I'd just be afraid to look at any alternate USSR leadership universes for the sole reason that they absolutely MUST win WW2, or else most of Eastern Europe gets genocided.
I would love to see an Alexandra Kollontai/Worker's Opposition universe though. It's on the outer edge of realistic outcomes, but every other nation would lose their MINDS if a global superpower had a woman leading it.
Yeah, without the massive forced collectivization and industrialization plans that Stalin initiated, WW2 looks a lot different.
There's also the flip side of Germany possibly flipping communist with more active Soviet international activity during the late 20s to mid 30s. Or at the very least a trade embargo in reaction to Nazi's gaining power.
Hindsight is 20/20 though, and Russia basically ran ahead and no one in Europe followed like was expected. Marx, Engels, Lenin, they all kinda expected the revolution to spread like wildfire after a successful one, and while it did, it just didn't in the industrial core. Which was very bad because the industrial core had industrial weapons.
The problem i see with Trotzky leading the USSR isn't that he would have underestimated fascism, it's that he was really awful at getting the party on his side. I mean, sure, in a scenario where he was in charge during WW2, that obviously would not apply for some reason, but that brings us to the core of the problem with such scenarios: A Trotzky leading the Soviet Union wouldn't be the historical Trotzky, it would be some other dude looking just like Trotzky.
I'd just be afraid to look at any alternate USSR leadership universes for the sole reason that they absolutely MUST win WW2, or else most of Eastern Europe gets genocided.
I would love to see an Alexandra Kollontai/Worker's Opposition universe though. It's on the outer edge of realistic outcomes, but every other nation would lose their MINDS if a global superpower had a woman leading it.
Yeah, without the massive forced collectivization and industrialization plans that Stalin initiated, WW2 looks a lot different.
There's also the flip side of Germany possibly flipping communist with more active Soviet international activity during the late 20s to mid 30s. Or at the very least a trade embargo in reaction to Nazi's gaining power.
Hindsight is 20/20 though, and Russia basically ran ahead and no one in Europe followed like was expected. Marx, Engels, Lenin, they all kinda expected the revolution to spread like wildfire after a successful one, and while it did, it just didn't in the industrial core. Which was very bad because the industrial core had industrial weapons.
It's my impression that all of the Bolsheviks knew how dire the threat of Nazism was, I mean Trotsky was writing about it all through the 30s.
The problem i see with Trotzky leading the USSR isn't that he would have underestimated fascism, it's that he was really awful at getting the party on his side. I mean, sure, in a scenario where he was in charge during WW2, that obviously would not apply for some reason, but that brings us to the core of the problem with such scenarios: A Trotzky leading the Soviet Union wouldn't be the historical Trotzky, it would be some other dude looking just like Trotzky.