com/books?id=mbD8jRUdAjsC&pg=PA279 Bukharin's attempt to form a "buffer group" simply annoyed both Lenin and Trotsky; the "Workers' Opposition" objected to both Lenin's and Bukharin's positions but saved their strongest criticism for Trotsky; and Stalin, whom Lenin had criticized after the Polish war, now organized Lenin's faction during the dispute. It seems that, as Service remarks, Trotsky relished a good dispute too much to care about the consequences...) https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/R8y9UR6NylI/EXMm-sTFe20J
(3) The idea of Trotsky as the champion of "world revolution" vs. Stalin as the champion of "socialism in one country" is IMO absurdly overplayed.
"Socialism in one country" was an attempt to keep up the morale of the Bolsheviks after the failure of Europe to undergo successful Communist revolutions in 1918-23. If did *not* mean that the USSR would give up on encouraging revolutions abroad, only that as of circa 1925 there seemed little immediate chance that such revolutions would succeed (at least in Europe) and in the meantime the USSR could build socialism even without such revolutions.
I agree with Leszek Kolakowski, *Main Currents of Marxism*, "It is possible that if Trotsky had been in charge of Soviet foreign policy and the Comintern in the 1920s he would have taken more interest than Stalin did in organizing Communist risings abroad, but there is no reason to think his efforts would have had any success. Naturally he used every defeat of Communists in the world to accuse Stalin of neglecting the revolutionary cause. But it is not at all clear what Stalin could have done if he had been actuated by the internationalist zeal which Trotsky accused him of lacking. Russia had no no means of ensuring a German Communist victory in 1923 or a Chinese one in 1926. Trotsky's later charge that the Comintern failed to exploit revolutionary opportunities because of Stalin's doctrine of socialism in one country is completely devoid of substance." https://books.google.com/books?id=qUCxpznbkaoC&pg=PA807
(4) Related to the above: For some reason, when Trotsky's position in the 1920's is discussed, people almost always ignore his explicit statement in 1925 that (1) he regarded "permanent revolution" as pertaining solely to the past and (2) did not think the future economic advance of the Soviet Union depended on accelerated revolution in the West:
***
3. The question of the estimation of the peasantry in this connection is of the greatest political importance. I absolutely deny that the formula “permanent revolution,” which applies wholly to the past, in any way caused me to adopt a careless attitude towards the peasantry in the conditions of the Soviet Revolution. If at any time after October, I had occasion for private reasons to revert to the formula, “permanent revolution,” it was only a reference to Party history, i.e., to the past, and had no reference to the question of present-day political tasks. To my mind, the attempt to construct an irreconcilable contradiction in this matter is not justified either by the 8 years’ experience of the revolution, through which we have gone together, or by the tasks of the future.
Equally I refute the statements and reference to my alleged “pessimistic” attitude towards the progress of our work of Socialist construction in the face of the retarded process of the revolution in the West. In spite of all the difficulties arising out of our capitalistic environment, the economic and political resources of the Soviet dictatorship are very great. I have repeatedly developed and argued this idea on the instructions of the Party, particularly at international congresses, and I consider that this idea preserves all its force for the present period of historical development.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1925/01/ccletter.htm
***
(5) Another old post of mine:
I don't think a Trotsky-ruled USSR is very likely at any time after Stalin was named as General Secretary (Zinoviev-Kamenev prevailing over Stalin in 1923 or Bukharin prevailing in 1928 are actually more plausible alternatives to Stalin IMO) but if somehow it happens, here is an interesting possibility: the USSR takes the lead in nuclear physics and develops the first a-bomb? Consider what Trotsky said in 1926:
"The phenomena of radio-activity are leading us to the problem of releasing intra-atomic energy. The atom contains within itself a mighty hidden energy, and the greatest task of physics consists in pumping out this energy, pulling out the cork so that this hidden energy may burst forth in a fountain. Then the possibility will be opened up of replacing coal and oil by atomic energy, which will also become the basic motive power. This is not at all a hopeless task. And what prospects it opens before us!" https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1926/03/science.htm
Thank you so much for this. I only check in to this website every now and then and hadn't realized that this topic had been discussed so many times. Guess there goes that timeline I was trying to come up with of a Trotsky led USSR trying to stir up a communist revolution in Nazi Germany. Thought the many victims of the Nazi regime would be willing to take any help they could get at that point (towards beginning of WWII). Will have to keep thinking. I've been struggling to come up with a realistic timeline that hasn't already been used many a time.Thank goodness someone is raising an original topic here!
WI: Trotsky leads the USSR instead of Stalin?
I mean that in this case, the PoD is that Trotsky gets wind of Lenin's testament and uses it to discredit Stalin before he has a chance to do any serious damage. What would the implications be for human history, and how would this change WW2? Would it mean a realistic C&C: Red Alert 1 scenario...www.alternatehistory.com
Leon Trotsky succeeds Lennin
What if Lennin was more vocal in his opposition of Stalin, at least vocal enough to discredit Stalin? I think that had this happened, Leon Trotsky would have succeeded Lennin. Why? Because he was supposed to in OTL. Had Trotsky become the leader of the Soviet Union, they would have definitely...www.alternatehistory.com
How would life in the Soviet Union under Leon Trotsky be any different than it was under Stalin?
I know Leon Trotsky was no angel, so the Soviet Union would probably retain a degree of government oppression (such as Stalin-esque policies regarding industrialization which led to the OTL Holodomor), but aside from that, how would life under Trotsky be any different than what life was under...www.alternatehistory.com
DBWI: What if Stalin took power instead of Trotsky?
I was just watching that comedy film "Death of Trotsky" about when all of the major communist leaders fought over the Soviet Union when Trotsky died. It reminded me of one of Trotsky's political enemies from when he was first made General Secretary by the name of Joseph Stalin. What do you think...www.alternatehistory.com
PC: No Hitler and Trotsky instead of Stalin leads to USSR starting WW2
If Hitler didn't come to power and Trotsky instead of Stalin succeeded Lenin, how plausible is it that WW2 could be started by the Soviet Union? I think I've heard Trotsky believed in spreading the revolution all over the world by force perhaps.www.alternatehistory.com
AHC: Make Trotsky Defeat Stalin
IOTL, after Lennin's death in 1924, Stalin & Trotsky engaged in a struggle for leader- ship of the Soviet state. Stalin won, & Trotsky was exiled & later murdured. The challenge here is- Arrange events to work out differently so that Trotsky, not Stalin, wins this struggle.www.alternatehistory.com
WI Trotsky wins the power struggle against Stalin
I want to know what would happen.www.alternatehistory.com
Trotsky and not Stalin
Apparently, it would have been a safe bet to say that Trotsky would have succeeded Lenin in 1924. The famous letter counted against Stalin. Maybe more importantly, Trotsky's insistence of 'global revolution' may have been seen as unrealistic by many, whereas Stalin's "Socialism in one...www.alternatehistory.com
Leon Trotsky instead of Stalin?
What if Leon Trotsky remained ruler of the Soviets instead of Stalin? How would history have been different? How differently would he have dealt with European politics?www.alternatehistory.com
what if stalin had died in the red white civil war and Leon Trotsky sucseeded lennin
whithout stalin Leon Trotsky takes lenin old postion what doe he do how doe the USSR turn out? what is russia like today?www.alternatehistory.com
Trotsky instead of Stalin
What would have been the repercussions if Leon Trotsky had gained power instead of Joseph Stalin? Say, Lenin lived long enough to pass power to Trotsky. Or, Stalin died earlier. So I guess this would be two different possible outcomes, i.e. if Stalin lived to challenge Trotsky or if Trotsky had...www.alternatehistory.com
Trotsky not Stalin
What if Trotsky not Stalin had succeeded Lenin? What are the effects? How does the Soviet Union emerge, I have read that Trotsky despised the bureaucracy and the closed party. Would a Trotsky USSR be more democratic? What does it mean for Europe?www.alternatehistory.com
**
OK, seriously, a few points:
(1) I find it very doubtful that Trotsky could use the Red Army to come to power. See my post at https://soc.history.what-if.narkive.com/GOcJcA0i/a-trotsky-military-coup-in-the-1920-s#post1
The question has sometimes been raised [1] whether Trotsky could have used
his positions as commissar of war and chairman of the Military
Revolutionary Council to launch a successful military coup against his
factional opponents during the 1920's. The Zinoviev-Kamenev-Stalin
triumvirate very likely had some fears on this score in the mid-1920's; as
early as January 1924 they removed Trotsky's ally Vladimir Antonov-
Ovseyenko as head of the Political Directorate of the Red Army and
replaced him with Andrei Bubnov. (Bubnov had also been a Trotsky
follower--he had signed the "Declaration of the Forty-Six" though with
some reservations [2]--but had gone over to the triumvirate's side.)
Trotsky was to write in 1935 that a military coup would have been easy--
indeed he makes it sound *incredibly* easy--but that he had rejected it
for principled reasons:
"There is no doubt that it would have been possible to carry out a
military coup d'état against the faction of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin,
etc., *without any difficulty and without even the shedding of any blood*;
but the result of such a coup d'état would have been to accelerate the
rhythm of this very bureaucratization and Bonapartism against which the
Left Opposition had engaged in struggle." [my emphasis--DT]
Leon Trotsky: How Did Stalin Defeat the Opposition? (1935)
Leon Trotsky: How Did Stalin Defeat the Opposition? (November 1935)www.marxists.org
Likewise, Victor Serge--who retained his admiration of Trotsky even after
breaking with him politically--in his *Memoirs of Revolutionary* (pp.
234-5) wrote that Trotsky could easily have defeated his opponents by
relying on the Red Army:
"...[A] coup against the Politbureau of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin
would have been possible, and in our Oppositional circles we had weighed
this possibility. The army and even the G.P.U. would have plumped for
Trotsky if he had wished; he was always being told this. I do not know if
there were any formal deliberations on this subject among the leaders of
the Left Opposition, but I do know that the question was discussed (end of
1925, beginning of 1926) and it was then that Trotsky deliberately refused
power, out of respect for an unwritten law that forbade any recourse to
military mutiny within a Socialist regime; for it was all too likely that
power won in this way, even with the noblest intentions, would eventually
finish in a military and police dictatorship, which was anti-Socialist by
definition." http://books.google.com/books?id=zgqahLS2NFwC&pg=PA234
Serge goes on to quote the 1935 Trotsky statement cited above (with a very
slightly different translation), and adds:
"Rarely has it been made more sharply obvious that the end, far from
justifying the means, commands it own means, and that for the
establishment of a Socialist democracy the old means of armed violence are
inappropriate." http://books.google.com/books?id=zgqahLS2NFwC&pg=PA235
Before we accept this portrait of Trotsky--out of principled opposition to
bureaucratization and Bonapartism, nobly sacrificing a chance to come to
power--we should ask whether a military coup would have been that easy, or
indeed even possible. Here I would tend to agree with Roy Medvedev, *Let
History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism* (1989), pp.
133-136:
"... The idea of a military solution to the internal party conflict
occurred to some members of the Trotskyist opposition. Zinoviev, Kamenev,
and Stalin had some apprehensions in this regard, which explains the
changes made on the Revolutionary Military Council as early as 1924 and
the removal of Antonov-Ovseyenko as head of the Political Directorate of
the Red Army and his replacement by Bubnov.
"It must be said quite emphatically, however, that at the time of the
discussion in the party there was never any real threat of a military
coup, if only because the Red Army was never just a 'docile' instrument in
Trotsky's hands. Trotsky could rely fully on the soldiers of the Red Army
when he gave the order to march on Warsaw, but he could not have raised
the Red Army against the Central Committee and the Politburo...
"If Trotsky in 1924 thought as he wrote in 1925, it would have been one
more of his illusions... [A] military ouster of the triumvirate and the
party apparatus loyal to it would have been an extremely difficult and
uncertain undertaking--an adventure with very little chance of success. If
Trotsky refrained from such a step, one can assume that what held him back
was not concern over Bonapartism but uncertainty of his control over the
Red Army.
"The German edition of Serge's memoirs contains a foreword by the
prominent German revolutionary Wollenberg, who went to live in the Soviet
Union after the failure of the German revolution and in the thirties fled
to the West from the persecution of the NKVD and the Gestapo. Wollenberg
convincingly disputes the version of events presented by Serge:
"'What a colossal mistake in assessing the concrete situation that had
arisen in the land of the Soviets within a few months after Lenin's death!
I must add that at the time Lenin died I was still on military duty in
Germany. As a specialist in civil war I held a prominent post in the
German Communist Party. At that time I thought along more or less the
same lines as Serge and as Trotsky apparently thought about all these
matters for another decade or more.
"'But when I moved to Moscow, I saw my error. In Moscow I was forced to
realize that the leading figures on the Red Army general staff, such as
Tukhachevsky, with whom I became friends, admired Trotsky greatly as the
organizer of the Red Army, as a man and a revolutionary, but at the same
time they took a critical attitude toward his general political position.
"'...I had very close contact with the army in general, and, through it,
with the Russian village. There could be no doubt that the top military
command had full confidence in the party leadership.... And in the entire
party there was an unquestionable majority in favor of the triumvirate,
that is, the leading threesome formed after Lenin's death: Zinoviev,
Kamenev, and Stalin. That was the order in which the importance of the
three members was estimated at the time--with Stalin last.
"'If the Soviet constitution could have been changed for a plebiscite to
be held, it is impossible to say which of Lenin's successors would have
gathered the most votes. But it can be said for certain that, given the
hostility of the peasants and the middle class (which was reappearing in
the first half of the 1920s) in relation to Trotsky, who was considered an
'enemy of NEP,' the outcome would have been rather unfavorable for him.
"'It is necessary to state this with full clarity because to this day
Trotskyists of all varieties, as well as Soviet experts in West Germany
and other countries, continue to spread the tale in speech, in print, on
radio and on television that after Lenin's death Trotsky supposedly missed
a 'sure bet.' Apparently Victor Serge believed this too right up to his
death.'"
Let History Judge
The most comprehensive and revealing investigation of Stalinism and political developments in the Soviet Union from 1922-1953, this edition is an extensively revised and expanded version of a classic work. The internationally known historian Roy Medvedev has included more than one-hundred new...books.google.com
(2) If Trotsky couldn't come to power by a military coup, how could he come to power? (Please don't say by using Lenin's "Testament"--it was critical of Trotsky and all the other Bolshevik leaders as well as Stalin, and even if its proposal to remove Stalin as General Secretary had been implemented, it hardly follows that Trotsky would be the beneficiary. In 1923, Zinoviev and Kamenev seemed more likely to benefit.) One possibility I mentioned in an old post:
One thing that is often forgotten is that there actually was a pro-Trotsky Secretariat for a while! From December 1919 to March 1921 the "Responsible Secretary" was Trotsky's ally Nikolai Krestinsky. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay_Krestinsky (Also in the Secretariat was Preobrazhensky, who was to become the chief theorist of Trotsky and the "Left Opposition" on economic matters later in the 1920's.) Krestinsky was removed from this position (as well as his Politburo and Orgburo positions) in March 1921 for having sided with Trotsky against Lenin on the "trade union dispute." Perhaps if Lenin had died before 1921, Krestinsky could have used the powers of the Secretariat to bolster Trotsky's position.
You may say that the Secretariat was not nearly as powerful then as it would be once the position of General Secretary was created and given to Stalin. True, but to some extent the powers of an office are what the holder makes of them. Krestinsky never seems to have tried to use the Secretariat to build up a personal or pro-Trotsky factional power base. Maybe with a healthy Lenin still around he couldn't have done so even if he had tried. In any event, even in 1920-21 the Secretariat was by no means solely a technical office without political significance. It was in 1921--well before Stalin's General Secretaryship--that Bukharin made his famous quip that "the history of humanity is divided into three periods: the matriarchate, the patriarchate, and the Secretariat." http://books.google.com/books?id=BUg-lWpZcsIC&pg=PA154
(About the "trade union dispute": Calling for open statification of trade unions and militarization of labor was another of Trotsky's political mistakes which helped to give him a reputation as authoritarian and a "splitter" while driving Lenin closer to Stalin. Of course Lenin did not favor independent trade unions any more than Trotsky--but as Robert Service notes, "Whereas Lenin hoped to control the trade unions by stealth, Trotsky wanted to do it to the accompaniment of bells and whistles." http://books.google.com/books?id=mbD8jRUdAjsC&pg=PA279 Bukharin's attempt to form a "buffer group" simply annoyed both Lenin and Trotsky; the "Workers' Opposition" objected to both Lenin's and Bukharin's positions but saved their strongest criticism for Trotsky; and Stalin, whom Lenin had criticized after the Polish war, now organized Lenin's faction during the dispute. It seems that, as Service remarks, Trotsky relished a good dispute too much to care about the consequences...) https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/R8y9UR6NylI/EXMm-sTFe20J
(3) The idea of Trotsky as the champion of "world revolution" vs. Stalin as the champion of "socialism in one country" is IMO absurdly overplayed.
"Socialism in one country" was an attempt to keep up the morale of the Bolsheviks after the failure of Europe to undergo successful Communist revolutions in 1918-23. If did *not* mean that the USSR would give up on encouraging revolutions abroad, only that as of circa 1925 there seemed little immediate chance that such revolutions would succeed (at least in Europe) and in the meantime the USSR could build socialism even without such revolutions.
I agree with Leszek Kolakowski, *Main Currents of Marxism*, "It is possible that if Trotsky had been in charge of Soviet foreign policy and the Comintern in the 1920s he would have taken more interest than Stalin did in organizing Communist risings abroad, but there is no reason to think his efforts would have had any success. Naturally he used every defeat of Communists in the world to accuse Stalin of neglecting the revolutionary cause. But it is not at all clear what Stalin could have done if he had been actuated by the internationalist zeal which Trotsky accused him of lacking. Russia had no no means of ensuring a German Communist victory in 1923 or a Chinese one in 1926. Trotsky's later charge that the Comintern failed to exploit revolutionary opportunities because of Stalin's doctrine of socialism in one country is completely devoid of substance." https://books.google.com/books?id=qUCxpznbkaoC&pg=PA807
(4) Related to the above: For some reason, when Trotsky's position in the 1920's is discussed, people almost always ignore his explicit statement in 1925 that (1) he regarded "permanent revolution" as pertaining solely to the past and (2) did not think the future economic advance of the Soviet Union depended on accelerated revolution in the West:
***
3. The question of the estimation of the peasantry in this connection is of the greatest political importance. I absolutely deny that the formula “permanent revolution,” which applies wholly to the past, in any way caused me to adopt a careless attitude towards the peasantry in the conditions of the Soviet Revolution. If at any time after October, I had occasion for private reasons to revert to the formula, “permanent revolution,” it was only a reference to Party history, i.e., to the past, and had no reference to the question of present-day political tasks. To my mind, the attempt to construct an irreconcilable contradiction in this matter is not justified either by the 8 years’ experience of the revolution, through which we have gone together, or by the tasks of the future.
Equally I refute the statements and reference to my alleged “pessimistic” attitude towards the progress of our work of Socialist construction in the face of the retarded process of the revolution in the West. In spite of all the difficulties arising out of our capitalistic environment, the economic and political resources of the Soviet dictatorship are very great. I have repeatedly developed and argued this idea on the instructions of the Party, particularly at international congresses, and I consider that this idea preserves all its force for the present period of historical development.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1925/01/ccletter.htm
***
(5) Another old post of mine:
I don't think a Trotsky-ruled USSR is very likely at any time after Stalin was named as General Secretary (Zinoviev-Kamenev prevailing over Stalin in 1923 or Bukharin prevailing in 1928 are actually more plausible alternatives to Stalin IMO) but if somehow it happens, here is an interesting possibility: the USSR takes the lead in nuclear physics and develops the first a-bomb? Consider what Trotsky said in 1926:
"The phenomena of radio-activity are leading us to the problem of releasing intra-atomic energy. The atom contains within itself a mighty hidden energy, and the greatest task of physics consists in pumping out this energy, pulling out the cork so that this hidden energy may burst forth in a fountain. Then the possibility will be opened up of replacing coal and oil by atomic energy, which will also become the basic motive power. This is not at all a hopeless task. And what prospects it opens before us!" https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1926/03/science.htm
Trotsky in charge of USSR prevents Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. Hitler would never ally with communist Jew, that would be too much. That means ww2 looks different from the very beginning.
This comes up often. Really often. For future reference, the search function here is great. ^_^
Basically, Trotsky had no real chance at getting power in OTL and certainly couldn't quash Stalin if he "had been a little tougher". For Trotsky getting power requires MAJOR changes. His easiest path would likely be a) Lenin lives longer and b) Lenin comes to like him a whole lot more in the last years of this extended life and Trotsky is made heir apparent.
Even if Trotsky HAD gained power however, he just doesn't have the respect and support that Stalin had in OTL and showed no interest in building the kind of respect and support that translated into real political power in the Bolshevik system. So we are talking a weaker leader than Stalin. With the other Politburo members wielding far more power.
Also, the Bolsheviks were really, really worried about some Napoleon type coming and stealing their revolution in the same way that Napoleon had "stolen" the French revolution "from the people". And Trotsky was the closest thing to Napoleon they had, so became the goat carrying all those fears.
And Trotsky was NOT more into spreading Communism. Stalin's "socialism in one country" is very misunderstood. Stalin had a whole theory of how the revolution would spread, that capitalism would destroy itself in a series of world wars, after each of which Marxism would be able to spread. Based on this theory, Marxism needed to be strong in one country to survive this war. Also, maybe to invade the neighbours after the war and facilitate their revolutions. So as you see, Stalin was A-OK with spreading the revolution.
Trotsky is also very misunderstood. Firstly, though Trotsky proved himself ruthless and deadly during the civil war, he was not irrationally ruthless and deadly. Indeed, part of the reason he was effective during the civil war was his willingness to compromise with reality. His ideas about exporting revolution were just as keen as Stalin's, but he had a different idea of how to go about it. It is hard to say exactly how Trotsky would have implemented those if he had the power to, but certainly his ideas can be interpreted as being much less aggressive than Stalin's. Also, while Trotsky was all for overthrowing all capitalism everywhere eventually, he was also more in favour of things like trade and scientific cooperation with the rest of the world, which could easily have resulted in a less threatening and more integrated USSR in the interwar period.
fasquardon