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View Full Version : Trotsky instead of Stalin? - In response to the Q&A thread



Ymir
14th March 2003, 15:44
http://www.althist.com/stalin.htm

What if Stalin NEVER became dictator of the USSR ?

Mike Reid

I have wondered what would happen if Stalin had never been able to become dictator of the USSR.

Say if Stalin died in one of the Tsar's prisons prior to the Russian Revolution? How differently would world history have turned out?

My very speculative timeline:

1924 - after the death of Lenin, Leon Trotsky becomes General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

Late 1920s - Trotsky, attempting to further his aim of a world revolution, backs subversive communist groups throughout the world far more than Stalin does in OTL.

1930 - The Great Depression has affected the world significantly. With 30% of the German labour force unemployed, the KPD attempts to seize power and make Germany a communist state. The revolt is unsuccessful. The Nazis gain much popular support for mobilizing SA and SS troops to help the regular army defeat the communists.

1931 - Hitler becomes leader of a right-wing German coalitiong overnment.

1932- Attempts at communist revolution in France take place. The result is that right-wing parties form a coalition government which is allied to Germany.

1933- Chinese civil war starts. USSR sends lots of aid to the communists under Mao. USA aids Chaing. Japan takes the chance to seize large parts of eastern China.

1933-35 Hitler purges the non-Nazi elements in his administration and makes himself Fuhrer.

Britain's mainly-Conservative government under Baldwin (later Chamberlain) allies with France and Germany to form a "Three-power European anti-communist Axis".

1936- Spanish civil war breaks out. Trotsky sends lots of military aid. Communists purge non-communists from the Republican forces. France, Britain and Germany back Franco to stop communism spreading.

1937- USSR invades China to help Mao and to get more territory for itself. Chaing's poorly-motivated forces start to lose.

1938- Japan declares war on USSR after Soviet troops invade recently-conquered Japanese territory in eastern China. Mao becomes Chinese dictator. Chaing flees to US.

1939- Attempts to encourage a communist coup in Poland fail. Then, Trotsky orders Soviet troops to invade. Britain, France and Germany declare war on USSR. The Soviet army is stronger and more tactically-skilled than it is in OTL because purges haven't lobotomized the army.

1940- Covert Soviet operations encourage a pro-independence revolt in India. Mao sends Chinese troops into Indian territory to aid pro-independence forces. Britain, France and Germany declare war on China.

1941- The Soviets sink many US vessels delivering equipment to Britain under the Lend-Lease Act. USA declares war on USSR and China. China invades Vietnam and Cambodia (French colonies).

1942- Most of north and central India is now under the control of a pro-communist puppet government with the USSR and China pulling the strings. The British still occupy portions of the south. With US equipment, the Soviets are being pushed by German and French forces back towards Moscow.

1943- Suffering defeats against Japan, the USSR and China decide to make piece with the Imperial Japanese forces. A Sino-Japanese treaty gives the eastern coastline of China (plus Manchuria) and the Chinese-occupied portions of Vietnam and Cambodia to Japan as colonies. The Soviets sign a peace treaty with the Japanese too.

1944- With the huge industrial superiority of the anti-Soviet forces, the USSR suffers huge defeats in the West. Moscow and Leningrad fall. The US test-detonates an atomic device.

1945- Nuclear devices fall on Beijing and Volgagrad(?) (Stalingrad in OTL) (new Soviet capital). It is clear to the USSR and China (plus their Indian puppet ally) that they can't win. However, controlling about 1/3 of the world's land area, the communists refuse to surrender.

1945-9 Over the next four years, millions of British, French, German and American troops die trying to conquer the USSR, China and independent India. The Allies have said they will accept nothing less than total surrender. Trotsky and Mao have refused to give in. Further elementary nuclear devices are dropped on Chinese, Russian and Indian towns and cities. However, the British, French, Germans and Americans have to send their own soldiers into the nuclearly-contaminated areas in order to expel the surviving communist troops from there and to maintain law and order.

late 1949- A palace coup topples Trotsky. The new administration, led by Nikita Khruschev, signs a humiliating peace treaty. The USSR is broken up into about a dozen or so states as Ukraine, Latvia, Kazachstan etc all get their independence. A devastated and shrunken Russia (much smaller than modern Russia in OTL) is what is left for Khruschev to rule over.

1950- Mao's regime finally falls. Huge famines, which have killed tens of millions of Chinese peasants lead them to desperation. They revolt against Mao's regime and it finally falls. Chaing returns to govern China.

1951- Adolf Hitler, German dictator and ally of the UK, France and Britain, dies a natural death having managed to gain most of Poland and Czechoslovakia, as well as Austria in a post-war Treaty of Washington which sets the new world boundaries. His state funeral is an international event. British prime minister Anthony Eden and US president Truman are among the prominent mourners. Only in the 1970s, do historians discover the reality behind the Nazi regime which killed over two million Jews and left-wing activists in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

peaccenicked
14th March 2003, 15:53
What a pile of crap, based on air head Stalinist prejudice

Just Joe
14th March 2003, 16:20
would Hitler have come to power if Trotsky had taken over?

even if the situation you said would happen, did, i still think Socialism would be more healthy today. Trotsky would have made the USSR a better place to live and other countries would have seen this, and maybe copied the Soviets.

Ymir
14th March 2003, 19:44
peacenicked, are you aware I did not create that timeline? I also do not know Mike Reid or his thoughts about Stalin. Unless you know the author's personal views, you can't pass much judgement about prejudices can you?

I agree that supporting foreign communist movements would have united reactionaries against the communist threat and started a world-war between socialist nations and 'capitalist' ones. After the socialist countries were defeated, the remaining communists would be comparable to the Southerners after the American Civil War.

Saint-Just
14th March 2003, 23:18
Quote: from peaccenicked on 3:53 pm on Mar. 14, 2003
What a pile of crap, based on air head Stalinist prejudice


This timeline seems actually seems mcuh worse, boviosuly, but still rather familiar. Interesting scenario.

thursday night
14th March 2003, 23:31
I would suspect this to be true. The great enemy revisionist Trotsky would have doomed the socialist revolution.

Pete
14th March 2003, 23:49
I must agree with Thursday, Trostky would have been very BAD for the CCCP. I think that a joint command would have been better. To counterbalance everything.

Cassius Clay
15th March 2003, 00:19
Quote: from peaccenicked on 3:53 pm on Mar. 14, 2003
What a pile of crap, based on air head Stalinist prejudice



No this is NOT written by a Stalinist.

Back to the point, under Trotsky workers would of been living under military discipline and the USSR would resemble something like Pol Pot's Cambodia. Under Stalin workers had the right to sack their own bosses. I know which one I would chose. Anyway that timeline is highly implaussible, Trotsky got less than 1% of the vote come election time in real life so I doubt he'll do any better. Most likely somebody like Kaganovich or Molotov would of took over.

peaccenicked
15th March 2003, 00:21
"In the limits of this preface we cannot deal in detail with the question of building socialism in one country. To this we have devoted a number of writings, particularly Criticism of the Draft Program of the Comintern. Here we confine ourselves to the fundamental elements of this question. Let us recall, first of all, that the theory of socialism in one country was first formulated by Stalin in the autumn of 1924, in complete contradiction not only to all the traditions of Marxism and the school of Lenin, but even to what Stalin himself had written in the spring of the same year. From the standpoint of principle, the departure from Marxism by the Stalinist 'school' on the issues of socialist construction is no less significant and drastic than, for example, the break of the German Social Democrats from Marxism on the issues of war and patriotism in the fall of 1914, exactly ten years before the Stalinist turn. This comparison is by no means accidental in character. Stalin's 'mistake', just like the 'mistake' of the German Social Democracy, is national socialism.

Marxism takes its point of departure from world economy, not as a sum of national parts but as a mighty and independent reality which has been created by the international division of labor and the world market, and which in our epoch imperiously dominates the national markets. The productive forces of capitalist society have long ago outgrown the national boundaries. The imperialist war (of 1914-1918) was one of the expressions of this fact. In respect of the technique of production socialist society must represent a stage higher than capitalism. To aim at building a nationally isolated socialist society means, in spite of all passing successes, to pull the productive forces backward even as compared with capitalism. To attempt, regardless of the geographical, cultural and historical conditions of the country's development, which constitutes a part of the world unity, to realize a shut-off proportionality of all the branches of economy within a national framework, means to pursue a reactionary utopia. If the heralds and supporters of this theory nevertheless participate in the international revolutionary struggle (with what success is a different question) it is because, as hopeless eclectics, they mechanically combine abstract internationalism with reactionary utopian national socialism. The crowning expression of this eclecticism is the program of the Comintern adopted by the Sixth Congress. "
Trotsky 1931

Hate Your State
15th March 2003, 00:28
"even if the situation you said would happen, did, i still think Socialism would be more healthy today. Trotsky would have made the USSR a better place to live and other countries would have seen this, and maybe copied the Soviets."

Are you aware how horribly opposed to civil rights Trotsky was? There would still have been mass deaths in USSR.

Cassius Clay
15th March 2003, 00:56
Peacenicked just what is the point of all that?

Anyway here's an example of what life under Trotsky would of been like.

''In December 1919, Trotsky proposed the `militarization of economic life' and wanted to mobilize the workers using methods he had applied for leading the army. With this line, the railroad workers were mobilized under military discipline. A wave of protests passed through the union movement. Lenin declared that Trotsky committed errors that endangered the dictatorship of the proletariat: by his bureaucratic harassment of the unions, he risked separating the Party from the masses.

.

V. I. Lenin, The Trade Unions, the Present Situation, and Trotsky's Mistakes (30 December 1920). Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1960--1970), vol. 32, pp. 19--42.


Trotsky's outrageous individualism, his open disdain for Bolshevik cadres, his authoritarian style of leadership and his taste for military discipline frightened many Party cadres. They thought that Trotsky could well play the rôle of a Napoléon Bonaparte, effecting a coup d'état and setting up a counter-revolutionary authoritarian régime.''


And some people on this website like to call other people 'Anti-Human' while upholding the above.

peaccenicked
15th March 2003, 01:06
Lenin thrashed Trotsky on his eclecticism. I think Trotsky learned from it.

Cassius Clay
15th March 2003, 01:20
'I think Trotsky learned from it'

LOL, ofcourse he did.

That would explain why he ordered his supporters to collobarate the IJA in slaughtering Chinese peasants (but then again Trotsky never did like peasants, what were they? Something along the lines of reflecting 'barbarism'. Anyway I guess those 'Stalinists' deserved it.) and acting as Franco's spys in Spain.

peaccenicked
15th March 2003, 01:43
trotsky did what? YEAH.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggggggghh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhht.
Do you believe every slander of Trotsky you read?

Pete
15th March 2003, 01:55
*frowns at the stupid troskty vs stalin debate flaring up*

Question, did Trostky not sleep in a palace?

Cassius Clay
15th March 2003, 11:20
Quote: from peaccenicked on 1:43 am on Mar. 15, 2003
trotsky did what? YEAH.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggggggghh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhht.
Do you believe every slander of Trotsky you read?


Yeah that's right he did precisly that. Go to the 'American on Josef Stalin' thread which is in this forum a few pages back. And also according to one Trotskyite it's okay to throw workers into concentration camps for merely turning up late to work. As I said in the thread I was amazed to meet a Trotskyite who actually understood what Trotsky and Trotskyism means. Anyway go to the thread all the evidence is there.

Eastside Revolt
15th March 2003, 20:15
Ymir,

You may be right about everything except the alliance with japan. But at least we wouldn't have had such a black-mark on socialism made by Stalin. And if there is hope today for a socialist revolution, then there still would have been after those events.
Those people that you mentioned taking power would never have listened to Keynes and they would have plunged us into another depression, hence fuelling socialism.
Aswell if Trotsky had taken power, he wouldn't have had so many socialist schollars executed for stupid Stalinist reasons, who knows what kind of effect this would have. It could only have been positive.

Cassius Clay
15th March 2003, 20:35
Redcanada you are aware that if Lenin had lived another ten or even thirty years so called 'Historians' or 'Experts' would be writing the same things they do of Stalin of Lenin or whoever had taken over.

As for your claim that 'socialist schollars executed for stupid Stalinist reasons' what is all this about?

Back to the orginall point Trotsky wanted to throw workers into concentration camps for merely turning up late, hardly a 'workers paradise'.