It’s all well and good to speculate about what the world would have been like without Hitler - but what about Stalin? If Stalin had died in a tragic accident in seminary, for example - who would have been likely to take over for Lenin, and what would his government have been like?
Feel free to list several possible candidates. 
When Lenin died, leadership of the Soviet Union would’ve likely passed to Trotsky.
And what would the Soviet Union under Trotsky have been like? Would have have, for example, refrained from purging the general staff? Would Ukraine still have happened?
Trotsky would have pressed for World Revolution immediately. There wouldn’t have been any agreement between the Soviet Union and Hitler, so the whole Polish question would have played out differently. The Soviets would probably have aided the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War to a greater degree.
I could see war between Germany and the USSR breaking out in the early 1930s, and France/Britain et al siding with the Fascists. Not likely, but possible.
I agree Trotsky. General Staff, no. Ukraine, yes.
I believe that Trotsky would not have spent 30 years inculcating the Cult of the Paranoid Personality into the Russian psyche, and that the USSR would have been better for that, and more able to adjust to conditions. Which is not to say that a government headed by Trotsky would necessarily have been less bloody on a general scope, but it would have been less bloody particularly. Even Lenin couldn’t simply order that Stalin be taken out and shot, and I believe that Trotsky would have continued more on that line.
shrug Could be wrong, it’s just sandcastles in the air, after all.
Without Stalin, would the Soviet Union have industrialized in time to even put up any resistance to Germany?
Trotsky was more of an intellectual than Stalin, who was cunning & brutal.
I recall reading in a history of the October Revolution, Lenin suggested he remain as head of the Bolshevik Party while Trotsky headed up the government. Trostky protested that as a Jew, he was unacceptable. “Besides, you will just stay outside and criticize.” So Lenin reluctantly agreed to perform both roles. But if a Jew, in Trotsky’s opinion (and he should know), was politically unacceptable as a national leader for Russia in 1917, he probably still would have been unacceptable in 1924 when Lenin died.
Still, by 1924 Trotsky had earned more status, as the leader of the Red Army and victor of the Civil War. So, maybe.
Trotsky would most likely have been the leader (on preview, I guess this is less than surprising, since it’s what everyone has said so far). I think that had Trotsky been leading the Soviets he would have looked more toward global revolution and less inwardly, as Stalin did. So, I’m not sure if the Soviet Union would actually have been able to hold together, to be honest, nor do I think that Trotsky would have put the same emphasis on the internal industrialization and building of infrastructure that Stalin did. Not the same level of purges either (though don’t fool yourself…instead of 10’s of millions, maybe only a few million deaths would have resulted), which may or may not have been a bad thing. The thing is, even paranoiacs have enemies, and not all of the purges that Stalin periodically launched, especially those in the military, were necessarily just him being a crazy asshole. It’s entirely possible that without an iron fist (or with a more externally focused instead of inwardly focused regime), that there could have been a more serious counter revolutionary movement. Stalin kept them all in line by completely terrorizing them, but not sure what Trotsky would have done in the same situation.
I seriously doubt that, assuming the Soviet Union survived up to it’s clash with Germany, that they would have long survived the onslaught under Trotsky, so that would probably have been the end of them (I actually think they would have gone down in the '30’s without Stalin to keep everyone marching along).
It’s an interesting question though, and I really just joined the thread to see what others think on this one.
-XT
I don’t think it can be assumed that the rise of Hitler can be taken as read given the rise of Trotsky. Trotsky would definitely have involved himself as best he could in helping the German left develop an active resistance to the rise of the fascists instead of the stupidly passive and sectarian approach orchestrated by Stalin. The history of Germany would likely have differed just as markedly as the history of the Soviet Union.
Does anyone remember a thread re a world without Hitler? Please don’t search for me, (my search just returned a database error :mad: … I’ll try again.)
It’s also interesting to remember that without Stalin there is likely no Khrushchev and therefore none of the reforms he initiated. Of course a lot of those were erased after he was ousted so maybe its not so big a change.
The world would now be a socialist paradise, my comrades. Vodka would flow like water. We would all join hands daily and sing songs in honor of factory workers. There would be no money and no private property. Children would be well behaved and women would desire more sex.
We were that close.
A more interesting question is, what would have happened to Russia and world, if the February Revolution had happened but the October Revolution had not?
At any rate, under Communist rule in Russia, vodka did flow like water! And still does today!
Trotsky would’ve taken over, but like others have said Trotsky had more of an imperial policy and a desire to spread world communism.
Also I don’t know (but personally doubt) that Trotsky would’ve engaged in the purges Stalin engaged in. Once Stalin died the mass purges stopped too.
So maybe when WW2 finally broke out the Soviets would’ve been in a better position militarily to conquer the Germans because they’d be better fed, with more soldiers and a better officers corp. And as a result of this maybe they would’ve annexed larger portions of western europe (including all of Germany, Italy and France, and possibly Scandinavia, however the soviets couldn’t even defeat Finland so I don’t know about that) instead of just western Germany.
It seems the concept of a global communist rebellion happened anyway. Communism was used heavily as an umbrella in anti-colonial rebellions all over the world during the cold war period. So would Trotsky really have made a difference? Most colonial nations rebelled against their western colonizers anyway in the 1950-1990 period.
I doubt it. I don’t see the Soviet Union under Trotsky as any more likely than the Soviet Union under Stalin to ally itself with “social fascists”. It’s true that, in 1932, Trotsky spoke out in favor of such an alliance, but again, that was in 1932, and Trotsky was in exile and pretty routinely criticizing almost everything that the Stalin led Soviet Union did. I think that almost everything he wrote after he went into his exile is tainted by his bitterness over losing the power struggle and an attempt to whitewash himself, and can’t be trusted as an honest expression of his views.
A Trotsky Soviet Union would have been even more militant and less pragmatic than the OTL Soviet Union, which, on the on the other side, would have made the Social Democrats even less likely to want to cooperate with them. Communism would have been seen as even more of a danger to Germany than it was, which would have just increased support for the Nazis and other far right governments.
I do agree it’s much less likely that, domestically, you would have seen a purge of the party the way you did under Stalin, or, if there was one (of Stalin, Bukharin and Rykov, maybe), it would have been much smaller and less disruptive and violent.
It’s sort of more interesting to think about what would have happened if Bukharin or Rykov had taken power, and if the NEP had been allowed to continue.
It’s sort of more interesting to think about what would have happened if Bukharin or Rykov had taken power, and if the NEP had been allowed to continue, because it was working by the time it was canceled. Agriculture was producing surpluses, and industrial production had gone back to prewar levels.
I’m not sure how the new regime could have survived while dealing at the same time with the soviets, the bolsheviks, probably also tsarists and a world war on top of it. :dubious:
I suspect that a peace treaty with Germany would have been absolutely necessary in this case too.
I’m not sure the Soviet Union under Trotsky would have been a very effective state. Stalin’s biggest effect may have been how he effectively silenced internal dissent. If Trotsky had been in power when the famines happened, I think there’s a good chance he may have been the victim of a coup. Who’s to say whether the Soviets would have even industrialized to the level they did.