Alternate History Ideas and Discussion

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
‘General Secretary Lazar Kaganovich’.
A USSR ruled by Kaganovich would just become a huge North Korea, IMO. Dude was Stalin's most zealous disciple and extraordinarily bloodthirsty even by Soviet standards, being both the architect of the Holodomor and signing off on tens of thousands of executions (as well as pushing his own brother to suicide for disappointing Stalin), exceeded only by Beria and his predecessors as the top secret policeman in the Soviet Union. As Uncle Joe's industrial minister he was the worst kind of boss anyone could ask for, a vicious martinet with a famously volcanic temper whose solution to inefficiency and other problems usually came down to 'just kill the useless wreckers and use their corpses as an example for the rest'.

You would never ever get Khrushchev's relative thaw with 'Iron Lazar' in command, nor any degree of liberalization within the USSR itself. All the worst policies associated with Stalinism (centralized collectivization, breakneck industrialization with a focus on heavy industry, totalitarianism and regular, bloody purges, etc.) would almost certainly endure. Certainly the cult of Stalin will, just with Kaganovich as the distorted shadow of Saint Peter to Uncle Joe's dark God, for Kaganovich endlessly whined about how the later Soviet leadership had dared turn against Stalin & Stalinism until the end of his days IRL. If you're lucky the lack of changes in industrial and social policy could lead to the USSR crumbling sooner in the '70s or '80s under the weight of Stalinism, or otherwise it'll persist at least as long as Kaganovich's life as an especially brutal, soulless, continent-spanning gulag - essentially a bigger North Korea, as I said above.

Knock-on effects overseas might include the Red Scare persisting in the US longer, as Kaganovich would seem far more threatening than Khrushchev pre-Cuban Missile Crisis, and the idea of 'Judeo-Bolshevism' remaining a little more mainstream as well (Kaganovich was Jewish). The Sino-Soviet and Albanian splits may not happen or at least be delayed, as there would be no de-Stalinization to fuel accusations of revisionism within the Communist bloc, and so no Sino-American detente whether or not Nixon still becomes president. Environmental disasters like the shrinking of the Aral Sea or even Chernobyl may well also be accelerated and become more numerous, since Kaganovich was hardly the kind of man to let such petty considerations like 'minimal safety standards' and 'not wrecking the environment' get in the way of his beloved heavy industries.
 

Buba

A total creep
1 - the Sino-Soviet split will happen because China is not happy about having to follow somebody's lead. De-Stalinisation was a pretext;
2 - Aral Sea - this need not happen. Lazarovich might not push cotton growing in the region nor copy US river diversion schemes.
 

Bassoe

Well-known member
Depends on who writes that scenario. If it's a leftard, it will be about the Glorious March of Socialism and Equality across the World, teaching the savages of the past about the goodness that is Diversity, Sharing, and the Genocide of White People. If it's a right winger who writes the story, it will be a sorrowful piece about the world of '59 looking at the degenerates of the EU and deciding that nope, this is not what they want and refuse any diplomatic overtunes. The african populations quickly dump all their malcontents in the EU while laughing at these moronic bleeding hearts for taking in the detritus of their nations. Nations like the USA, UK, and Russia point at the EU and tell their people what equality leads to: Rampant degeneracy and moral collapse. The leadership of the EU, enraged by the sound rejection of their ideology, decide to try and conquer the world to make them obey, only to eat several nukes to their face. Social rights are set back by centuries as both minorities and the LGBT faction desperately try to wash out the stains caused by the reveal of what their future of free love and socialism would look like.

The Left loses. Forever.
Uh…

I doubt it’s nearly as black and white as your portray it as. While social revolutions have empowered movements that are indeed problematic, the 1950s were also a backwards period in many ways (i.e. no civil-rights legislation in the US yet). That, and historical maltreatment of certain racial and sexual-orientation groups may go some way to explaining—if not excusing—current progressive excesses today, when they’re finally able to live unmolested in at least liberal-democratic, Western societies (which wise and pragmatic downtimers should come to understand).

Honestly, if I were writing this, it’d probably have more of a “both sides have a point” theme to it. Per the above, uptimers and downtimers alike would ineluctably be critical of the other’s social mores, and rightly so. Obviously, not every instance of this would be resolved peacefully, which would be a central conflict of any decent execution of TTL.
You can't even do proper AH anymore. Truly interesting timelines end up being forced into following current political sensibilities and become boring. Every ISOT of modern day country or place to the past has to have mainstream politics taking over and enlightening the locals to our glorious progressive Utopia of current year. People can't point out that it would take 30 seconds of seeing a pride parade to get 1940's politicians to codify those as illegal forever, or how showing BLM to them would effectively torpedo Civil Rights into not happening because they would assume all blacks support that (because you know that is how the approved political on BLM goes) and that cannot be allowed to happen.
Having looked at Sobek’s quote just now, they do make a good point about how certain left-wing strains would make twentieth-century people balk, much to the selectivity of many AH fans.

For as much as people on AH.com consistently claim that Reaganomics would puzzle FDR-era New Dealers, they also downplay or ignore how gay marriage or widespread abortion would appall Republicans and Democrats alike from around the same time. Even when I’ve tried to point that out, I’ve at best gotten responses along the lines of “Meh, some uptimer Democrats might alienate downtimers.” Rather than, you know, a good majority of them (though the Reaganite GOP might also raise eyebrows).
…Well, it does sound pretty dystopian, with the future it describes having minimal “Upward march of history!” ideals to spread to us downtimers.
AH.com's discussion of the upcoming Axis of Time adaptation might be relevant here. What if the lesson we learn from the ISOTed uptimers wasn't "the values of our system failed of their own accord" but "a rival who didn't have our scruples crippling them kicked our asses".
china-want-their-mozarts.png
 

Urabrask Revealed

Let them go.
Founder
AH.com's discussion of the upcoming Axis of Time adaptation might be relevant here. What if the lesson we learn from the ISOTed uptimers wasn't "the values of our system failed of their own accord" but "a rival who didn't have our scruples crippling them kicked our asses".
china-want-their-mozarts.png
There's maybe one post that talks about your scenario, all others are whining about how dare the author be an islamophobe and all the usual sjw-tripe. I'd much rather read the thread on 4chan you posted. Is it on /tv/ or /lit/?

EDIT: Found it. It was neither, but /pol/ instead. Direct Link to screenshot.
 

ATP

Well-known member
A USSR ruled by Kaganovich would just become a huge North Korea, IMO. Dude was Stalin's most zealous disciple and extraordinarily bloodthirsty even by Soviet standards, being both the architect of the Holodomor and signing off on tens of thousands of executions (as well as pushing his own brother to suicide for disappointing Stalin), exceeded only by Beria and his predecessors as the top secret policeman in the Soviet Union. As Uncle Joe's industrial minister he was the worst kind of boss anyone could ask for, a vicious martinet with a famously volcanic temper whose solution to inefficiency and other problems usually came down to 'just kill the useless wreckers and use their corpses as an example for the rest'.

You would never ever get Khrushchev's relative thaw with 'Iron Lazar' in command, nor any degree of liberalization within the USSR itself. All the worst policies associated with Stalinism (centralized collectivization, breakneck industrialization with a focus on heavy industry, totalitarianism and regular, bloody purges, etc.) would almost certainly endure. Certainly the cult of Stalin will, just with Kaganovich as the distorted shadow of Saint Peter to Uncle Joe's dark God, for Kaganovich endlessly whined about how the later Soviet leadership had dared turn against Stalin & Stalinism until the end of his days IRL. If you're lucky the lack of changes in industrial and social policy could lead to the USSR crumbling sooner in the '70s or '80s under the weight of Stalinism, or otherwise it'll persist at least as long as Kaganovich's life as an especially brutal, soulless, continent-spanning gulag - essentially a bigger North Korea, as I said above.

Knock-on effects overseas might include the Red Scare persisting in the US longer, as Kaganovich would seem far more threatening than Khrushchev pre-Cuban Missile Crisis, and the idea of 'Judeo-Bolshevism' remaining a little more mainstream as well (Kaganovich was Jewish). The Sino-Soviet and Albanian splits may not happen or at least be delayed, as there would be no de-Stalinization to fuel accusations of revisionism within the Communist bloc, and so no Sino-American detente whether or not Nixon still becomes president. Environmental disasters like the shrinking of the Aral Sea or even Chernobyl may well also be accelerated and become more numerous, since Kaganovich was hardly the kind of man to let such petty considerations like 'minimal safety standards' and 'not wrecking the environment' get in the way of his beloved heavy industries.

You would have WW3 then.Only reason why it not happened OTL is that soviet leaders after Sralin do not truly belived,so perspective of dying themselves stopped them.Sralin and Lazar would not hesistate.
Good for world in long turn,becouse they would lost.And if war happen before 1965,USA would survive to rebuild world.
 

Atarlost

Well-known member
You would have WW3 then.Only reason why it not happened OTL is that soviet leaders after Sralin do not truly belived,so perspective of dying themselves stopped them.Sralin and Lazar would not hesistate.
Good for world in long turn,becouse they would lost.And if war happen before 1965,USA would survive to rebuild world.
Clearly the second best timeline. (The best timeline is the one where some Earth crossing asteroid has a slightly different orbit and pulverizes Moscow a few days after the Bolsheviks complete their take over and everyone else considers it the clearest sign of divine displeasure since Sodom and Gomorrah.)
 

ATP

Well-known member
Clearly the second best timeline. (The best timeline is the one where some Earth crossing asteroid has a slightly different orbit and pulverizes Moscow a few days after the Bolsheviks complete their take over and everyone else considers it the clearest sign of divine displeasure since Sodom and Gomorrah.)

I remember some polish short novel about alternate history,when Petersburg was destroyed in 1908,becouse Tungusca astreoid hit it in 1908.As a result,smarter tsar win WW1,and we have much better future...i forget both title and author.
 

TheRomanSlayer

Unipolarity is for Subhuman Trogdolytes
"Polish-Style Partition of Japan"

In a world where the Tokugawa Shogunate never came to being, and the Sengoku Jidai lasted a bit longer, was there a danger of Japan being carved into spheres of influence by more than one great power? For example, if a different dynasty came to power after the Ming in China had ambitious plans for an overseas expansion, it would make sense to annex Taiwan, Ryukyu, and at least turn Kyushu and Shikoku into puppet vassals of the Chinese Empire, while a different expansionist Russian Empire would have nibbled at half or all of Tohoku and annexed Hokkaido as well, with the remaining part of Japan being a puppet of whichever power was desperate enough to get it. Maybe Spain, Portugal, Britain, or France.
 

ATP

Well-known member
No.
Before railways Russia had no "power projection" in the Far East. And until deep into the 19th the Maritime Powers also couldn't do much but trade with willing locals.
Also - China had problems keeping down Vietnam or Korea - Japan would be even harder.

That.And Japan had emperors - without power,but china must try vassalize them .and then everybody in Japan would fight them,which would end in another shogunate.
 

Atarlost

Well-known member
A China style outcome with treaty ports might have been possible. The Dutch had Nagasaki and if Japan had remained disunified other powers might have been able to secure partial control of other ports.
 

TheRomanSlayer

Unipolarity is for Subhuman Trogdolytes
A China style outcome with treaty ports might have been possible. The Dutch had Nagasaki and if Japan had remained disunified other powers might have been able to secure partial control of other ports.
True, although having a failed Meiji Restoration could end up in a China style concessions being made.
 

gral

Well-known member
Chile coastline is less meme-worthy?
Maybe; the territory Chile won on the War of the Pacific wasn't that big a part of the current Chilean territory. But a Chile that doesn't have the money from the nitrate and copper mines won in that War will be less able to expand to the south. This means less dispute with Argentina, and less money poured down into the Chilean Navy, which has effects regarding the Argentinean, Brazilian and US navies(not that many for the last two, though; the Brazilian and US naval expansion programs were dictated mostly by internal factors - a less powerful Chilean Navy and no Chile-Argentina naval arms race means there is less urgency towards rebuilding the Brazilian and US navies).
 

TheRomanSlayer

Unipolarity is for Subhuman Trogdolytes
A sports WI that I had after watching the YouTube video about the Toronto Maple Leafs:

"What if the Toronto Maple Leafs drafted Scott Niedermayer instead of Eric Lindros?"

Would Lindros avoid becoming injury prone if he was drafted by a different team? Alternatively, would Niedermayer as a Leaf be an incentive for Toronto to rebuild its hockey team?
 

Buba

A total creep
a Chile that doesn't have the money from the nitrate and copper mines
Very interesting observation.
Actually my thoughts were the exact opposite, I was wondering whether Chile, denied its Birthright in the North, might not be more aggressive in Patagonia. But, as you say, Chile might not have the money for it.

No Chilean-Argentinian naval arms race (for which there definitely would be no money) = no Garibaldi class cruisers for Japan to buy (with British money?) before Mandzhurian War?
No Swiftsure class or HMS Canada is irrelevant, though.
 

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