stalin

POD is Sergei Kirov not being assassinated, I know Stalin still could've purged everyone but just assume he doesn't. The Red Army has officers however it still has some other issues such as outdated equipment. I assume the Red Army would be able to conquer Finland ITTL. Would Hitler still launch...

After the October Revolution and during the Russian Civil War, Trotsky was de facto Lenin's second-in-command. At multiple times Lenin offered Trotsky high positions which could've given him the power inside the party to outmanoeuvre Stalin (first deputy of Sovnarkom, Vice-Chairman of the Soviet...

Between Lend-Lease officials in the Soviet Union, as well as Allied and Polish military intelligence in Eastern Europe, let us say discover Hitlerian-style death camps are discovered in the Soviet Union. The Soviets certainly have the means (a dictatorship with a deep ingrained personality cult...

Let's say that Stalin keeps to the initial ideological purposes of the Great Purge, rather than consolidate all power solely under himself. What then?

A small challenge for y’all but also a definitely-not-big question for a commie like me, what if Stalin was an extremely wholesome sane man? Heck, forget it, what if Stalin not only lived over 100 years, but also guide the USSR to become a literal beast of a nation? One example of this came from...

Stalin industrialized the Soviet union by collectivizing agriculture and exporting it's output to gain the capital need to hire the experts and buy the equipment required for industrialization. Taiping rebellion also abolished private property and planned to adopt modern technology like...

Hi everyone, so, my question is simple. After Boris III died he was succeeded by a regency council. during the Bagryanov government the pm tried to exit the war by being neutral and trying to keep some land to no avail and ultimately need all when the september coup was made and Bulgaria was...

Very quick question because I cannot find a definite answer to this, when Stalin first invaded Finland, did he had in mind to annex the entire state, to sort of restore the Grand Duchy of Finland in a red coat of paint as a new Finnish SSR? because it seems that after it was made clear that the...

During WW2 and after, Stalin deported people of many different nationalities (partly or wholesale) to various parts of the Soviet interior. These included Chechens, Kalmyks, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, people from the Baltic states and others. But after Khrushchev came to power and...

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Truman, Churchill and Stalin discussed their stance vis-à-vis Spain at the Postdam Conference, but did not reach an agreement on immediate action (more than internationally ostracising Spain). I believe Churchill was vocal against any kind of...

So the way I understand it, Soviet armed forces were seeing some serious innovation as regards military theory during the 1920s-30s. Not only was the Red Army rapidly modernizing, Soviet commanders were also theorizing how to best make use of it, and they came up with Deep Operation/Deep Battle...

We all know of the famous July 20 Plot, the failed attempt to kill Hitler and use Valkyrie to stage a coup, as well as the assassination attempts by Elser and Bavaud. There are other lesser known attempts too and this one piqued my interest: An attempt to assassinate Hitler was planned for July...

A lot of historical reading over years has given me this idea, but the two articles I'm linking summarize my line of thinking fairly comprehensively. Taiwan: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/question-why-didnt-mao-invade-taiwan-60837 Yugoslavia...

what would have happened if between 1913 and 1914 (you decide whether before or after the war) a great fire occurs in Wien? The fire puts Austria in crisis and kills Franz Joseph, Franz Ferdinand, Hitler, Stalin, Trotsky and Freud, all people who were in the city at that time

The topic of alcoholism in general and in the post-Soviet states in particular has always been interesting to me. Russia has a massive problem with alcohol - not only do people drink a LOT over there, which affects health and life expectancy, crime, etc., but drinking is socially acceptable and...

I'm not sure if there's a specific name for this phenomenon, but since time immemorial, militaries have tended to 'mix' their soldiers, meaning that you generally won't see a unit comprised solely of people from Region X or Town Y or Village Z, and you sure as hell won't see a unit like that...

I remember that many people in the political upper echelons of the USSR opposed Malenkov primarily because he was associated with Lavrenty Beria, who was nicknamed as "our Himmler" by Stalin and also a child predator and rapist. Would he have stayed longer in power if Beria wasn't around?

Founded by a movement predisposed towards terror and social engineering from the very beginning, the Soviet Union consistently ranked as one of the most repressive, most authoritarian, and—ironically—most unequal regimes of the twentieth century. In addition to state-sponsored mass killing and...

Suppose that the USSR, rather than exposing and condemning Stalin's monstrous deeds wholesale, instead only undoes the worst parts of the terror (shutting down the gulags, for example) and shifts most of the blame to someone else (such as Beria) while the late dictator gets the Mao treatment...

Plausibility check : POD 1905 can Nicholas II after coming to realisation after defeat in Russo Japanese war become totalitarian rather than turn democratic like in OTL and build up Russia's war industry's like Stalin did ? He can get funds via debt, high taxes and give Free land beyond Urals to...