Inspired by this thread. What if Trotsky instead of Stalin had ended up in charge of the post-Lenin USSR? How would history have been different?
Room for a lot of speculation here. I think that Trotsky would have continued closer to Lenin’s model. It seems to be Stalin who gave the Soviet Union most of it’s original totalitarian flavor. The purges wouldn’t have occured, or ocurred in the way they did–perhaps Trotsky might have purged a few opponents too? Stalin sure wasn’t the first to do so. So some of the political ideology may have had a different flavor.
In the end though I think the Soviet Union would have eventually collapsed economically anyway.
WWII would have still been fought between the Soviet Union and Germany, though it may have unfolded differently.
On the large scale, I think things wind up pretty much the same. Possibly Trotsky might have led to a less threatening Soviet Union and thus a Cold War not quite as chilly as the one we had.
Trotsky was no sweetheart. He ordered plenty of executions and could be as ruthless as Stalin.
I think the main difference was that Lenin and Trotsky weren’t as personally paranoid as Stalin. They might shoot you if you disagreed with them but you could keep on their good side. With Stalin there were only two factions in the world: Stalin and everyone who was a potential threat to Stalin that he hadn’t got around to killing yet.
On doctrinal issues, the big difference was over where they should focus the resources for revolution. Trotsky led the faction that said their primary goal should be spreading revolution throughout the world. Stalin led the faction that said their primary goal should be building up the revolution in Russia. So if Trotsky had won, you’d probably have seen the Soviet Union as a more aggressive player in world politics rather than the relatively isolationist policy it followed under Stalin.
I like to think Trotsky would have had no part in any Holodomor, at least.
…Animal Farm would have been much different.
Eh, maybe, maybe not. I don’t think Lenin or Trotsky would have shied away from it. What’s the saying, the one good thing Stalin did was that he made Lenin look good by comparison?
People get this idea somehow that Lenin was a benevolent despot – he was nothing of the sort. Trotsky was pretty much in the same vein, if a wee more intellectual.
I’ve always said that Lenin was a necessary prelude to Stalin. Lenin basically eliminated any political opposition in Russia and concentrated all control of the country into a few hundred people in one group. And then Stalin succeeded Lenin and took over control from that small group. In a normal society, power would have been too decentralized for Stalin to assume the amount of personal control he did.
OK, but what if Trotsky had got the seat instead?
Of course that raises the question of why Stalin became so paranoid. The most likely reason seems to be that he had absolute control over the Soviet Union for a long time. History suggests that almost anyone who has absolute control over a country will mentally disintegrate in one way or another, sometimes by paranoia and sometimes in other ways.
Haven’t there been any Russian Tsars or Chinese Emperors who were both long-lived and sane? I’m sure there were. And they were absolute rulers.
Anyway, I don’t believe Stalin was corrupted by power, I think his tendencies were clear pretty early in his career.
Catherine the Great?
Perhaps something to do with growing up as heir to power vs being a peasant (stalin) who manages to come into it?
Sorta like how a Rockefeller grows up around vast wealth but is groomed to manage it vs. Joe Dirt who wins the lottery and goes nuts buying useless crap.
1984 too.
Trotsky was one of the principal organizers of the Red Army and may not have purged it in the way Stalin did just before WWII. Repulsing the Nazi invasion might thus have been easier and faster. At the most extreme, imagine that the Red Army rolled up the Nazis in time to reach Berlin before D-Day. From there, much of Western Europe would end up in the Warsaw Pact.
Actually, I read up on a lot of Trotsky’s writings as a teenager, and distinctly remember his claim that, had he been in Stalin’s seat, he would have ordered Soviet tanks into Germany the second Hitler grabbed power, way back in 1933. Nip that shit in the bud, as it were.
Hindsight is 20/20, though – who knows if he would have actually done so, had he been given the chance.
All in all, my bet is Trotsky would probably have been just as brutal as Stalin.
Make that “vaguely remember,” instead of “distinctly remember.”
I agree with the member who suggested that Trotsky would have kept
the Red Army intact, thus providing with USSR with a much stronger
fighting force in 1941. He might also have taken greater heed of the
intelligence reports and many other warnings of impending invasion-
I mean, it is not really possible to be suprised by the designs of three
or so million armed men concentrated on your border, is it?
It is less certain that he would have avoided the Holodomor, because
he was no less than Stalin committed to tight state control over all
parts of the economy, including agriculture. The stratification of the
peasant class into rich peasant (Kulaks) down to poor peasants also
sounds like something he would have taken violent steps to eliminate.
Perhaps he could have accomplished agricultural collectivization with
more finesse and much less loss of life, however.
His foreign policy might well have been less accomodating to the rest
of the world. He championed the Communist doctrine of “Permanent Revolution”,
whereby class warfare, incited and abetted by the USSR, was to be a constant
phenomenon of the landscape of Capitalist society. Stalin and his faction
posed the alternative of “Socialism in One Country”, entailing a large measure
of opportunistic surface accomodation and working within other counties’
parliamentary systems, all the while devoting most attention and effort to
establishing socialism in the USSR, and building the industry needed to equip
modern armed forces.
I happened across the following collection of Trotsy’s writing,
and have been browsing somewhat lightly through it. He was
an excellent writer, and translates well.
I missed any suggestion by Trotsky that the USSR commit its
own armed forces against Nazi Germany in early 1933. These
wouild have had to fight their way several 100 miles through
Poland just to get to Germany, and I doubt the Red Army was
then strong enough to do so.
Trotsky did point out that the three-million stong communist
electorate in Germany consistuted “a mighty army”, and I believe
he favored that they take violent action.
Ah, thanks. Good points.
It’s possible that the whole “Trotsky would have stopped Hitler way back in the early 30’s”-thing was speculation on the part of Trotsky’s (fawning) biographer, Isaac Deutscher, rather than something I read in Trotsky’s own writing. Not sure. It’s been fifteen years.
Russian intelligence might also have fared much better under Trotsky, as Stalin was so paranoid he kept rolling up his own spy networks. (“Rolling up” is a euphemism for “killing off or imprisoning.” Generally, you roll up the other side’s spy networks.) A lot of Soviet spies ended their days in Lubyanka Prison basements with bullets in their forehead. If Trotsky had used the spy networks more intelligently, and it’s hard to see how anyone could avoid doing a better job than Stalin, Russia would have been a much more effective force in WWII.