What if the october revolution never happened

Or Kornilov stages a successful coup, though this would probably prolong Russian involvement in the Great War.

Or Kerensky successfully uses the whole plot as a device to boost his popularity and marginalise the Bolsheviks. Let's take the option that the Kerensky offensive is a worse disaster but he manages to maintain his own power and eliminate the Reds. This might lead to a CP victory, or not. Either way Russia is likely to be riven with internal unrest for years to come, with various warlord states persisting see ' Ephemeral States of the Russian Civil War ' and maybe Roman von Ungern-Sternberg establishing a dynasty in Mongolia.

There will be no Stalinist forced-draught industrialistion, until perhaps the government is toppled during the Big Slump and replaced bya himegrown political cult espousing a windy mix of nationalism, monarchism, corporatism, anti-liberalism, anti-socialism, social conservatism, Pan-Slavism, reactionary Orthodox Christianity and tinges of anti-Semitism and xenophobia. Then the stage is set for the Great Eastern War of OK, maybe not. An earlier and more stable Labour government in Britain perhaps?

Thomas Banned. Catsmate said:. Click to expand Thomas said:. Their failings cast serious doubt on the prospect that any one of them could have defeated the others and built an effective state, much less overseen breakneck industrialization. The other alternative was the Socialist Revolutionaries SR. The only party besides the Bolsheviks with a legitimate mass following by , the SR was founded in on a platform of agrarian socialism.

It became notorious for carrying out political assassinations against tsarist officials. Unlike the Bolsheviks, who were well on their way to establishing a capable, disciplined party organization, the SR, and even separate factions therein, was wracked by internal divisions. It lacked a charismatic leader on the order of Lenin who could have united the party and given it direction. Also missing were elite party members with the military and organizational skills of Trotsky or the political and administrative acumen of Stalin — extraordinary minds who would prove pivotal to the Bolshevik victory in the civil war and the construction of a state.

While morally commendable, such ideals were at odds with the need to forge an authoritative state out of the anarchic wreckage of tsarist Russia and upend society in pursuit of industrialization.

Had the country fallen under the sway of bumbling warlords and an internally divided, incompetent SR, it would have entered an extended period of civil war. The fighting would have lasted far longer than the three-year conflict the Bolsheviks ultimately won, more likely resembling the decades of bloody strife that decimated China from to Needless to say, a Russia riven by sustained internal violence would have hardly been in a position to fend off a foreign invader, whether Germany, Japan, or some other great power.

One would be hard-pressed to argue that there existed some other political faction besides the Bolsheviks that was capable of winning a civil war, establishing a centralized state, and rapidly industrializing the country.

It took not just a willingness to seize power but also extraordinary skill, unrestrained brutality, and a capacity for mobilizing society in support of regime goals. Had there not been a World War II, or had Russia not won that war, our world today would be unrecognizable.

There would have been no Cold War. No European Union. No divided Korea. No Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan and, consequently, no al Qaeda. Without the Holocaust, would a Jewish state have even emerged in the Middle East?

The possibilities are endless. Search forums. Log in. Install the app. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.

You should upgrade or use an alternative browser. What if the October Revolution never happened in Russia? Thread starter sirjackalot Start date Jul 6, Tags russia soviet union. So let's say the February revolution still happens just like OTL and the Czar is overthrown and replaced with a provisional, democratically elected left-wing government.

What if, the Bolsheviks decide to honor the results of the election instead of starting a coup, and Russia stays on a democratic path for the rest of the 20th century, preventing the Soviet Union from ever existing. What would Russia, Europe, and the World be like in this scenario? King Nazar. It was hard enough for Lenin to convince the Bolsheviks to agree to it after all.

You've just butterflied away the entire 20th century, my friend. Most of the conflicts since have been either caused by communism or fear of communism in one way or another. World War I or the Great War as we'd probably call it would be seen as the last gasp of despotism before the light of liberal democracy swept across the world whether it be Russia, Weimar Germany, Mussolini-less Italy, or Taisho Japan. The Bolsheviks created the first professional revolutionaries, the first total police state, the first modern mass-mobilisation on behalf of class war against counterrevolution.

Bolshevism was a mind-set, an idiosyncratic culture with an intolerant paranoid wordview obsessed with abstruse Marxist ideology. It also gave birth to slave labour camps, economic catastrophe and untold psychological damage. These events are now so long ago that the horrors have been blurred and history forgotten; a glamorous glow of power and idealism lingers to intoxicate young voters disenchanted with the bland dithering of liberal capitalism. And then there is Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union.

Americans may have invented the internet, but they saw it decadently as a means of making money or naively as a magical click to freedom. The Russians, bred on Leninist cynicism, harnessed it to undermine American democracy. Putin presents himself as a Tsar — and like any Tsar, he fears revolution above all else. That is why it is victory against Germany in , not the Bolshevik Revolution of that is the founding myth of Putinist Russia.

Hence the irony that while the West has been discussing the revolution at length, Russia is largely pretending it never happened. You can manage them any time by clicking on the notification icon. This section is about Living in UAE and essential information you cannot live without. By clicking below to sign up, you're agreeing to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Friday, November 12, Opinion Op-Eds.

All Sections. Astatue of Vladimir Lenin stands in the town of Uglich, kilometers miles north-east of Moscow, Russia. The thousands of statues of Vladimir Lenin spread across the vast region bring to mind poet Vladimir Mayakovsky's ringing line of devotion: "Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live. More From Op-Eds. US needs to recoup confidence and trust of allies.

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