What if Trotsky managed to become the leader of the Soviet Union?

Would have been similar in many ways; while Trotsky opposed Stalin's agricultural policies in exile he was the one who originally backed them when he was still in the Soviet Union. Minus that, you don't get the purges and you probably don't empower people like Beria, but without Stalin's realist foreign policy the USSR is more of an international pariah.

>>3155274
Nah, human nature would have reared its ugly head sooner or later.

>>3155274
Nah, he probably would have made pointless expansion wars against neighbors for achieving "international communism", which would have collapsed Russia. Stalin was smart enough to keep minding his own business and industrializing before doing anything else.

>>3155310
A more interesting what-if off of that--what if Trotsky had won the Battle of Warsaw?

Read The Revolution Betrayed

Trotsky literally wanted to draft the entire country to militarize labor. Trotsky the humanist is a meme. Not even a communist but I think he was right in this regard.

>>3155313
Communist domination of Europe to the Atlantic coast. Germany falls by '23, France before the decade is out.

>>3155319
The rants of a hypocrite who complained about Stalin being authoritarian when he used the Red Army to kill dissidents and formed part of an authoritarian regime and wanted to institute militarized labor?

Yes I believe so. Stalin corrupted the ideals of the revolution, Trotsky would have been the best leader and would have pushed for international socialism.

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>>3155274
No if Stalin is present.

>>3155274
If he wasn't as authoritarian as Stalin, somebody else would take the place. Communism as portrayed by Marx or any democratic govt couldn't arise then in Russia as it lacked proper fundaments. Educated society for one.

>>3155581
>Trotsky
>Authoritarian
>Hypocrite
Pick three.

Also
>Educated peoples
>Communism

>>3155274
Since Trotsky wanted to turn Russia into a "desert populated with white niggers", im going to go with no.

>>3155295
You'd probably see more and harder attempts of "spreading revolution" around Europe too. In such a world, there's a chance the Nazis would be seen as the "good guys" in WW2 if it's Trotsky doing the expansion. Such a scenario wouldn't be good, because the resulting Cold War with Nazi Germany would likely see nuclear warfare.

>>3155274

Without Stalin, the Soviet Union would have continued to attempt to expand, drawing it into a war with the West which it could not win, and resulting in it's total destruction, sparring Russia and Eastern Europe from decades of suffering, poverty, backwardness and tyranny.

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>>3156034
>pick one

His head

>>3156471
t. kulak kulakovich

>>3155313
A communist Poland and a negotiated peace with the allies with germany as a buffer state
the soviets were already diverting troops from the western front to internal fronts, signifying a shift in foreign policy.

>>3155303
>le hooman naytchur
>well-sourced arg appropriate for /his/

>>3156452
>implying Germany wouldn't be a glorious socialist republic by timeframe of WWII

>>3156034
>Educated peoples
>Communism

Universities lean left. Why?

>>3155274
It would have been better, I suspect Stalin was brutal to the Ukrainian and Russian peoples because he was Georgian and bore no sympathy. At least Trotsky was Russian.

>>3158762
Propaganda and commercialization.
>"cool" people (manufactured) and popular intellectuals lean left so I should as well

>>3158783
Or, just maybe, you fell for the mainstream propaganda in your country - that left is evil and silly. How come you don't even have a real left party? Do you know what happened to it?

It's not the "popular intellectuals" that have big bucks to throw away for propaganda. Do you know who does?

>commercialization
So it actually is the fault of capitalism?

>>3158898
There isn't such thing as left or right, hence why you can tell it is commercialization by the trademarked "leftist" branding.
>so it is actually the fault of capitalism
there isn't a corelation between the two, capitalism can exist without commercialization, commercialization is secondary and incidental and driven not by financial profit solely.

>>3155274
basically no, Trotsky would have been very similar to Stalin just replace stalin's paranoia with trotsky's evangelical marxism. Trotsky would ahve been far mroe active in supporting revolutions abroad, which could have been good in that maybe german communists would have taken over instead of the nazis, but in all probability would have led to the entire capitalist world uniting against the soviets and probably destroying them.

Also just look at his actions in the civil war and you see Trotsky had no less qualms about executing innocents than Stalin, just while Stalin did it to shore up his regime Trotsky did it in pursuit of utopia.

>>3158781
>Trostky
>Lev Davidovich Bronstein
>Russian

Thats a funny way of saying Jewish anon.

>>3158898
>It's not the "popular intellectuals" that have big bucks to throw away for propaganda. Do you know who does?
The big left-wing foundations sure do.

>>3158915
>commercialization is secondary and incidental and driven not by financial profit solely.
'Commercialization or commercialisation is the process of introducing a new product or production method into commerce—making it available on the market.'

nigga what the fuck are you smoking

>>3158781
Lol Trotsky wanted to "turn Russia into a desert populated with white niggers" and his name is Lev Bronstein and he was an internationalist Jew, not Russian.

>>3158927
I was referencing the commercialization of leftism not goods.

>>3158929
Googling that quote only returns conspiratorial blogs.

>>3158955
Bullshit dude stop lying. It's from here since you cant find a fucking reference for yourself. Why are you posting in a /his/tory channel if you lack the most basic of research skills? - Trotsky speaking in Petrograd December 1917 to revolutionaries as noted in Aaron Simanovich’s Memoirs, P 153 – 154. Paris 1922, Molodaya Gvardiaya, Moscow. No 6, 1991, p 55

>>3158985
I can't believe how there are people who think that he was a good person.

>>3155274
No it would still be shite but not as shite as Stalin.
Trotsky killed tsarists and the like but he felt a bit more sympathy for fellow communists.
Quite possible he would've started WW2 earlier than Hitler did and maybe even invaded fascist Germany.

>>3155274
Communist utopia is an autistic meme, actually communism in general

What are the best books to read about the russian revolution/soviet union?

>>3159486
The Gulag Archipelago comes to mind.

>>3159457
This.

People keep thinking that Trotsky was some kind of humanist commie because he was a Jew and socialized with Western intellectuals, but IRL he was even more brutal that Stalin.

He was the one who first proposed forced collectivization of agriculture, but Stalin didn't had the stomach to enact such a policy until the food crisis became too great. But Trotsky wanted to go further, he also wanted to militarize industrial labor, basically creating slavery in Russia in all but name.

The real "good" commie was Nikolai Bukharin, he wanted to implement a kind of "market socialism" reform similar to the ones that Deng Xiaoping would later implement in China and be extremely successful.

>>3157358
>implying the USSR could take out poland and weimar at the time