AHC: Anti-Soviet "crusade" instead of OTL's WW2

a): Agreed.

b): That's the question. Did anyone ever develop a scenario that looks at how Soviet economy might develop under Trotsky? I don't know from the top of my head what he thought about the NEP. If he kept it, and didn't kill millions in a Holodomor, who knows, maybe the SU will be better off?

Tsarist Russia’s economy was a predominantly agrarian society with 80% of the Empire’s rapidly growing population employed in the agricultural sector, 15% of Russians lived in cities and even less, just 10%, of Russians were employed in the industrial sector.

The 1800s saw attempts to modernise Russia and its economy, but the half-hearted efforts had mixed results. The Emancipation Act of 1861 ended serfdom, a system that was at the heart of the Russian economy for hundreds of years, but land was still controlled by the Communes who distributed plots in a haphazard manner based on the number of workers in a household and the people found it difficult to move out of the Commune to seek advantages in other sectors and the growing population meant the land allotted to the peasants was increasingly diminished. The agricultural sector also suffered from a lack of modernisation – farmers relied on manpower and outdated technology such as wooden ploughs.

World War I wrought devastation on the pre-industrialised Russian economy. It is difficult to quantify the loss to Russia in terms of men, but cautious estimate put that figure somewhere between 5.3 million and 5.5 million killed in action. As a proportion of population Russia suffered less casualties than Germany and France, however this reality does not include those men recorded as missing (estimated 500,000), prisoners of war (estimated 3 million), the disabled (estimated 1.1 million), refugees (estimated 6 million) and countless civilian victims. The impact of losing so many men, who would be out tiling the fields growing food, was incalculable emotionally speaking, but it also served to highlight the class divide. The army was reorganised to replace professional officers with educated peasants from the lower ranks, but the gulf between the troops and their high-ranking official was growing and gave rise to the 1917 mutiny. The size of the country also contributed to the hostile emotion toward the Tsar and Russia’s war effort the distances made effective communication difficult which often gave rise to ‘fake news’ which only served to add to the anger that was bubbling under the surface.

Stalin faced an uphill struggle to modernise the Soviet Union. He instituted a five-year plan to develop heavy industry and to collectivise the agricultural sector. The five-year plan was a success of sorts but came with a heavy human toll. Soviets had seized control in 1917 but had little idea about how to run an economy and the Great Purge, between 1937 and 1938, didn’t help the situation as a paranoid Stalin sought to eliminate any opposition to his authority.

The fledgling Soviet Union was like the Weimar Republic – its economy was ravaged by war, inflicted by massive social upheaval and plagued by political and fiscal instability. Stalin eyed up the riches of the West and Middle East with envy. What if… Stalin seeks to take advantage of the situation in Europe following the war. Can he make territorial gains in the Middle East. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire led to France and Great Britain taking large sections of the Near East and Middle East – if Stalin was capable could he take some of the land such as Iraq whilst trying to make the most of the resource rich Siberia. Would China pose a threat to the development and what about Japan. The Empire of Japan and Nazi Germany signed an Anti-Comintern Pact. If Stalin changes the course of events in the interim war period what affect with that have of Japan’s foreign relations with Soviet which were strained in OTL.