It would be interesting to see how the Lenin/Stalin relationship played out. Stalin had amassed considerable power in terms of the party apparatus even before Lenin died. On the other hand, Lenin had immense prestige within the party, and he was made of considerably sterner stuff than the other Old Bolsheviks.

I suspect that Stalin would have moved more cautiously if Lenin had been in good health and continuously involved in the party apparatus than he did with Lenin in poor health and out of the process for periods of time in his first two strokes. However, Lenin was a strong personality and historically figured out Stalin. I suspect he would spot the threat from Stalin and act against him. I suspect he would win that battle and oust Stalin from his positions of power. On the other hand, Stalin was a master of maneuver and timing. I wouldn't totally count him out, even against Lenin. 

A lot depends on how long Lenin survives past his real history expiration date. I suspect that surviving long enough to denounce Stalin and then folding in the mid-1920s would favor Trotsky. Staying on longer might end up pushing succession to a younger generation of leaders.

Issues: Historically the Soviet Union faced a variety of questions like

(1) Was it going to become a federation with some degree of real power in the hands of the SSRs or was it going to become the centralized state that it historically became? There were strong forces for centralization. The Russians were used to being in charge of a centralized state and had the bulk of the administrative experience, so there was a strong tendency toward "Great Russian Chauvinism", which I believe Lenin was smart enough to spot and fight against.

(2) Was the NEP going to continue or were they going to go to the panic industrialization based around heavy industry that they went to historically? The NEP was sort of a way for the Bolsheviks to have their version of a capitalist period and accumulate capital, but they didn't want the capitalist elements encouraged by it to get strong enough that they took over the country like they seem to be doing in China. The intention of at least part of the Bolshevik leadership was that at some point the NEP would end and the accumulated capital used to build Communism, which is kind of what happened historically, though what got built was a distorted fun-house mirror version.

Historically, there were divisions among the leadership as to when and to a limited extent if that would happen, with Stalin maneuvering between the factions. I'm guessing that with Lenin in charge the same divisions would develop, but with Lenin moderating the depth of the divisions because of his prestige and power. If Trotsky succeeded Lenin in the mid-1920s, I suspect that the NEP would be terminated as soon as he consolidated power, and possibly a little earlier than it was historically.

 Trotsky supported the concept of rapid industrialization at the expense of the peasants early on, which is ironically, one of the things Stalin used against him in the post-Lenin maneuverings. Stalin allied with the 'right' (odd concept when talking about Bolsheviks) to get rid of Trotsky and several other prominent 'leftists', then turned around and implemented it. I'm not sure if it would have been implemented as ruthlessly or effectively under someone other than Stalin.

Among the issues: would Trotsky (or Lenin or someone else other than Stalin) be willing to go to reactionary capitalists like Ford for advice on building Soviet industry? Willingness to go to Capitalist experts on mass production was a lot of what made Soviet industrialization so successful, but it must have been a bitter thing for the Soviet regime to accept.

 But would Trotsky consolidate power?  Historically, Stalin led the coalition against Trotsky, but even without Stalin I suspect that there would be an anti-Trotsky coalition, and that Trotsky would find few firm allies near the top of the party.

 A guy I know who is getting his doctorate in Russian history claims that Stalin's actions were the logical endpoint for the Russian Revolution and that if they hadn't been implemented by Stalin they would have been implemented by whoever else was in charge.

I don't totally agree with that. I don't think Lenin would have needed to unleash a reign of terror on the Bolshevik party itself because unlike Stalin he had the intellectual and oratorical firepower to dominate the old Bolsheviks. I also don't think Lenin would feel the need to purge the Red Army to the extent and in the way Stalin did, again because he would be more secure in his position of power.

Other policies I'm not as sure about. The end of the NEP? The forced heavy industrialization? The war on the wealthy peasants? The elimination of any real power from the non-Russian SSRs? The buildup of a powerful and ubiquitous police state? I suspect that those were probably going to happen in some form whoever was in charge of the Soviet Union, though the timing, the extent, and the form they would take might differ considerably under someone other than Stalin.

It would be interesting to replay the lead-up to World War II with Lenin in charge as opposed to Stalin. Stalin did a lot of things that were too smart by half and that ended up backfiring on him. Hitler would never have been in a position to launch his attack on the Soviet Union without some of Stalin's dumber moves. Would Lenin have been smart enough to realize that gaining a little chunk of rural Poland at the expense of gaining Nazi Germany as a neighbor was a bad deal? Germany could not have started World War II without a pact giving them access to Soviet raw materials, or if they started it they couldn't have sustained it long.

 Granted, no Soviet leader would have trusted the West as potential strategic partners after Munich, but I'm not at all sure cutting a deal did make sense, even in the context of what the west did with Czechoslovakia. The territory the Soviets gained in Poland was militarily a very mixed blessing. They didn't have time to build up an infrastructure to support their troops there, so when the Germans invaded the troops in the occupied parts of Poland the Soviet troops there couldn't adequately fight there and couldn't get out of the German pincers in a timely manner.

The Soviets had more than two choices in August 1939. Yes, signing on with the western Allies to help defend Poland was risky because it is quite possible that Britain and France would have sat back and let the Soviets do most if not all of the heavy lifting. That doesn't mean that the Soviets had to make a pact with the Germans that gave them the raw materials they needed to fight the war. The most rational option would have been to shut up and let the Germans wonder what the Soviets were going to do.

That complicates German planning considerably. Are the Soviets going to move in support of Poland? No way of knowing for sure from a German point of view. Are the Soviets going to supply the Poles with weapons? Again, no way of knowing. Maybe that deters the Germans. Even if it doesn't, it keeps the Germans from building up enough to cause the amount of destruction they did historically in the Soviet Union. The Germans advanced into the Soviet Union in very large part using Soviet oil and eating Soviet grain that Stalin traded to them. Could not have done it without that.

Posted on Jan 4, 2012.

More Stuff For POD Members Only

What you see here is a truncated on-line version of a larger zine that I contribute to POD, the alternate history APA.  POD members get to look forward to more fun stuff.