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Sure, if it's death camps they're carted off to and Kaganovich specifically wants their annihilation, rather than "mere" mass-deportations with lots of "collateral" deaths. I'm not sure whether he'd consign Eastern Europe to a similar (if more gradually implemented) fate, but I assume he'd...

I've suggested it before and @Circle of Willis was kind enough to respond, but I wonder if having Lazar Kaganovich succeed his boss after a bitter power struggle could do it? Him being an ardent Stalinist and completely devoid of Beria or Khrushchev's pragmatic liberality, we can at least be...

So, while I'm interested in the budding side-discussion here, I don't suppose you could please continue it in a new thread? I'd like to keep discussing realistic PoDs for my initial scenario, which don't necessarily call for a dilapidated USSR-in-exile after Moscow falls in '41.

Well, we've had plenty of mountain-moving dark horses who'd have otherwise died unknown and insignificant IOTL, so I suppose there's room for that, too. Problem is, that doesn't leave us with much to work with, unless we either extrapolate what their counterparts may be like to the extreme or...

Hopefully, yes. I myself picture a broken and battered Stalin—after suffering the same weeks of torture, taunting, and regretful self-pitying as his victims—trembling as he's led to the execution chamber, his last plea being that at least Svetlana be spared, if he is to die. Only for Beria to...

At that point, I honestly question whether the Soviet people will have finally had their fill of Stalin's bullshit. He launched cack-handed purges that swept up their friends and families, he failed to prepare for Barbarossa when he had the chance, and he lost a war for national survival against...

Which called for what? Perhaps it’s me, but I’m not aware of anything Stalin had planned that called for mass-killing on remotely the scale of an inverted Hunger Plan and/or Generalplan Ost. Even if he did, I imagine it would’ve been difficult to hide from the W/Allies, who had already toppled...

Not bad, @Circle of Willis! :D I’ve heard some things about Yezhov’s odious reputation before—namely, his nickname and his removal from history after being purged—but didn’t quite get the impression he was potentially more horrible than Stalin. Having said that, I suppose Vozhd was...

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—quite ironically—most unequal regimes of the twentieth century. In addition to state-sponsored mass killing...