An earlier post here put the re-occurring question as to what if Trotsky became the General Secretary instead of Stalin. Let's bring some new blood into these hypotheticals. Forget Trotsky. What if Bogdanov wasn't hounded out of both his leadership position and subsequently the party by Lenin (for example Lenin dies in 1909)? Would we see a more democratic and more science based Soviet society emerge after the revolution without the superstitious excesses of anti-intellectual careerists, without the heavy handed approach of the military-originating cadres, without the cult of personality and rabid censorship of forward thinking schools of thought and individuals? Would, in essence, the Soviet Union have been able to wield authoritarianism and militancy necessary for its survival without the crippling paranoia wasting away its best and brightest and giving way to cynical careerism?

  • Grownbravy [they/them]
    1·
    4 years ago

    I remember Trotsky’s horny letters and now demand to know what kind of freak Stalin was.

      • CenkUygurCamp [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Stalin in those days was slim, attractive, charming, an accomplished poet and educated in the priesthood, but also a pitiless Marxist terrorist and brutal gangster boss - a Red Godfather who had funded Lenin's Bolsheviks with a series of audaciously bloody acts of bank robbery, piracy and racketeering.

        this shit sounds like an anime lmao

      • Grownbravy [they/them]
        1·
        4 years ago

        Just one leftist leader who isnt trying to get with teenagers, please.