WI Trotsky killed during July Days

(Firstly, we currently have an excellent, top-notch TL on this forum from @Zulfurium on Lenin and Stalin being killed during the July Days, I would encourage everyone to check it out).

I wanted to explore something different. WI when the Provisional Government’s troops come to arrest Trotsky in the aftermath of the July Days, a scuffle breaks out and they shoot him dead? Assume the fates of the other Bolsheviks (Lenin, Zinoviev, Stalin, etc) during the July Days remain as IOTL (i.e. they all live and either escape, are arrested or continue operating).

So Kerensky and the Provisional Government have killed one the leading Soviet leaders and the Bolsheviks have lost that same man, with Kornilov breathing down their necks. What happens now?
 
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TBH, I don't think that much changes. Lenin would still be enough for the 1917 Bolshevik coup to go forward and Stalin probably still comes to power in the Soviet Union after Lenin's death in this TL.
 
TBH, I don't think that much changes. Lenin would still be enough for the 1917 Bolshevik coup to go forward and Stalin probably still comes to power in the Soviet Union after Lenin's death in this TL.
What about the effects on the Red Army?
Trotsky had many defects, but i thought he was one of its most important members
 
This would be a fun TL to explore. The Bolsheviks would still carry out the revolution, in my view, and would have the initial success, but then once the Whites start gathering forces... It's not just that Trotsky was the father of the Red Army and imagining someone else in that position is hard, it's also that Trotsky had access to Lenin on a level few of the Old Guard had. Lenin believed he had no equals, but one guy whom he thought of as being almost at his level was Trotsky. Without Trotsky, whoever leads the Red Army is going to have some trouble getting the clearance and bandwidth to do what Trotsky did, even if they have some of Trotsky's pluck and skill.

I've actually been thinking of a possible story set in such a world after kinda debating which would be a bigger change to OTL: no Lenin or no Trotsky in 1917. Although my thinking was, Trotsky or Lenin die five-ten years before 1917.
 
Oddly enough, David T made a thread on this a couple years ago. His conclusion was that not only might a Trotsky-less Bolshevik Party fail to take over, but he may actually have been more essential to their success than Lenin was!

https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ober-who-do-you-kill-lenin-or-trotsky.396645/

Did not know that post existed, but it kinda follows my line of thinking, to a point. There is a gloriously apocryphal story that Trotsky barged into Lenin's office after they have been in power for 72 days and bringing a bottle to celebrate the fact that they somehow lasted longer than the Paris Commune in '71. That being said, I give Trotsky credit for helping keep the Party in power after the Revolution, but even without Trotsky, the Revolution would have commenced with Lenin leading it. Now, not saying Lenin would not have botched it the first time, but then someone else would have come in on his heels and made it happen and then chaos would have resulted. The conditions that made the February Revolution occur were present in July and October. The Provisional Government (a body of decent and indecent men who thought they were in a real Parliamentarian democracy - bless their hearts) did not solve for the problems the man on the street was experiencing. So Lenin would have had a revolt one way or another. Or, someone else would have figured it out.

What made Lenin so effective in churning the masses on his return was that he was outside the Petrograd "bubble" when the February Revolution occurred and was stuck overseas during the back-slapping hand-shaking euphoria that followed. Lenin was immune to the feeling of "We did it!" when the Tsar was overthrown, because he "got" that it didn't address the fundamental needs of the people. But there would have been others present who would have "gotten" the same thing.
 
Damn, that is one hell of a question. I am spitballing here so bear with me:

The immediate consequence would be terror in the Petrograd Soviet, given that Trotsky was a prominent figure in the Soviet and wasn't actually a Bolshevik at this point in time (He was still in the Mezhraiontsy at the time of the July Days) and his murder by the government would send shockwaves through the Soviet. There are a couple of ways events could go from there - the Soviet could find itself sidelined like IOTL until Kerensky and Kornilov butt heads like IOTL, but it could also serve as a spur to action for the Soviet. Now granted, with the July Days having just ended in miserable failure they are unlikely to be able to provoke an uprising in Petrograd itself but you might see people follow Lenin's lead and flee for the hills. If the Soviet feels sufficiently scared of the Provisional government it might well fracture. On the other hand, the Soviet as a whole might be radicalized by Trotsky's murder. You could also see protests, demonstrations and the like spread to other Russian cities as word of Trotsky's murder spreads. Trotsky was the most prominent and well known politician at this point in time both nationally and internationally so his death would set off a fire storm.

Now if we move forward to the Kornilov Affair, then the first question to ask is what has happened with the Mezhraiontsy following Trotsky's death? Are they still independent of the Bolsheviks? Have they joined the Mensheviks? Bolsheviks? From there it is a question of whether the Bolsheviks, without Trotsky's presence in the Petrograd Soviet, would be able to muster sufficient resistance to Kornilov's attempted coup for it to fall apart as IOTL. If it doesn't fall apart then we get into a scenario similar to my TL, but lets focus on if it proceeds at least somewhat like OTL and falls apart. Then we get into the twilight of Kerensky's rule.

This is when the question about the Mezhraiontsy becomes important because Trotsky was a major voice supporting Lenin in favor of the October Revolution and many of the people he brought with him to the Bolsheviks from the Mezhraiontsy were key players in the October Revolution and its aftermath - including Antonov-Osveenko, Lunacharsky, Joffe and many more. Without those talented leaders, the Bolsheviks are going to have a much harder time pulling off their attempted coup. Additionally, without Trotsky Lenin is going to be in a much weaker position when trying to argue in favor of a Revolution. To be honest, I am not sure he would be able to convince Zinoviev and Kamenev without Trotsky on side. That would lead into a scenario where the Bolsheviks do't attempt their coup and Lenin is instead forced into working with the other Soviet parties against his will. This actually has some really interesting prospects.

Kerensky is unlikely to hold onto power past New Years 1917 and the Soviet parties are the most likely to take his place at the top. The composition of the coalition that resulted from this would be important to what followed, as would be whether the new government goes ahead with the election of a Constituent Assembly. From here I could see Lenin trying to sabotage the coalition from the inside while worming his way to power. That said, I am not sure Lenin would be particularly good at functioning in a coalition government and he was growing more sickly as we move forward from this point. You probably see Zinoviev and Kamenev emerge as early power players, but I wouldn't count out Stalin and his incredible ability to saturate any network or group he enters with his own supporters. Given time, I could see Stalin maneuvering his way to the top by playing the others off against each other - although he might be too closely tied to Lenin, at least early on, for him to make too many gains.

At this point it gets too vague to really go further without more specificity as regards the points I laid out.
 
Divergence points:

1. Kerensky and the Provisional Government have just straight up killed a popular Soviet leader. They are going to face some intense backlash.

2. I definitely agree that Lenin will still launch a revolution. But Trotsky was a vital organiser of the October Revolution and Military Revolutionary Committee. Do the Bolsheviks have anybody with similar talent and standing to pull off a successful revolution?

3. Without Trotsky, who gets picked to negotiate with the Central Powers? Will there be something like Brest-Litovsk?

4. Trotsky was the father of the Red Army. More than any other Bolshevik, Trotsky was responsible for the Red victory in the Russian Civil War. He was, quite simply, a brilliant military commander and organiser in the dire straits the Reds found themselves in. Civil war is inevitable in the face of a Bolshevik Revolution of some kind - do the Bolsheviks actually win without Trotsky?

5. Assuming the Bolsheviks win a civil war and establish a victorious Soviet government, does a faction like the Left Opposition emerge within the Party without Trotsky?

6. There will be no such thing as Trotskyism, which means international leftism is more cleanly split between communists vs. social democrats, socialists, anarchists, etc, with international communism being more popular and unified.
 
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