[Political Interest]

Let us discuss a scenario in which the White Russians won the Russian Civil War.

[Daktoria]

That's a toughie. The Whites were scattered and divided, and the Reds had leadership and organization.

If Trotsky wasn't such a retarded tool, the Reds would have lost though. Stalin was a jerk in criticizing Trotsky's use of former White officers, and he later exploited Trotsky's leadership in the Polish-Soviet War as well. Why he remained motivated to the cause beats me.

[The Immortal Goon]

He remained motivated because Stalin was like the Michael Steele of the Bolsheviks during the Civil War. Most people sort of knew what he was, but nobody considered him vital,a political contender, or even really Russian in the way the others were. He was a Georgian Peasant that was educated in a seminary school instead of a Russian intellectual from an educated class. Trotsky was an outlier too, but during the Civil War he was a rock star and heir apparent to Lenin.

As for if the Whites would have won, we'd be talking about some Khamier Rouge shit in the future. It was already a brutal war, but the Whites, lacking numbers, tended to rely a lot on massacre and white terror to keep everyone in their territory in line. The vast majority were not going to submit to that, nor would they submit to continuing the war until they took Constantinople, nor feudalism coming back into fashion. After the Whites won and eliminated the Bolshevik leaders, you would have had uncontrolled mobs rising against everyone and crushing everything with no plan on what to do next. Russia itself, as an idea, may have ceased to exist.

[Andropov]

Impossible unless the Whites officially recognize the Soviets, end the war, and redistribute land. If they did all this, they would become a new ideological force; a kind of ultra-reactionary anarcho-socialist movement, with the Tsar as figurehead, determined to fight against Western decadence and degeneration by returning to ancient Slavic customs of the obschina and the mir.

[Potemkin]

a kind of ultra-reactionary anarcho-socialist movement, with the Tsar as figurehead, determined to fight against Western decadence and degeneration by returning to ancient Slavic customs of the obschina and the mir.

They already existed; they were called 'Socialist Revolutionaries' (SRs). Minus the 'Tsar as figurehead' bit, of course.

[Section Leader]

The only way the Whites could have won would be if Russia was more industrially developed and thus had a larger middle class and skilled working class. Trotsky was a competent military leader, but a political liability, and that's why Stalin purged him and his followers.

[Daktoria]

If the white and black armies stopped playing chess, they could have beat the reds in playing checkers.

Sometimes, people make things too complicated.

Oh yea... and POLAND.

[Rich]

The only way the Whites could have won would be if Russia was more industrially developed and thus had a larger middle class and skilled working class. Trotsky was a competent military leader, but a political liability, and that's why Stalin purged him and his followers.

Russia had a huge middle class in 1918. The biggest in the world. It was called the peasantry. If the Whites had given clear and categorical support for the new land settlement and for the independence of Poland and Finland, defeating the Bolsheviks would have been a cake walk. The Communists have always come to power on the back of a landless or nearly landless peasantry. The great problem of Western Liberalism in the twentieth century was that it was reliant on and came to be led by cretinous Americans who imagined that their success and prosperity was due to their Constitution and love of liberty, rather than that the British state has provided them with the greatest piece of real estate in the world and defeated their serious continental enemies. As if Viet Cong peasants loved liberty any less than American minute men.

[Smilin' Dave]

Russia had a huge middle class in 1918. The biggest in the world. It was called the peasantry.

No. The half-initiated Stolypin reforms failed to create a large peasant middle class. The majority of Russian peasants didn't have large land holdings and were not economically well off enough (or politically influentual enough) to be called a middle class.

Land reform would have been a problem for anyone that initiated it in Russia because someone had to lose out. The small holdings had to be reorganised. Every land reform/change in ownership in history has resulted in the creation of a large group of displaced peasants filled with discontent. The Whites might have actually struggled even more because they probably would have failed to create the expanded industrial sector to employ the newly disposesed.

They would also a politically difficult force to mobile, because the popular political notion amongst the peasantry was almost seperatist. They wanted their piece of land and to be left alone. The SRs and their predessesors had even tried to make this was some kind of virtue, where wisdom would be found on the land etc. But for a modern society it almost seems insane... and for a group (well groups, the Whites were pretty well all over the spectrum) trying to fight a war, it's not really desirable.

[Daktoria]

If the whites won the Civil War, the south wouldn't need to rise again.

House of York forever! Long live Rhodesia!

It's a shame Massoud couldn't keep Afghanistan together after beating the Russians back.