What would have happened if this guy lived 15 years longer? I'm mostly asking this because of the Sino-Soviet split. In my opinion, that was one of the most hilariously retarded events in the history of the communist movement that likely prevented its victory by 2000 or something. So, would Mao have eventually broke with Stalin too? We know they had disagreements.
Also, what would have happened to the Soviet economy? Did Cornholio improve the Soviet economy or did he weaken it?
What would have happened on the international stage?
Of course the implication in this scenario is that Stalin remained healthy till his death and kept his wits.
We would have been able to take more photos of him and prove he was a manlet.
Nathaniel Bell
cuba crisis with a happy ending
Oliver Lewis
No. Stalin, unlike Khrushev, despite hes otherwise (justified) ruthless and social-imperialist approach fully realized that China is too big to be ruled from Kremlin.
On the other hand, Mao didn't truly care about ideological compliance of allies (he allied with America after all), but alliance with the USSR was essential not just for Chinese economy, but also with American nukes in mind.
Grayson Baker
Mao didn't just ally with the US. There was decades of bad blood between the USSR and China, and eventually Mao found himself so isolated, that he had to turn to the West. Plus, it takes two to tango. If China and the USSR were close, the US wouldn't have allied with China because the entire reason for that was to drive a wedge between the USSR and China.
Camden Richardson
Nothing of value would’ve happened to the Soviet economy. Kantorovich’s ideas struggled to be adopted because Stalinists considered cybernetics taboo and framed it as being an American mechanism of removing worker control (lol) and neither Brezhnev, Krushchev, or Stalin made any significant plans to expand the computer industry in the Soviet Economy, so I doubt that would’ve happened for any particular reason. Not to mention the Dutch disease that came from all the oil discovered in Siberia.
Joseph Edwards
By that I mean that Mao wouldn't care about whatever policies Stalin would implement in the Soviet Union.
Mao started setting up contacts with the USA immediately after the friendship with USSR disbanded, and it took many years and efforts for it to pay off
Yeah, that's complete bullshit. Not the USSR, but GDR had the most advanced computer industry, most of it copied from the west. Even then their computers needed to be heavily subsidized, yet still were twice the price of western ones.
Jordan Jackson
The Sino-Soviet split would have still happened. I don't have my sources with me right now, but Mao highly critical of Stalin's policy toward China at least since 1945, when he (predictably) threw the CPC under the bus to cut a deal with Chiang Kai Shek. After the CPC's victory in the revolution, the deal with the KMT was simply transferred over to the PRC, complete with a highly disrespectful meeting with Stalin which deeply disillusioned Mao with his former hero.
Khrushchev, in the early years, registered Mao's dissatisfaction with the Stalin era deal and actually improved relations immensely, giving back railroads, etc. Things only really started to go south after Mao attempted the Great Leap Forward against Soviet advice.
The number one motivation for keeping the Stalin cult alive for Mao was to justify his own immense personality cult. Other than that, he had no particular attachment, his "Stalinist" policies were linked to the Third Period and not Stalin's later policy. If Stalin had lived longer, Mao would condemn the USSR as Social Imperialist just the same, and likely remove him from the ML banner.
Aaron Reed
He would have saved third world countries.
Jaxson Murphy
That's when you drink delicious capitalist tears about their precious IP being violated. The West has dominated for centuries, and was responsible for quite a brain-drain. Soviet Union emerged from war and poverty to invent big dick things like nuclear power plants, viable nuclear fusion, orbital satellites and human spaceflight. Another side was that the capitalist siege and encirclement never stopped, so the other half is invention of military equipment and tactics, like reactive armor, missile boats and military robots
As I have mentioned, they were a couple years behind. Soviet Union was at the cutting edge of some innovations and inventions nonetheless.
Mason Taylor
The CPC itself repeatedly negotiated and cut deals with the KMT of its own volition. Mao was clear that he had disagreements with Stalin, but the idea that it would have lead to a catastrophic split is ridiculous. Stalin was too smart and dedicated to the Bolshevik line on the national question (THAT HE AUTHORED) to fall to petty chauvinism like cornman did.
Kevin Scott
Look at Stalin's actions instead of just asserting how "smart" he was. Sino-Soviet relations were already well on the decline in the Stalin years, and there's nothing to suggest that his policy toward China would change. If you are imputing some kind of internationalist tendency on the part of Stalin, you are sorely mistaken. At the same time Stalin was telling the CPC to "dissolve their army" and accept KMT rule, he was initiating the Yugoslav-Soviet split to punish Tito for not accepting the Percentages Agreement.
Aiden Clark
everything would have been better that we can say for sure, even though sino-soviet split was the fault of mao ultra left deviations instead of Krushchev right turns
Colton Nguyen
Mao was a pure pragmatist in foreign policy. Maoist ideology itself postulates that there should be very little ideology in foreign policy. The sino-soviet split happened because the cornman asumed he could make China a soviet satellite state - which Mao would have none of.
Parker Robinson
FALC and Soviet holocaust.
Landon Foster
Don't forget that Stalin always wanted to have Mao removed an probably killed since the 30s and promote his own loyal head of the CCP
James Ward
he would've saved the fucking world.
Oliver Jenkins
Imagine if the opposite happened. imagine if, shortly after Stalin's death, Mao secretly funded a Soviet Maoist sympathizer to take over, and started a Cultural Revolution in the USSR. My face would be pic related
excerpts from Kotkin: “Planning went forward for a public trial of “Trotskyite-fascists” in the Comintern, and the tentative list of “Trotskyites” seems to have included Mao.82 The trial never materialized. It was supposed to center on Pyatnitsky, an original member of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (1898) who had never joined any opposition but was expelled from the Central Committee and placed “under investigation” during the June 1937 plenum. Despite being beaten to a pulp over the course of a full year, Pyatnitsky refused to slander himself.83”
Excerpt From: Stephen Kotkin. “Stalin.” iBooks. “On November 11, 1937, Stalin received Dimitrov and Wang Ming, a young rival to Mao, and told them, “Trotskyites [in China] must be hunted down, shot, destroyed. They are international provocateurs, fascism’s most vicious agents!” Stalin also instructed them that “the main thing now is the war, not an agrarian revolution, not confiscation of land,” and concluded, “neither England nor America wants China to win. They fear a Chinese victory because of their own imperialist ambitions.” (Wang would immediately leave Moscow, where he had lived for six years, and, in China, insist on mounting a party congress, where he would deliver the political report.)209 With the Comintern types, Stalin underscored how waverers in the party had faltered at every difficult moment: in 1905, in October 1917, Brest-Litovsk in 1918, the civil war, “and especially collectivization, a completely novel, historically unprecedented event”
seeing as he quotes "Mao: The Unknown Story" in foot notes though now I'm skeptical
Joseph Perez
really?
Alexander Peterson
I know his reputation but on the other hand I Ive seen plenty of posters around here say he’s accurate because it’s more intellectually nuanced to say “Stalin was a true believer in Marxism” and then show how this led to the consequences it did. The older anticommunist school would have played up the gorillions card, say Stalin committed Ukrainian genocide, that he was a secret Russian nationalist or a whole host of other fictions that made him out to be a diabolical demon of communism but also somehow the perverted warper of the communist vision. Anyway I dont see how the quotes in question to accuse Mao of trotskyism and have him replaced can be interpreted another way than Stalin wanting to remove Mao. Admittedly though this seems to have been a brief moment and Mao was too distant and isolated to be controlled directly anyway. Stalin went over his head and did more negotiating with Chiang Kai Shek and supplying the nationalists against Japan and only had nominal control over the ChiComs and their strategic directions
Christopher Bennett
Alternate history threads should be bannable.
Julian Hernandez
While his works generally are decent he has an admitted bias and has said falsities.
Not only does this make no goddamn sense (the USSR had no jurisdiction in Mongolia FFS, let alone China), but it's anecdotal at best, especially since "the trial never materialized" Evidence in the actual book of this? I've heard many authors claim that people like Tukachevsky were tortured horribly and broke within a WEEK yet the actual documents and evidence show no trace of torture other than slight sleep deprivation. Pyatnitsky had the guts to resist a YEAR of being beaten? Really? Hell the NKVD had many other methods, such as having someone put in a closed chamber and having it be frozen until they couldn't stand it anymore and demand that they let in steam until it got too hot and then they'd demand the cold again… often this would lead to a person getting pneumonia or losing a lung, as with my Great-Granduncle who told me of his experience in Kolyma after being sent there for a few years.
The second excerpt has nothing to do with Mao except that Wang Ming was a 'rival'. The agrarian revolution or confiscation of land wasn't even in MAO's plans in 1937, they were still busy fighting the Nationalists.
Jace Gutierrez
The first quote is a claimed list that supposedly accused him of Trotskyism though no real evidence of this exists and the second quote is just a name drop of Mao in relation to a CPC delegate who was told to get rid of trotskyite diversions. Mao doesn't come up in this at all except that he is a 'rival'. Overall a rather shaky proof considering over-all relations between Stalin and Mao were generally positive.
Comintern was involved in directing the party line in Communist parties all over the world. In the 30s this would have meant following the Stalinist line. Comintern originally was pretty in control in China but the Long March made the party harder to control because Mao ascended to the leadership and the party became geographically isolated. presumably it's a record from Comintern archives of preliminary plans to purge the CCP. presumably it wasn't carried through for any number of reasons. But yea I have to admit it's shaky assertion to say as I originally did that Stalin wanted Mao killed, as Dmitrov seems to have his own power within Comintern though with close collaboration with Stalin yeah no clue, he tends to give graphic descriptions but I can't confirm them The implication is that if Mao was to be purged on the grounds of being a "trotskyite-fascist", as the first excerpt seems to suggest, then Wang Ming would be sent in to replace him and Stalin's general talk of the threat of Trotskyism and scaling back revolutionary ambitions is actually an indirect attack on Mao and his unwillingness to subordinate himself to the Nationalist war effort against Japan If I'm not mistaken Mao didn't fight the Japanese head on for quite a while. Nationalists by far bore the brunt of the Japanese invasion
Aiden Green
STFU with your slander
Isaac Bailey
care to actually argue? the other two posters gave me thoughtful responses
Carter Carter
The Sino-Soviet split was due to the USSR not helping China industrialize, which the USSR couldn’t due because WW2 wrecked their economy. By 1960 they could though. So maybe the Sino-Soviet split doesn’t occur, maybe it does, who knows.
He didn’t really do much. Soviet stagnation was due to the USSR lagging behind the west in computer technology. Maybe Stalin would’ve given more funds to tech research, maybe not.
Hunter Ward
The USSR sent China thousands of economic advisors in the 50s that Mao kicked out after the split. So its not true that the Soviets didn't aid China
Levi Young
no, fuck off reddit.
Julian Wilson
You have it the other way around. Khrushchev withdrew them all in a moment of rage because Mao was going through with the Great Leap Forward against Soviet advice.
Henry Powell
Mao did not kick them out, they were recalled by cornholio and then when he offered to send them back (AFTER ruining Mao's trust) Mao rightly saw it as some kind of deception and refused.
Chase Sullivan
Ah yes I’m mixing up Mao with Anwar Sadat of all people, who kicked out all Soviet military advisors in the early 70s as a gesture to get US aid
Alexander Davis
They could only influence foreign communist movements, and did not control them as Spain demonstrates. Yeah and what I'm sying is that Kotkin is forming that implication. Stalin wasn't just like "Hey you Wang, Mao's rival, I want you to get rid of trotskyite fascists *wink wink*" Its not Stalin's indirect attack on Mao but Kotkin attempting manipulate it to look that way. In 1931, Japan invaded China’s northeast provinces (Manchuria). Jiang ordered the Chinese army not to resist. Even when the Japanese army ravaged most of northern and eastern China, and a horrific massacre took place at China’s capital—Nanjing—which alone killed 300,000 people, the Nationalist Government was officially not at war with Japan. China did not declare war with Japan until December 9, 1941, that is, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. This must be one of the most bizarre episodes in the world diplomatic history.
he biggest action taken was a disaster: In June 1938, Chinese Nationalist armies under the command of Chiang Kai-shek breached the Yellow River’s dikes at Huayuankou in Henan province in a desperate attempt to block a Japanese military advance.[1] For the next nine years, the Yellow River’s waters spread southeast into the Huai River system via its tributaries, inundating vast quantities of land in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu provinces. Perhaps the single most environmentally damaging act of warfare in world history, the strategic interdiction threw long-established water control infrastructure into disarray, leading to floods that persisted until the Yellow River was finally returned to its previous course in 1947. Between 1938 and 1947, this disaster killed more than 800,000 people in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu and displaced nearly four million. disasterhistory.org/yellow-river-flood-1938-47
Camden Parker
depended on the country I think. comintern had strong control over some country's parties but not others. I think the french communists were directed closely from moscow, for example. I agree it's entirely possible the nationalists were not even close to being war ready. They weren't in 1936 either but Chiang did take many steps to prepare for a showdown with Japan by then. Chiang also protested to the League of Nations and made a fuss about it, but the other world powers dithered. Also, given that warlordism de facto still existed, the Japanese taking Manchuria eliminated the powerbase of his warlord rival zhang xueliang. Neither was the USSR, which fought several consequential battles against Japan and gave the Nationalists vital resources that prevented their total collapse, thereby blocking Japanese strategic aims. Diplomatic formalities are never something to take at face value and are manipulated all the time in such situations as these I'm well aware of the yellow river flood. I've heard conflictingly that it did slow the Japanese or deprived them of resources while I've also heard it was totally senseless mass murder by Chiang. I don't know which story is true, but it's still a fact that the nationalists and their warlord allies provided most of the manpower against the Japanese
Andrew White
What would have happened if Beria had taken his place instead of Khrushev?
Difficult to say, maybe a bit more stabilization and continuety in building socialism, maybe better protections of civil rights with the old hand in the captains seat assuming a more steady post war return to peace time, since with the recollectivisation of agriculture and the state farms shifted a large proportion of the peasantry to the prolateriat and Stalin did try to introduce better civil rights after that happened only to have the fascist crisis caused by the great depression outside the soviet union intervene
It's hard to say, personality often changes after a heart attack, increased agitation, paranoia angry outbursts so on so forth
