WI Vladimir Lenin had survived
- Thread starter HistoryLovingCat
- Start date
Paul MacQ
Monthly Donor
Well NEP might last if it shows good results. And it was showing early signs of it doing just that. Also things like NEP would strengthen the likes of Alexei Rykov for a more liberal turn.
Prevention of Stalin getting in charge is a high possibility. Moderates like Nikolai Bukharin and Mikhail Tomsky being seen as less of a Threat to Lenin, And he can play off the Likes of Stalin and Trotsky off against each other for a few years .
Lets say another 12 years with better health that would make him 65, It would be interesting how he would have reacted to the Fascists of the 1930's. He was not as Paranoid as Stalin and might have struck out at them. USSR would have probably been more stable. Cult of personality for Lenin was on a different order compared to Stalin.
The likes of Stalin would have outlived there usefulness by the end of the 20's and would have been swept away. Trotsky leading Military reforms for a few more years might see the Russian army with better leadership. I am not sure if that is enough in a pure Military sense enough to compare to the Stalin 5 year plans. Agriculture would have been massively better off and the economy. Military spending might or might not have been better off I am not sure it would be as high a percentage of GDP.
If NEP can continue for 5-6 years its advantages would speak for themselves and more food on the table and a happier USSR.
Prevention of Stalin getting in charge is a high possibility. Moderates like Nikolai Bukharin and Mikhail Tomsky being seen as less of a Threat to Lenin, And he can play off the Likes of Stalin and Trotsky off against each other for a few years .
Lets say another 12 years with better health that would make him 65, It would be interesting how he would have reacted to the Fascists of the 1930's. He was not as Paranoid as Stalin and might have struck out at them. USSR would have probably been more stable. Cult of personality for Lenin was on a different order compared to Stalin.
The likes of Stalin would have outlived there usefulness by the end of the 20's and would have been swept away. Trotsky leading Military reforms for a few more years might see the Russian army with better leadership. I am not sure if that is enough in a pure Military sense enough to compare to the Stalin 5 year plans. Agriculture would have been massively better off and the economy. Military spending might or might not have been better off I am not sure it would be as high a percentage of GDP.
If NEP can continue for 5-6 years its advantages would speak for themselves and more food on the table and a happier USSR.
MarshalBraginsky
Banned
Having Lenin avoid getting shot by Fanny Kaplan would help him in the long run.
The NEP isn't gonna continue long term unless they can find a way to rein in the NEP Men, who pretty much everyone in a position of leadership and among the Bolsheviks despised for profiteering. If those exchanges can be regulated in such a way that prices aren't damaging to the Russian industrial cities then the whole thing has a much longer shelf life.
WW2 with a healthy old Lenin in command have I not seen yet, but it seems interesting ...
Is there such a thread?
Is there such a thread?
I think you're going to have to butterfly the strokes of 1922-1923 to make him live longer. Give him strict doctor's orders to do whatever prevention measures were known at the time.
Assuming the Testament of Lenin was real, he would probably try to get rid of Stalin, though Stalin's powerful position as Communist Party secretary might lead to a rebellion.
Assuming the Testament of Lenin was real, he would probably try to get rid of Stalin, though Stalin's powerful position as Communist Party secretary might lead to a rebellion.
This, which I'm exploring in a TL of mine. Assuming that he isn't incapacitated by a stroke, he might just live longer.
The NEP was meant to be a temporary tactical retreat - a concession to free trade and the petty-bourgeois peasant. Lenin was in favor of collectivization of agriculture, while the NEP itself gradually fell apart which led to the First Five-Year Plan under Stalin.
If Lenin lives well into 1928, (which is unlikely) the NEP more or less might be ended by his initiative.
If not, Trotsky or Stalin will see to it that the NEP is ended.
It's often assumed that if Lenin survived, Stalin would be finished, but that is not necessarily true. Probably a healthy Lenin could get Stalin removed as General Secretary (though whether he would *want* to is not certain, because in OTL much of Lenin's resentment of Stalin stemmed from Lenin's own illness--or more precisely, from the way he thought Stalin was *using* this illness to isolate him from the Politburo, was insulting Krupskaya, etc.) Yet even if removed as General Secretary, Stalin would still have a chance for a later comeback. He would remain an important political figure; even Lenin's "Testament" did not urge that Stalin be expelled from the Central Committee or Politburo (and even had Lenin so recommended, he would not necessarily have prevailed--after all, his 1921 attempt to expel Tomsky from the CC had failed).
Assume as a PoD that Fanny Kaplan doesn't seriously wound Lenin in 1918. This minimum PoD is that instead of shooting Lenin through the neck and left lung with one bullet, and in the left shoulder with another, Kaplan grazes Lenin's head with one bullet, and hits the flesh of his upper right arm with the other. This is just about as threatening as the OTL wounds, but Lenin recovers quickly and completely from the injuries.
Lenin might live to be 75, which would put his death in 1945.
It is not likely that Soviet internal policy would be significantly moderated.
Lenin was a fanatical Communist, who regarded wholesale terror and mass executions as necessary elements of the Revolution - for subduing and destroying its opponents.
During his remaining life OTL, however, Lenin was only primus inter pares among the Bolsheviks. There was a leadership circle, not an autocracy. OTL the autocracy was established in the early 1930s by Stalin. It does not appear that Lenin ever sought the same degree of autocratic supremacy that Stalin wanted and got.
Nor does it appear that the ruling circle of 1924 to 1930 broke in any significant way with Lenin in policy. That is, the policies followed by the USSR then could plausibly be described as what Lenin would have advocated had he lived.
A second question arises - would Lenin, as his heirs did, have read out of the Party those Bolsheviks who opposed the policies enacted by the controlling faction?
I say probably not. So the ruling circle remains intact rather than be whittled down by Stalin.
No. Lenin believed in carrying through the Revolution by force and terror.
saturnV
Banned
If lenins survival in anyway prevents stalin frorm issuing his first 5 year plan withe brutality that he enforced. Then even without the purges I can't see russia surviving the great patriotic war . as hated as he is most russian historians come to the same solution that building industry at the expense of starving everyone else was the only way to prevent a german victory
iddt3
Donor
Except they don't need the industry if the Soviet army doesn't get pocketed on day one. A smaller, better led and less political army with a healthier, better fed and more loyal populace can probably stop invasion a lot sooner.