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If the USSR had a leader friends with the West, it all plays out differently
A) Hitler doesn't cooperate with Russia to over run Poland
B) USSR falls to Hitler
How does a better US - Russian relationship lead to the USSR falling to Nazi Germany?
Firstly, we don't know what the outcome of world war two would have been.
And secondly, no. Russia has far too much land and valuable resources such as water, coal, diamonds, for the USA to ever be 'friends' with unless they make it Mexico.
It really has nothing to do with Stalin, although he was a very ruthless leader, very sad. I think the premise to your question is wrong though.
How does a better US - Russian relationship lead to the USSR falling to Nazi Germany?
No, not just USSR. Europe too could have fallen to Nazi Germany. I don't think America would have intervened had it not being for Pearl Harbour. So you would have had two superpowers then, USA and Nazi Germany.
Firstly, we don't know what the outcome of world war two would have been.
And secondly, no. Russia has far too much land and valuable resources such as water, coal, diamonds, for the USA to ever be 'friends' with unless they make it Mexico.
It really has nothing to do with Stalin, although he was a very ruthless leader, very sad. I think the premise to your question is wrong though.
I guess it always looked to me like it was because of Stalin why the US and USSR did not have better relations. I just thought the Soviet people did not hate the USA but it seemed like Stalin hated the USA. But you make a good point and may be right. Thanks for the replies and keep em coming. Ron
I guess it always looked to me like it was because of Stalin why the US and USSR did not have better relations. I just thought the Soviet people did not hate the USA but it seemed like Stalin hated the USA. But you make a good point and may be right. Thanks for the replies and keep em coming. Ron
I'm not sure what part of the fundamental role that Marxism played in east-west tensions that you don't understand.
If there had been no Stalin and the USSR had a leader that was good friends with the west after WWII do you think it would still have been a cold war. I mean if the USA and USSR stayed good friends after WWII what would history have been like ? Do you think it would have been much different ? Ron.
I guess I should have worded it different. I meant no Stalin but another person was their leader instead of Stalin ?
That's pretty much a given if there is no Stalin. Sure, someone else is going to lead the USSR. But is it going to be someone with the inclination or the talents to turn the authoritarian USSR of the 1920s into the totalitarian dictatorship with all power concentrated in the hands of one person? Is that person going to be paranoid to the point of the Great Purges? Will this alt-leader scrap Lenin's New Economic Plan, as did Stalin in 1928?
We need to know the who and what of that person before we can even understand what this alt-USSR looks like in 1939 at the onset of war, because 'no Stalin' means the Soviet Union in that alt-year will be very different than the one we know from history.
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I mean someone who had more trust in the westerners so the USSR and USA were not dead set enimies ? A leader who appriciated lend lease.
A 1930s/40s Soviet leader who trusts and appreciates the capitalist West?
Stalin wasn't the problem from the West's point of view; the problem was Marxist-Leninist thought. Recall that of the USSR, Churchill wanted - in his own words - to 'strangle it in its cradle'. He held this notion in the early days of Bolshevik Russia (before the USSR was technically created and so named in the early 1920s) when Lenin was the leader and it was far from clear or even perceived as likely that Stalin would succeed him.
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How then would history have been from the end of WWII ?
N/A - because you've gone from alt-history to fantasy.
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And a USSR who did not take eastern Europe under its control.
Well, the most obvious alternative to Stalin is Trotsky, and replacing Stalin's "Socialism in One Country" with Trotsky's ideal of exporting the "Permanent Revolution" at every opportunity isn't going to make the Soviets any less likely to stay in Eastern Europe*. Frankly, any Soviet leader who found himself in control of Eastern Europe (a happy - from the Soviet perspective - consequence of taking down Hitler) is going to maintain that new-found control in some manner.
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Do you think the USA and USSR could have been friends and stayed allies after the war ? Ron
The U.S. and Soviets were never friends - they simply had a common cause. With the Axis defeated, that common cause disappeared. They had nothing over which to ally themselves.
* - Nor is it going to make the USSR any more palatable as an entity to the West: quite the opposite, in fact.
In fear of repeating myself, what part of the fundamental role that Marxism played in east-west tensions that they don't understand.
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Originally Posted by Unsettomati
That's pretty much a given if there is no Stalin. Sure, someone else is going to lead the USSR. But is it going to be someone with the inclination or the talents to turn the authoritarian USSR of the 1920s into the totalitarian dictatorship with all power concentrated in the hands of one person? Is that person going to be paranoid to the point of the Great Purges? Will this alt-leader scrap Lenin's New Economic Plan, as did Stalin in 1928?
Yes, like Georgy Malenkov, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, of Konstantin Chernenko, 35 years of post Stalin leadership that didn't reduce one iota of east/west tensions and animosity, tensions and animosity that began in 1918 with the ascendancy of the Communist Party and the establishment of the Soviet Union.
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We need to know the who and what of that person before we can even understand what this alt-USSR looks like in 1939 at the onset of war, because 'no Stalin' means the Soviet Union in that alt-year will be very different than the one we know from history.
I just don't get this alt-history that pre-supposes that even with Lenin's marginally liberal economic policies that the foundation of Marxist-Leninist ideology, the dictatorship of the proletariat when translated into real speak meant the absolute power of the state resting the hands of the Communist Party, the Supreme Soviet, the Politburo and ultimately in the hands of the Party Chairman. Lenin wasn't going to change that and neither was Leon Trotsky.
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A 1930s/40s Soviet leader who trusts and appreciates the capitalist West?
I can't the idea hurts my head too much. Appreciates the capitalist west, that is so utterly inimical to the principles of Marxism as to defy a response... but I'll try. Capitalism was seen by all Marxist as inequitable and exploitative, a system that could not be reformed but instead had to be destroyed. And once given the eagerness of western "democracies" destroy communist movements whenever and wherever they appeared... I'm not feeling how they were going to link arms with the capitalist west and sing Kumbaya.
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Stalin wasn't the problem from the West's point of view; the problem was Marxist-Leninist thought.
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Well, the most obvious alternative to Stalin is Trotsky, and replacing Stalin's "Socialism in One Country" with Trotsky's ideal of exporting the "Permanent Revolution" at every opportunity isn't going to make the Soviets any less likely to stay in Eastern Europe*.
How does a better US - Russian relationship lead to the USSR falling to Nazi Germany?
If you assume Stalin had lost the power struggle after the death of Lenin in 1924 and the USSR had taken a course more along the lines of the New Economic Plan backed by Lenin and Trotsky one wouldn't have had (1) the Rapid industrialization of the 3 Five Year Plans, (2) Forced collectivization of agriculture and (3) The rapid devlopment of the technical basis for what would become the new weapons that won the war. Russia might have been a huge but weak version of Poland or Yugoslavia and might have been easy pickings for the German Reich.
If you assume Stalin had lost the power struggle after the death of Lenin in 1924 and the USSR had taken a course more along the lines of the New Economic Plan backed by Lenin and Trotsky...
One could also imagine that Trotsky when have been far more aggressive in supporting the Communist Party of Germany. So if we playout the alt-history gasme to the extreme, perhaps the Nazi Party would have never come to power. Had Trotsky succeeded Lenin, we can speculate there would have never been a schism in the Communist International and a united Socialist/Communist Party armed by the Soviets would have defeated the SA and the Nazis in the streets and at the polls.
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