Would a Trotsky led USSR have a better relationship with the west?

[trurle]

That is assuming both China and Germany go Communist which is one hell of an assumption!

China went communistic OTL. It is realistic to assume several provinces controlled by Communist forces by 1935 if even marginal (~10 divisions) Soviet forces are deployed. After all, 2 soviet brigades nearly took Xinjiang IOTL.
With Germany, the forecast is more difficult, but without anti-communistic Hitler 25% of Reichstag seats by 1935 with subsequent communistic takeover is plausible. IOTL, Communists power share peaked at 17% in early 1933. Hitler in this ATL actually can become the leader of one of the factions of the German Communist Party, or be killed/expelled during communist takeover. Of course, no guarantee. Political alliances are volatile, and betrayals are advantageous.

One more possible route is the Hitler receive support from Trotsky initially, but become independent later (mirroring situation with the Lenin receiving support for Russian revolution from Germany). In this case, history will flow more OTL route, but with more volatile German alignment (Germany can potentially join Allies against Soviet Union).

 

[Johnrankins]

China went communistic OTL. It is realistic to assume several provinces controlled by Communist forces by 1935 if even marginal (~10 divisions) Soviet forces are deployed. After all, 2 soviet brigades nearly took Xinjiang IOTL.

Of course the West won't do a thing about that. It wasn't until the 1950's that China went Communist.

With Germany, the forecast is more difficult, but without anti-communistic Hitler 25% of Reichstag seats by 1935 with subsequent communistic takeover is plausible.

There were a lot of anti-communists in Germany that could take Hitler's place the vast majority of which were far more sane.

IOTL, Communists power share peaked at 17% in early 1933. Hitler in this ATL actually can become the leader of one of the factions of the German Communist Party, or be killed/expelled during communist takeover. Of course, no guarantee. Political alliances are volatile, and betrayals are advantageous.

Or never become a major political leader in the first place.

One more possible route is the Hitler receive support from Trotsky initially, but become independent later (mirroring situation with the Lenin receiving support for Russian revolution from Germany). In this case, history will flow more OTL route, but with more volatile German alignment (Germany can potentially join Allies against Soviet Union).

Unlikely Trotsky was a Jew.

 

[GiantMonkeyMan]

There were already Soviet troops in China in OTL. With Trotsky in charge, Soviet-occupied zone would form sooner and be much better supported.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Xinjiang

This, of course, happened nearly a decade after the period I was talking about which would have led to circumstances that would have been too different for the same situation to reoccur.

"Permanent Revolution" is much more scary than "Socialism in one Country". The first implies exporting the revolution outwards directly threatening the Western Powers while "Socialism in One Country" implies keeping the revolution inside the USSR and building it there.

So you say. Stalin claimed to be building socialism in only one area of the world and there was a concerted effort to undermine the Soviet Union regardless. Don't see there being much difference or the underlying motivations having changed at all but, sure, 'permanent revolution' is 'scary'.

While the poor peasants wanted the actual land. They wanted to be small time land owners not agricultural workers bossed around by agriculturally ignorant city born party apparatchik. Once he found this out he would eventually went the Stalin route. It is hard to consider a country Communist when most of the land is held by small time land owners.

Not really even sure what you mean here. Land worked and owned collectively has been a goal of poor peasants the world over since the establishment of agriculture, really. Trotsky wouldn't find resistance to the concept of collective farms if the process is properly prepared, there's a decent groundwork laid in place and if the process is incentivised to avoid any backlash - which was basically what the people who were going on to form the Left Opposition were advocating as early as 1923. The approach to collectivisation between Stalin and the Left Opposition was so radically different that you cannot simply expect the same results.

Either that or like a typical Third World potential dictator he spoke a good deal about democracy but wouldn't give up a scrap of his own power. He advocated changing the membership largely because he was losing with membership they had.

I would argue, in reading Trotsky's writings, particularly during the civil war period before Lenin had died, that he had a very pragmatic view of democracy. He was willing to shoot Whites outright, suspend the democratic process and imprison political enemies in the midst of such turmoil as the civil war but he also had a desperate image of a proletarian democracy, railed against the corruption's of the state bureaucrats, which he saw only as a necessary evil, and truly wanted workers to control their own destiny. What that translates to if he actually got into power is another thing altogether.

You could argue that he'd simply go the route of Stalin and keep the iron fist closed but I would argue that he'd made an enemy of the state officials from day one by trying to root out corruption and railing against them. The only way he's going to reach power is by forming a counter to that bureaucracy which would have come in a limited form of democracy, likely controlled and censored to ensure his political allies came into power as opposed to anything truly open. However the consequence of that would have led to a very different composition of the communist party and different people with different motivations gaining legislative powers.

I also don't see him purging the Old Bolsheviks as Stalin did, much as in Lenin's period the party would have had the Zinovievs, the Shliapnikovs and the Bukharins that would have remained internal counters and led to different competing 'factions' in all but name.

 

[Johnrankins]

This, of course, happened nearly a decade after the period I was talking about which would have led to circumstances that would have been too different for the same situation to reoccur.

The problem was the words "would have been" instead of "might have been", it was far from certain that either or both revolutions would have happened if Trotsky was in charge instead of Stalin .

So you say. Stalin claimed to be building socialism in only one area of the world and there was a concerted effort to undermine the Soviet Union regardless. Don't see there being much difference or the underlying motivations having changed at all but, sure, 'permanent revolution' is 'scary'.

The effort was mostly half-hearted. There wasn't a huge alliance built up to militarily take over the USSR or laws passed mandating a complete boycott of all trade with the USSR. I think you may have well seen it under Trotsky. It is the difference between a man buying a ton of weapons and another buying a ton of weapons saying he is going to shoot up the neighborhood. The latter is far more scary.

Not really even sure what you mean here. Land worked and owned collectively has been a goal of poor peasants the world over since the establishment of agriculture, really.

No, the goal of most peasants was to break up the big estates into little farms divided equally. If the land was worked by 100 serfs, most serfs wanted it broken equally into 100 patches of land and be given one of the patches. What you are saying is little different than a name change from feudalism. Someone is going to have to be in charge of distributing the output and making sure that everyone out there is actually working for the common good instead of slacking off .

Trotsky wouldn't find resistance to the concept of collective farms if the process is properly prepared, there's a decent groundwork laid in place and if the process is incentivised to avoid any backlash - which was basically what the people who were going on to form the Left Opposition were advocating as early as 1923. The approach to collectivisation between Stalin and the Left Opposition was so radically different that you cannot simply expect the same results.

Semantics mainly.

I would argue, in reading Trotsky's writings, particularly during the civil war period before Lenin had died, that he had a very pragmatic view of democracy. He was willing to shoot Whites outright, suspend the democratic process and imprison political enemies in the midst of such turmoil as the civil war but he also had a desperate image of a proletarian democracy, railed against the corruption's of the state bureaucrats, which he saw only as a necessary evil, and truly wanted workers to control their own destiny. What that translates to if he actually got into power is another thing altogether.

And yet when the SR's won the only free election in Russia up until that time he was fine with the Bolsheviks overturning that victory and not turning power over to them. It is when you lose an election when someone can see if you really believe in democracy or not. It is easy to abide by an election when you win. He talked a good deal about it but talk is cheap. What you do is what counts.

You could argue that he'd simply go the route of Stalin and keep the iron fist closed but I would argue that he'd made an enemy of the state officials from day one by trying to root out corruption and railing against them. The only way he's going to reach power is by forming a counter to that bureaucracy which would have come in a limited form of democracy, likely controlled and censored to ensure his political allies came into power as opposed to anything truly open. However the consequence of that would have led to a very different composition of the communist party and different people with different motivations gaining legislative powers.

Which would make him a dictator in fact if not in name. A closed democracy is no democracy at all. Some of the East European puppet states officially had more than one party but they were all subservient to the Communist Party and they were all the only candidate in their district. All you had is a name change, your seat might officially belong to the "Peasant Party" but since the only candidate for the "Peasant Party" was picked by the Communist Party it was the Communist Party in all but name.

I also don't see him purging the Old Bolsheviks as Stalin did, much as in Lenin's period the party would have had the Zinovievs, the Shliapnikovs and the Bukharins that would have remained internal counters and led to different competing 'factions' in all but name.

He might have purged different people and he might have sent them to Siberia instead of shooting them, although you can't rule out the latter but he wouldn't have allowed somebody who had a significant difference with him to gain any significant amount of power. At best he would be given a powerless position.

 

[Faeelin]

I'm a bit lost. How does Trotsky make Germany communist?

 

[GiantMonkeyMan]

No, the goal of most peasants was to break up the big estates into little farms divided equally. If the land was worked by 100 serfs, most serfs wanted it broken equally into 100 patches of land and be given one of the patches. What you are saying is little different than a name change from feudalism. Someone is going to have to be in charge of distributing the output and making sure that everyone out there is actually working for the common good instead of slacking off .

In the Soviet Union there were two types of collective farms, the Kolkhoz and the Sovkhoz. The kolkhoz were collectively run farms where the peasants participating each held their own bit of land but collectively dealt with distribution and mechanised tools and such whereas the sovkhoz were entirely state-run with those working on the land receiving wages. During the early 20's there was a propaganda drive to develop these farms and with some moderate success and during the civil war some peasants spontaneously formed these collectives but the NEP basically changed the attitude of the Soviets towards them and individual farming became the watchword of the day, allowing the richer peasants to begin accumulating land, hiring and exploiting the poorer workers and becoming richer. The Left Opposition proposed a continuation of the propaganda of the early 1920's to increase the voluntary participation in the collective farms as well as tax incentives, making it more beneficial for the landless rural workers and the small owner peasants to join either kolkhozes or sovkhozes whilst simultaneously making it more difficult for the richest peasants to exploit the poorer rural workers as well as pushing for the breaking up of the remaining large estates to form sovkhozes. This is a very different approach to Stalin's forced collectivisation.

Which would make him a dictator in fact if not in name. A closed democracy is no democracy at all. Some of the East European puppet states officially had more than one party but they were all subservient to the Communist Party and they were all the only candidate in their district. All you had is a name change, your seat might officially belong to the "Peasant Party" but since the only candidate for the "Peasant Party" was picked by the Communist Party it was the Communist Party in all but name.

It's entirely possible that this may have been the case. However, unlike Stalin who held the support of the state officials that he had helped into their positions, Trotsky had popularity amongst the workers, the poor peasants and the soldiers and so it would have been in his interest to shore up that basis of his power, likely through some democratic measures however superficial. It would have both suited his own ideological desires and the material basis of his power.

 

[Cook]

Trotsky's name always gets bandied around as though he is the automatic alternative to Stalin, and it's hardly realistic; Trotsky was not a popular man in the Politburo or the inner circle of the Bolsheviks and with good reason - Trotsky was monumentally arrogant, always believing that he was the smartest person in the room and, what was worse, he made sure everyone else knew it. It's not a formula for success, particularly when you are already an outsider, as Trotsky was, being a latecomer to the Bolsheviks and, critically, a Jew; something that cannot be ignored in Russia in the first half of the 20th century, or now for that matter.

 

[Johnrankins]

I'm a bit lost. How does Trotsky make Germany communist?

Apparently all Germans are overcome by the brilliance of Trotsky and march lockstep to his tune.

 

[fasquardon]

Another Trotsky thread another thread of myths and legends...

So let's tackle a few points before I take a stab at answering the OP's question.

1) Trotsky has to actually get power. This is close to ASB and the only plausible way for Trotsky to end up supreme leader is if Lenin puts him in charge. Something also needs to have removed Stalin for him, since I can't really see any way for Trotsky to be able to deal with Stalin himself.

2) Trotsky was disliked by most of his peers and showed no sign of the sort of political ruthlessness Stalin would show - in all likelihood, this means no purge of the old Bosheviks and Trotsky isn't a very supreme leader at all - instead he'd be first among equals in a Politburo where everyone had an interest to make sure he didn't grow too strong. Now probably things still get done - but controversial things could well end up stalled by political gridlock.

3) A Trotskyite SU doesn't magically become a utopia. Two big reasons for this - first Trotsky is a ruthless operator who was willing to kill hundreds of thousands of people to achieve his aims, second there were hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of ruthless operators below the top guy. There's no doubt that Stalin was an evil man, but people forget that he was also used as a scapegoat by the Communist Party after Khrushchev's secret speech. If Stalin never gains power then he and thousands of his creatures won't have much power in the Soviet Union, but that still leaves plenty of other people who'd sacrifice millions if they thought it would serve the greater good.

4) People also forget that Trotsky was a pragmatic and capable operator. He was a terrible politician, but there's no doubt that he could effectively run large organizations and fudge his ideological positions to justify pragmatic actions to himself and others. The guy was not some beardy-weirdy campus revolutionary who couldn't deal with the real world. Trotsky was one of the key men in actually winning a civil war and impose a very, very fringe political ideology on an entire empire. As such, anything that Trotsky wrote about his beliefs should be taken with more grains of salt than people usually do (for one thing, much of what he wrote in OTL was a reaction against what Stalin was doing OTL).

__________

So would Trotsky's USSR have better relations with the West? Well... It depends on how we get Trotsky in charge and whether an aggressive Germany is starting to loom in Central Europe.

Let's say that we get there through Lenin not getting a bullet from Fanny Kaplan, and not suffering his strokes. Lenin lives longer and has better health. Let's say that Stalin is demoted by Lenin around 1925 in this ATL, forever to languish as a cement plant manager in Kazakhstan or something. Let's also say that Trotsky, through long years being seen as Lenin's right hand man and through success in expanding Party membership among the Soviet workers, secures enough political support to squeak in as Lenin's successor when Lenin dies between 1929-1931.

Whether led by Trotsky or Lenin, this Soviet Union is going to have a rapprochement with the West, just as OTL. When it became clear that the Soviet state wasn't going to collapse on its own and that Western Capitalism was likewise going to be around for a while, the pressures to make realistic accommodations and get trade going again would pick up.

Where things could start to change is that it is unlikely that Trotsky or Lenin will be clamping down on travel in the early 30s. As such, as people start to worry about Germany (which is going to happen whether or not Germany goes Nazi in this scenario), the impetus to further improve relations with the SU will be there, and there will be less suspicion caused by the sudden appearance of Stalinist isolationism. So better relations with the West in the early 30s.

Even if Trotsky is no. 1 by this point, the idea of exporting revolution to the industrial West will have an appeal somewhere close to zero. There may be more support for revolution in China and the colonial world, but probably not a whole lot - the Russian civil war had left the country seriously wrecked and people wanted to rebuild. I just don't see the Soviets acting sufficiently differently to be any threat to Western interests in the 30s and 40s (though greater support for, say, scholarships and training for colonial revolutionaries to come learn in the USSR and less purging of those people could mean a very, very different decolonization in the 50s onwards).

In the mid and late 30s, much depends on what is happening in Germany - if the Germans have gone Nazi, France and Britain are going to start to get more serious about reaching out to the Soviets just as they did in OTL. It's hard to see Trotsky being quite as paranoid as Stalin, so probably Soviet/Anglo-French relations improve more.

At that point, if the Soviets, British and French contain the Germans and we avoid WW2, then we could see colder Soviet/Western relations.

So long story short, with Trotsky in the top job, things will go up and down depending on circumstances.

P.S. This assumes the Soviet Union industrialization speed on par with the OTL. I doubt this though. The industrialization rate of Stalin`s Soviet Union was astonishing, therefore any deviations from OTL are likely to reduce Soviet Union military potential.

IMO a non-Stalin led USSR of any flavor would develop at least as fast if not faster than OTL's Soviet Union.

Saying "what was achieved in OTL was amazing THEREFORE doing things differently is most likely to make things less amazing" is well, some kind of logical fallacy. I am afraid I am not a good enough debater to thing of the fancy Latin name for this sort of thing.

fasquardon

 

[yourworstnightmare]

I find it funny that people assume Trotsky would take over in any OTL wihout Stalin. The answer is simply: you have to change alot more to get Trotsky in charge. If Stalin wasn't around there'd still be everyone else in the politiburo having a much better chance than Trotsky. No one liked Trotsky, that was why Stalin was easily able to unite all the other leaders against him. Trotsky was seen as a much larger threat than Stalin. And yes it funny, considering what happened to all the people who helped Stalin outmaneuver Trotsky. Trotsky had too few friends among the powerful.