Alternate History Ultra-Evil USSR

[Zyobot]

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 and invasive, incompetent micromanagement of every aspect of its people’s lives and livelihoods, its example inspired yet more communist regimes that were arguably even worse throughout the second half of the century, being perfectly willing to tolerate (and even support) such dictatorships as North Korea, Maoist China, and the Eastern Bloc.

However, for all its gangsterism and callous excesses, even the Stalin years didn’t cause it to descend into the same spiral of madness as its unholy contemporary, Nazi Germany, or its overzealous fellow far-left regime, the Khmer Rouge. Nevertheless, there are times when I wonder if precisely that could’ve happened, had the USSR had its own equivalent to the “perfect storm” of events that propelled the mad Austrian and his cronies to power in Germany. So, with that cheery thought in mind, are there any realistic ways we could get a USSR that goes down right alongside Hitler’s Germany or Pol Pot’s Cambodia as the most monstrous regime in history? (Yes, I’m aware of Twilight of the Red Tsar over on AH.com, but am curious as to whether we can do “even better”—or, I suppose, even worse—than that.)

Spoiler: An over-the-top example of what I'm looking for...

I once had an ASB story idea where, on the eve of World War II, a mysterious event known as "The Maddening" corrupts the Allies into becoming every bit as bad as Nazi Germany. Naturally, this "corruption" extended to Soviet Russia, too, with Stalin's paranoia shooting through the roof and his bloodthirstiness amplified to truly Hitlerian levels.

The highlights of his rule include carrying out an early Doctors' Plot, unleashing more Holodomors to completely destroy the ethnic republics, erecting "People's Guillotines" everywhere that are used non-stop, and quadrupling down on blood purges designed to whittle away the adult population and raise future generations who only know Stalin. The survivors, meanwhile, are forced through a Cultural Revolution-style erasure of Old Russia and a total militarization of Soviet society, with children raised in Sparta-inspired "youth education centers" in which they're regularly beaten, brainwashed, and culled into becoming soldiers in a "Final Revolution" to destroy capitalism forever. The result is the USSR going from a brutal, relatively isolated mega-Gulag to the bastard spawn of a Red Sparta, North Korea, and 1984's Oceania, its people giddy for a worldwide nuclear war with the West as soon as the "fascist menace" has been crushed and obliterated completely.

Achieve something on the scale of what I outlined above with a more realistic PoD, and we're golden.

Thank you in advance,
Zyobot

 

[Circle of Willis]

Nikolai Yezhov succeeds in eliminating Lavrentiy Beria in 1938 before the latter can appeal to Stalin, and thus remains the General Secretary's chief executioner for a while longer. Their relationship still deteriorates as Stalin considers the overly sadistic Yezhov a liability following the 1938 peak of the Great Purge while Yezhov increasingly (and correctly) fears Stalin is looking for someone to do him in the same way he took out Yagoda on Stalin's orders, but the 'Bloody Dwarf' hangs on to his position and life by constantly finding reasons to off anyone who his boss might be looking at as a replacement for him, just as he did Beria. In the first weeks of the inevitable Nazi attack on the USSR, Stalin is left reeling and despondent at his dacha, fearing his underlings might overthrow him; and indeed they do, with Yezhov seizing the moment and leading the charge.

Far from begging Uncle Joe to return to his office, the Communist headsman is the one to arrest and personally execute his old master, and probably vents several years' worth of frustrations onto him via torture first. By the devil's luck Yezhov manages to outmaneuver and kill or intimidate his many, many enemies into submission, thereby claiming leadership of the Soviet Union and still being in a position to claim the credit for their part in eventual victory over the Axis. Whatever pragmatism may have compelled him to lighten up on the repression just a little (as Stalin did historically) during WW2 goes out the window with said victory of course, and Yezhov quadruples down on all the worst excesses of the Stalinist period soon after: an intense personality cult, the return of the Great Purge at its worst, Holodomoring (as you suggest) or skipping straight to death camps of his own for ethnicities considered disloyal such as the Cossacks and Chechens, etc. If Stalin scourged the Soviet peoples with a steel rod, Yezhov will scourge them with a scorpion: they will lament the fact that there is no longer a Stalin to rein in his erratic and mass-murdering purges.

The internal instability and distraction brought on by Yezhov's exhaustive purges and efforts to exterminate ethnic groups that have betrayed the Revolution mean the Soviets fail to prevent North Korea from being swallowed up by the South Koreans when their attack on the latter flounders, and is then reversed by the UN. Perhaps Yezhov fails even to procure a Communist victory in China, or MacArthur from nuking Mao when the latter tries to stop the US/UN forces himself, whichever you would prefer. No matter the case, the Bloody Dwarf responds to these foreign policy failure(s) by accelerating the Soviet production of nuclear arms, in which any human cost is justifiable...and developing a hair-trigger on the big button.

When a flashpoint arises in recently-turned-red Cuba, 67-year-old Yezhov - every bit as sadistic and bloodthirsty as ever, but even more paranoid (not only of fascist agents and capitalist wreckers but of his own impending mortality, accelerated by his alcoholism), despairing and spiteful in his old age, fearful that capitalism will defeat Communism without his leadership - decides a preemptive nuclear strike on the US is the way to secure the Revolution's final victory after all. Anyone who could possibly countermand his final orders has been dumped into a mass grave long ago. Nukes fall, and everyone loses. Can the USSR get much more evil than 'purposely starting WW3 and bathing everyone in atomic hellfire'?

 

[Zyobot]

Nikolai Yezhov succeeds in eliminating Lavrentiy Beria in 1938 before the latter can appeal to Stalin, and thus remains the General Secretary's chief executioner for a while longer. Their relationship still deteriorates as Stalin considers the overly sadistic Yezhov a liability following the 1938 peak of the Great Purge while Yezhov increasingly (and correctly) fears Stalin is looking for someone to do him in the same way he took out Yagoda on Stalin's orders, but the 'Bloody Dwarf' hangs on to his position and life by constantly finding reasons to off anyone who his boss might be looking at as a replacement for him, just as he did Beria. In the first weeks of the inevitable Nazi attack on the USSR, Stalin is left reeling and despondent at his dacha, fearing his underlings might overthrow him; and indeed they do, with Yezhov seizing the moment and leading the charge.

Far from begging Uncle Joe to return to his office, the Communist headsman is the one to arrest and personally execute his old master, and probably vents several years' worth of frustrations onto him via torture first. By the devil's luck Yezhov manages to outmaneuver and kill or intimidate his many, many enemies into submission, thereby claiming leadership of the Soviet Union and still being in a position to claim the credit for their part in eventual victory over the Axis. Whatever pragmatism may have compelled him to lighten up on the repression just a little (as Stalin did historically) during WW2 goes out the window with said victory of course, and Yezhov quadruples down on all the worst excesses of the Stalinist period soon after: an intense personality cult, the return of the Great Purge at its worst, Holodomoring (as you suggest) or skipping straight to death camps of his own for ethnicities considered disloyal such as the Cossacks and Chechens, etc. If Stalin scourged the Soviet peoples with a steel rod, Yezhov will scourge them with a scorpion: they will lament the fact that there is no longer a Stalin to rein in his erratic and mass-murdering purges.

The internal instability and distraction brought on by Yezhov's exhaustive purges and efforts to exterminate ethnic groups that have betrayed the Revolution mean the Soviets fail to prevent North Korea from being swallowed up by the South Koreans when their attack on the latter flounders, and is then reversed by the UN. Perhaps Yezhov fails even to procure a Communist victory in China, or MacArthur from nuking Mao when the latter tries to stop the US/UN forces himself, whichever you would prefer. No matter the case, the Bloody Dwarf responds to these foreign policy failure(s) by accelerating the Soviet production of nuclear arms, in which any human cost is justifiable...and developing a hair-trigger on the big button.

When a flashpoint arises in recently-turned-red Cuba, 67-year-old Yezhov - every bit as sadistic and bloodthirsty as ever, but even more paranoid (not only of fascist agents and capitalist wreckers but of his own impending mortality, accelerated by his alcoholism), despairing and spiteful in his old age, fearful that capitalism will defeat Communism without his leadership - decides a preemptive nuclear strike on the US is the way to secure the Revolution's final victory after all. Anyone who could possibly countermand his final orders has been dumped into a mass grave long ago. Nukes fall, and everyone loses. Can the USSR get much more evil than 'purposely starting WW3 and bathing everyone in atomic hellfire'?

Not bad, @Circle of Willis!

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 sufficiently “impressed” (or, at least, “amused”) by his subordinate’s bloodletting before he was betrayed and tortured to death?

Of course, I wonder if butterflies flying amok might prevent World War II and the Cold War from running more or less the same course they did IOTL? While I agree that conflict with the capitalist states is inevitable and that Yezhov’s temper is exceedingly dangerous, I question the assumption that a Korean War or Cuban Missile Crisis will still happen. Even if they play out differently, thanks to the Bloody Dwarf’s murderous meddling.

Given how you describe him and the stated PoD, perhaps Yezhov would smell blood in the water and attack Hitler’s Germany first? Even if not, I still fear that matching the Nazis in the Evil Department—at least, before gleefully kickstarting nuclear war with the West after winning World War II—would require him to carry out his own version of Generalplan Ost on Eastern and Central European nations swallowed up by the Soviet invasion. Never mind what he’d do to his share of a defeated Germany if he had carte blanche to enact revenge, though pragmatism may force him to refrain for the time being.

I wouldn’t rule out having former Axis countries made first-priority targets for Soviet nuclear strikes out of spite behind closed doors, though. Nor Yezhov ginning up hatred of the Americans, British, and other “Western” nations and ethnic groups as “far-gone capitalist vampires” whose few agents of Moscow are, at best, useful idiots to be disposed of when the time comes. But not before starting his last and greatest outbreak of genocides by drafting plans for his own Final Solution against the USSR’s Jewish population, not unlike his vanquished archenemy from a generation before… 😮

 

[sillygoose]

I once had an ASB story idea where, on the eve of World War II, a mysterious event known as "The Maddening" corrupts the Allies into becoming every bit as bad as Nazi Germany. Naturally, this "corruption" extended to Soviet Russia, too, with Stalin's paranoia shooting through the roof and his bloodthirstiness amplified to truly Hitlerian levels.

It can be argued they were IOTL. They could have actually been worse had it not been for the Soviet need for labor after the horrible bloodbath of WW2 and FDR's death right before the end of the war prevented the worst of the adminstration's plans for the aftermath of the war.

 

[Zyobot]

It can be argued they were IOTL. They could have actually been worse had it not been for the Soviet need for labor after the horrible bloodbath of WW2 and FDR's death right before the end of the war prevented the worst of the adminstration's plans for the aftermath of the war.

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 one genocidal regime and were in no mood to deal with another after the war.

 

[Agent23]

Stalin lives to 100.

 

[sillygoose]

Which called for what?

In the case of the Soviets had they not needed so much labor to rebuild they probably would have been much more murderous in the treatment of PoWs, as from 1941-42 German PoWs in Soviet hands suffered a roughly 95% fatality rate (a worse rate than Soviet PoWs in German hands BTW). Policy changed in 1943 due to the need for labor. Source is "Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau" by de Zayas.

As to the US there is the Morgenthau Plan, which was only partially enacted and fully ended by 1948; if FDR had lived or Wallace taken over after him then it would continue on and resulted in probably tens of millions of deaths as was predicted by US officials. As it is we don't really know how many Germans died between 1945-48 as a result of the purposeful restriction of food and massively increased mortality due to illness and malnutrition since no one kept track (AFAIK) other than as general stats per region.

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 one genocidal regime and were in no mood to deal with another after the war.

Before he died Stalin had plans to turn on the Jews in the USSR:

Doctors' plot - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Hate to break it to you, but the US fully endorsed whatever measures the Soviets and French wanted to take:

Nemesis at Potsdam - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The largest ethnic cleansing in European history was enacted starting during WW2:

Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Then mass enslavement:

Forced labor of Germans after World War II - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Stalin killed millions. A Stanford historian answers the question, was it genocide?

Historian Norman Naimark argues that today's narrow definition of genocide is Stalin's lasting legacy.

news.stanford.edu

Policy only chanced when the Cold War effectively started with the Blockade of Berlin in 1948 and the fears that Germany might go fully communist if something didn't change in occupation policy, plus of course Britain and France couldn't recover economically without Germany's economy functioning, as it was both of their biggest trade partners.

Also the GPO was a series of proposals that were never adopted or really enacted. They've been mistakenly discussed as actual policy rather than some flights of fancy that Hitler ultimately put the kibosh on in 1943. I'll have to look through my records to find the original study of the documents that points that out; it is from the 1950s and was the first actual study of the plans.

The Hunger Plan has also been misrepresented. Largely it had to do with the fact that Europe was in famine due to the British and later Allied blockade (peacetime Europe required imports of 10% of the food they consumed, but in wartime more imports were required due to farmers being mobilized, disruptions due to the fighting, and a bunch of natural disasters in 1940 that severely reduced food production) and part of the invasion of the USSR was planning for securing resources, one of which, the most pressing in fact, was food. In the original documents there are projections of what the consequences could potentially be if the necessary quantities of food are seized to feed the rest of Europe and Baeke projected that tens of millions could die as a consequence, though IIRC he talking about the worst case scenario that includes illnesses and the spread of disease caused by malnutrition and the deaths related to that based off of WW1 experience. In WW1 a lot of the deaths attributed to the Allied blockade were actually from malnutrition related illnesses rather than outright starvation. So rather than being a plan for genocide it was a document outlining the consequences of seizing so much food from the East...which of course was ultimately proved wildly incorrect due to all the destruction Soviet scorched earth policy inflicted on food stocks and farms. So even though part of the invasion was to seize food what they had planned on even being there ultimately wasn't so Europe as a whole got hungrier and hungrier from 1941 onwards as more mouths to feed were added into the Nazi sphere.

As it was the number of deaths due to starvation or starvation related problems was roughly 10 million people in the 1941 territory of the USSR, though most of that actually wasn't not due to Nazi policies (there wasn't much food left to seize) but rather the results of scorched earth policies the Soviets enacted since they either destroyed or took the food stocks in occupied territories when retreating as well as sabotaged any mechanized farm tools, which meant they effectively left their own people to starve. Later German scorched earth policies in the 1943 retreat made things worse, but unlike the Germans the Soviets had access to Lend-Lease food, which made up some of the difference and allowed damage to be repaired relatively quickly.

In the specific case of the Soviet PoWs who starved in 1941 there was simply no food for them. The Germans even approached the Soviets repeatedly for help feeding said prisoners and to exchange lists of PoWs as well as make a joint pledge about treating prisoners per the Geneva convention, but were ignored every time. Molotov even told US representatives that the USSR didn't have PoWs in enemy hands, only traitors. If you want references to that I can find them for you, but it may take a little while; they're from the massive book "Stalin's War" by Sean McMeekin.

The Holocaust too was related to the food situation, especially as the Wannsee Conference was ordered very shortly after the Hoover run food program was cut off by US entry into the war. Jewish groups who actually negotiated with the Nazis to save Jews who were now on the chopping block were rebuffed by the US who refused to do anything:


So I'm not saying the Nazis didn't willingly do horrific stuff, but most of it was predicated on material factors caused by the Allied blockade of Europe and refusal to help feed starving civilians. Herbert Hoover, who tried to get a program going to feel people in occupied Poland and various other countries under German occupation, was repeatedly rebuffed and attacked by the FDR admin, so he was only able to do what he could via private donations, but those were all cut off with US entry into the war with lethal consequences to millions of civilians.

When I say that arguably the Allies (including the Soviets) and Axis in Europe were roughly similar it is because of the policies the Allies enacted that helped lead to the worst war crimes committed by the Nazis and then the Allies blaming it all on the Nazis after the war was over to conceal their role. Then you have to factor in the post-war treatment of German civilians and PoWs after the fighting had ended and the policy was about revenge rather than the principles that the Allies claimed to have fought for. That's not even considering what the Soviets did to occupied countries they set up Communist regimes in:

Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939–1946) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Soviet war crimes - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Or the horrors of the Gulag

Nazino tragedy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Agent23]

Stalin lives to 100.

Little joke, the word for 100 in Russian is Sto, so he'd be Stolin.

 

[Circle of Willis]

Not bad, @Circle of Willis!

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 sufficiently “impressed” (or, at least, “amused”) by his subordinate’s bloodletting before he was betrayed and tortured to death?

Of course, I wonder if butterflies flying amok might prevent World War II and the Cold War from running more or less the same course they did IOTL? While I agree that conflict with the capitalist states is inevitable and that Yezhov’s temper is exceedingly dangerous, I question the assumption that a Korean War or Cuban Missile Crisis will still happen. Even if they play out differently, thanks to the Bloody Dwarf’s murderous meddling.

Given how you describe him and the stated PoD, perhaps Yezhov would smell blood in the water and attack Hitler’s Germany first? Even if not, I still fear that matching the Nazis in the Evil Department—at least, before gleefully kickstarting nuclear war with the West after winning World War II—would require him to carry out his own version of Generalplan Ost on Eastern and Central European nations swallowed up by the Soviet invasion. Never mind what he’d do to his share of a defeated Germany if he had carte blanche to enact revenge, though pragmatism may force him to refrain for the time being.

I wouldn’t rule out having former Axis countries made first-priority targets for Soviet nuclear strikes out of spite behind closed doors, though. Nor Yezhov ginning up hatred of the Americans, British, and other “Western” nations and ethnic groups as “far-gone capitalist vampires” whose few agents of Moscow are, at best, useful idiots to be disposed of when the time comes. But not before starting his last and greatest outbreak of genocides by drafting plans for his own Final Solution against the USSR’s Jewish population, not unlike his vanquished archenemy from a generation before… 😮

Re: Yezhov's temperament, I was going off memory of Simon Montefiore's Court of the Red Tsar and Nikita Petrov's Stalin's Loyal Executioner, which I had to read for my final paper in a 20th century Russian history course last semester. There's other articles on the interwebs for more information on Yezhov's temperament - a quick search brings up this, as well as its sequel, for example. (You can probably guess from the URL names that that site isn't the most unbiased nor does it host big fans of Communism, but the author was kind enough to include his sources at the bottom of each article) Long story short, as far as I know Yezhov wasn't just some coldly efficient killing machine, but a genuinely unhinged psycho: not satisfied with killing tens or hundreds of thousands in the peak of the Stalinist Great Terror, he got off on torturing his detainees and frequently indulged in that habit (most infamously personally torturing Mikhail Tukhachevsky into a coerced confession). If there's a source out there showing Yezhov to not be such a vicious little bastard and one of Stalin's most execrable associates even when compared to the likes of Beria or Kaganovich, I've yet to see it myself.

As to the steps to get everyone's favorite Bloody Dwarf to launch the nukes, honestly I wrote what I wrote above while about five minutes away from hitting the hay last night (technically this morning), so you can absolutely substitute the butterfly-proofed steps I outlined for anything you think would be more plausible. Certainly you could have him even take a Twilight of the Red Star-esque turn and get around to genocide the Russian Jewry if you like: his second wife was Jewish, but historically they were headed for a nasty divorce near the end of his life (she got purged by Stalin in 1938 anyway), and Yezhov was definitely not above settling petty personal scores under the guise of the Great Purge. Just have them still divorce at some point, and for it to really sting Yezhov, and you're probably good in that regard. (The guy could and did of course protect people he actually gave a damn about from the purges such as Filipp Goloshchyokin, who was his gay lover on top of being one of the killers of the Romanov family and the architect of the Kazakhs' own holodomor, so this wouldn't work if they managed to reconcile)

 

[Agent23]

Re: Yezhov's temperament, I was going off memory of Simon Montefiore's Court of the Red Tsar and Nikita Petrov's Stalin's Loyal Executioner

Did you read Stephen Kotkin's books on Stalin, btw?
IMHO he did a much better job than Montefiore.

My two cents, Yezhov was too unstable to run the USSR, and so was Yagoda.

Don't honestly recall which of the loons went to a meeting with his coat bloody and burst into laughter adter explaining that it was the blood of the enemies of the USSR that he had personally tortured.

Oleg Gordivski also had a pretty decent history of the KGB and its predecessor organizations, btw, you might enjoy that, too.

 

[Circle of Willis]

Did you read Stephen Kotkin's books on Stalin, btw?
IMHO he did a much better job than Montefiore.

My two cents, Yezhov was too unstable to run the USSR, and so was Yagoda.

Don't honestly recall which of the loons went to a meeting with his coat bloody and burst into laughter adter explaining that it was the blood of the enemies of the USSR that he had personally tortured.

Oleg Gordivski also had a pretty decent history of the KGB and its predecessor organizations, btw, you might enjoy that, too.

I agree: IIRC that was Yezhov who greeted, of all people, Nikita Khrushchev while drenched in the blood of someone he just tortured. Putting him in charge would be akin to making Andrei Chikatilo General Secretary - if he weren't a secret police chief, Yezhov did strike me as the kind of guy who'd become a 'common' serial killer. Hell, he was apparently capable of seeming superficially harmless and even come across as a somewhat nice, shy, nervous guy to the people who knew him before he was given a taste of power by Stalin and promptly let his true colors show.

While GoT is deader than Yezhov's victims, my prof did make a Stalin/Yezhov = Roose Bolton/Ramsay Snow analogy in-between grousing about how disastrous that show's ending was, and I do think it's an apt one. But the OP asked for the most over-the-top evil USSR imaginable, and I can't imagine many better candidates (outside of really wacky ones, like the aforementioned Chikatilo rising to lead the USSR in the '70s or '80s, which I think has actually already been done by a dystopian TL or two on AH.com) than him.

Thanks for the recommendations, BTW. We've unfortunately gone back under lockdown where I'm at and are still trapped that way, but I'll have to look for the works of those authors you mentioned once that lifts at the end of this month and the library reopens.

 

[BlackDragon98]

The events of this book would actually come to pass.

The Man with the Iron Heart - Wikipedia

 

[sillygoose]

(The guy could and did of course protect people he actually gave a damn about from the purges such as Filipp Goloshchyokin, who was his gay lover on top of being one of the killers of the Romanov family and the architect of the Kazakhs' own holodomor, so this wouldn't work if they managed to reconcile)

Wait what? You got a source on that?

 

[History Learner]

The events of this book would actually come to pass.

The Man with the Iron Heart - Wikipedia

I once did have a "Fourth Reich via insurgency" TL in mind inspired by that; me and @sillygoose actually discussed it over email but I never did go anywhere with it.

 

[Circle of Willis]

Wait what? You got a source on that?

Yes - Yezhov himself. Granted, he said that in a confession in 1939 after his downfall & arrest, but for what it's worth Goloschyokin did manage to not get arrested & killed (unlike many other disgraced Old Bolsheviks) until after Yezhov fell from grace, even though he himself had lost Stalin's favor long before that. Considering how purge-happy Yezhov was and how thorough Stalin himself was when it came to getting rid of his enemies (or just anyone who had fallen out with him/outlived their usefulness), I'm personally not inclined to think that that extended lease on life was just a happy coincidence for Goloschyokin.

 

[WolfBear]

What about having Hitler take Moscow in 1941, thus causing a Soviet collapse in either 1942 or 1943 and in the Soviet Union retreating to the east of the Urals, after which point Stalin becomes even more paranoid and proceeds to aggressively murder millions or even tens of millions of people for betraying him? After all, if it wasn't for their alleged betrayal, then how exactly could the Soviet Union have actually been pushed back to the east of the Urals? Due to Stalin's incompetence? No, don't be crazy!

 

[Zyobot]

What about having Hitler take Moscow in 1941, thus causing a Soviet collapse in either 1942 or 1943 and in the Soviet Union retreating to the east of the Urals, after which point Stalin becomes even more paranoid and proceeds to aggressively murder millions or even tens of millions of people for betraying him? After all, if it wasn't for their alleged betrayal, then how exactly could the Soviet Union have actually been pushed back to the east of the Urals? Due to Stalin's incompetence? No, don't be crazy!

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 an enemy that makes Napoleon Bonaparte look like Jesus Christ. And yet, he has the nerve to blame everyone else, when it's his job to have preserved the Union and keep Lenin's revolution going!?

Yeah, somehow, I doubt he'll be getting that for free this time. I don't know much about his inner circle on a personal level, but assuming they're relatively sane (if brutal) pragmatists who can sense the tide shifting among the (remaining) masses, they'll finally arrest and shoot Stalin before he can do the same to them. Doubly so if they detain him, torture him, and put on a show trial in which he "miraculously confesses" to being a fascist quisling and secret pawn of Hitler the whole time. Which isn't even completely wrong, though they'll "conveniently" omit their complicity in Nazi-Soviet collaboration when presenting cherry-picked (and a decent amount of outright fake) evidence implicating their old, insane, thoroughly broken boss before dumping him into the same mass grave as his many, many victims. As for who prevails in the potential power struggle thereafter and what their regime will look like... well, that's another story.

 

[WolfBear]

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 an enemy that makes Napoleon Bonaparte look like Jesus Christ. And yet, he has the nerve to blame everyone else, when it's his job to have preserved the Union and keep Lenin's revolution going!?

Yeah, somehow, I doubt he'll be getting that for free this time. I don't know much about his inner circle on a personal level, but assuming they're relatively sane (if brutal) pragmatists who can sense the tide shifting among the (remaining) masses, they'll finally arrest and shoot Stalin before he can do the same to them. Doubly so if they detain him, torture him, and put on a show trial in which he "miraculously confesses" to being a fascist quisling and secret pawn of Hitler the whole time. Which isn't even completely wrong, though they'll "conveniently" omit their complicity in Nazi-Soviet collaboration when presenting cherry-picked (and a decent amount of outright fake) evidence implicating their old, insane, thoroughly broken boss before dumping him into the same mass grave as his many, many victims. As for who prevails in the potential power struggle thereafter and what their regime will look like... well, that's another story.

Maybe Stalin gets overthrown while attempting to do this, then? And maybe some Soviet equivalent of Pol Pot subsequently emerges in Stalin's place as the new leader of the rump USSR?

Think of this guy emerging to lead Florence after the Florentines were sufficiently fed by with both Medici corruption and the 1494 French invasion of their territory, for instance:

Girolamo Savonarola - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But much more bloodthirsty than Savonarola ever was, of course! More comparable to Pol Pot, in fact!

 

[Zyobot]

Maybe Stalin gets overthrown while attempting to do this, then?

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 flatly deny his request and have him promptly machine-gunned, just for some extra irony.

And maybe some Soviet equivalent of Pol Pot subsequently emerges in Stalin's place as the new leader of the rump USSR?

Think of this guy emerging to lead Florence after the Florentines were sufficiently fed by with both Medici corruption and the 1494 French invasion of their territory, for instance:

Girolamo Savonarola - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But much more bloodthirsty than Savonarola ever was, of course! More comparable to Pol Pot, in fact!

Who's the most likely candidate, though?

@Circle of Willis already suggested Yezhov in his own spin on my scenario, but considering that te Bloody Dwarf has been in the grave for five years by the time this PoD happens, I don't think he's in the running here.

At any rate, I can see lots of ATL conspiracy theorists—Neo-Nazis and other ultra-partisan Germanophiles, in particular—arguing that this was all a series of 4D chess moves by Hitler to take out the Soviet threat, oust and permanently discredit his arch-nemesis, and run the rump USSR into the ground without having to do (most of) the mass-murdering himself. Not credit the Nazi leadership deserves at all, of course, though I imagine they'd be delighted to sit back and watch the show as the Slavic version of Pol Pot basically carries out Generalplan Ost on their behalf.

 

[WolfBear]

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 flatly deny his request and have him promptly machine-gunned, just for some extra irony.



Who's the most likely candidate, though?

@Circle of Willis already suggested Yezhov in his own spin on my scenario, but considering that te Bloody Dwarf has been in the grave for five years by the time this PoD happens, I don't think he's in the running here.

At any rate, I can see lots of ATL conspiracy theorists opining that this was all a series of 4D chess moves by Hitler to take out the Soviet threat, oust and permanently discredit his arch-nemesis, and run the rump USSR into the ground without having to do the killing himself. Not credit the Nazi leadership deserves at all, of course, though I imagine they'd be delighted to sit back and watch the show as the Slavic version of Pol Pot basically carries out Generalplan Ost on their behalf.

FWIW, I was thinking of someone who was not particularly well-known in real life--someone who will gradually emerge out of the shadows after Stalin's death and cultivate people with his charisma. It could even be an ordinary person just so long as he won't get liquidated before he's able to seize power.