Transhumanist Soviet Union

[Glen]

Originally Posted by Glen

So, I'm thinking Bukharin wins out as the eventual successor to Lenin. Bukharin was a supporter of the NEP. The Agricultural sector was doing well (under the NEP the USSR became the top producer of grain in the world, supposedly). The Industrial sector wasn't doing as well. So the NEP type programs spread more to the Industrial sector under this scenario.

Apparently, many of the changes Deng made in the People's Republic of China were based on the model of the NEP.

Lysenko never receives the support of Stalin thus, and instead is discredited.

Before the Lysenko debacle, the Soviets actually had pretty decent genetics.

I propose that the Soviets start developing genetics to improve first agricultural production, and later for medical purposes.

When the space race starts up for real, some of the Soviet planners begin thinking about long term exploration, and suggest cryogenic suspension for long journeys. Research begins, with some exciting early successes in small animals spurring it on. Popular writers in Pravda pick up the idea and popularize it, speculating that it can also be used to preserve people with incurable diseases until Soviet science has advanced to the level capable of curing them.

In the late 1960s, some of the Party bureaucrats see a propaganda potential in cryonics and begin a program to suspend those who are near dying in general, claiming that only the Soviet Union provides a real hope of immortality, unlike the deluded mysticism of the West. This cryonics is crude, and scientists secretly warn that it is doubtful that any will be revivable, but the program grows anyway. People end up being frozen rather than having lenghty ICU stays to help offset costs to the Soviet Union. Popular magazines often show pictures of gleaming stainless steel containers lining hallways under captions like, 'The Frozen Mortuaries of the Soviet State'.

Also, without as severe of purges and repression as Stalin, a Soviet 'Turing' arises to begin the basis for computer science. Soviet central planners see the possibilities in Mainframes immediately and they develop more quickly than OTL. In comparison, the development of distributed computing is slower, but still comes.

More later....

I see the 1940s as having an almost isolationist Nazi Germany, the aborted but still surviving dystopia of Adolph's happy bunch. Here the Nazis never get their big war, and instead hang on by internal repression. Many German scientists defect...to the Soviet Union!

The USA also is staying more repressive ITTL...the New Deal is still floundering by the 1940s with no WWII. The US stays segregated, and a conservative Christian religious movement comes to the fore in the US.

The US eventually pulls itself out of the depression by the 1950s, and the strengths of its economic base reassert themselves. The more conservative USA embraces the physical sciences, but shuns the biological as 'playing God'. So we see them entering the Space Race against the 'Godless Communists' and such, but not innovating in medicine which instead is becoming more and more a Soviet area of expertise.

More nations in this world are attacted to this ATL Soviet Union's Communism than OTL, with some notable exceptions though.

For example, ITTL China isn't going Communist....

[Glen]

Originally Posted by Max Sinister

Soviets decide to build a prestige project (arcologies)? In the 20s they planned to introduce a truly "revolutionary" architecture.

Ooooh! Good idea! Will have to pinch it for the Transhumanist Soviet Union!!

[Glen]

I'm seeing Soviet Arcologies in the 1960s...feels about right.

[Justin Pickard]

I'm very interested in TTL... Will be paying attention.

[Glen]

Originally Posted by Justin Pickard

I'm very interested in TTL... Will be paying attention.

Look forward to your comments.

[Hendryk]

Originally Posted by Tielhard

2) Do you envisage the transcendence to be Tielhardian (P. T de C not I) or more Libertarian in nature. That is do the all become one God or do they become individual (and by extension) lesser Gods?

If you've named yourself after Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, then there's a typo in your name. Or is that intentional, like Torqumada?

[The Sandman]

One bit of tech that seems fairly obvious for any society of Transhumanist Communists would be something like the cybernetic telepathy in Ghost in the Shell, and further applications thereof. What could be more communist than working towards the integration of the minds of the proletariat into a greater whole? It also would allow a greater degree of control; literally reprogram troublesome citizens, or have your tireless KGB staff surfing through memory recordings to find subversive views.

[Glen]

Originally Posted by The Sandman

One bit of tech that seems fairly obvious for any society of Transhumanist Communists would be something like the cybernetic telepathy in Ghost in the Shell, and further applications thereof. What could be more communist than working towards the integration of the minds of the proletariat into a greater whole? It also would allow a greater degree of control; literally reprogram troublesome citizens, or have your tireless KGB staff surfing through memory recordings to find subversive views.

Possible, but I was thinking a different tack...we'll see.

[Glen]

Wonder when they'd go for the megascale engineering projects?

A canal between the Aral and Caspian seas seems likely....

[TheLoneAmigo]

Is this thread going anywhere further?

I really like the imagery evoked by the ideas in this thread - a gleaming transhumanist Soviet Union ascendant over a somewhat backward Western world.

[Glen]

Originally Posted by TheLoneAmigo

Is this thread going anywhere further?

Short answer is yes, though it will be in starts and stops as the mood and time allows.

Feel free to throw in some ideas.

I really like the imagery evoked by the ideas in this thread - a gleaming transhumanist Soviet Union ascendant over a somewhat backward Western world.

Thanks, me too. It kinda turns all expectations on their head, at least for a pro-Westerner like myself. I like messing with expectations.

The Cold War is likely to be very different ITTL....

[MerryPrankster]

Even if the SU produces a few specimens like Homo drakensis or Kenneth LeFarge (the cybernetically-augmented Samothracian from "Drakon"), that doesn't mean the USSR could win the Cold War.

We might get some sad incidents where they have to pull the plug on the people in cryogenic suspension b/c they can't pay the electrical bill, and a bunch of "New Soviet Men" working as hitmen or mercenaries or starving to death b/c they can't afford enough food to sustain their hyperactive metabolisms (someone created an RPG version of Homo drakensis and concluded they'd need 7000 calories a day to sustain themselves).

[Glen]

Originally Posted by MerryPrankster

Even if the SU produces a few specimens like Homo drakensis or Kenneth LeFarge (the cybernetically-augmented Samothracian from "Drakon"), that doesn't mean the USSR could win the Cold War.

We might get some sad incidents where they have to pull the plug on the people in cryogenic suspension b/c they can't pay the electrical bill, and a bunch of "New Soviet Men" working as hitmen or mercenaries or starving to death b/c they can't afford enough food to sustain their hyperactive metabolisms (someone created an RPG version of Homo drakensis and concluded they'd need 7000 calories a day to sustain themselves).

You assume the Transhumanist Soviet Union will be 'our' Soviet Union with extra tech.

That's not enough to make it Transhumanist. There will be some political, social, and economic changes that go along with it.

Think more along the lines of current day China's politics and economics except starting in the 1920s/30s. Also think more of the Socialist/Welfare states of the Scandinavian countries. This Soviet Union never knows Stalinism, and the NEP is just the start of innovation.

Also, in contrast 'the West' isn't going to be nearly as good as it was OTL in all those areas. Over time, its going to effect the course of the Cold War.

Quite frankly, I anticipate the Transhumanist Soviet Union winning the Cold War, though later than our own Cold War ended....

[Glen]

Originally Posted by MerryPrankster

Even if the SU produces a few specimens like Homo drakensis or Kenneth LeFarge (the cybernetically-augmented Samothracian from "Drakon"), that doesn't mean the USSR could win the Cold War.

We might get some sad incidents where they have to pull the plug on the people in cryogenic suspension b/c they can't pay the electrical bill, and a bunch of "New Soviet Men" working as hitmen or mercenaries or starving to death b/c they can't afford enough food to sustain their hyperactive metabolisms (someone created an RPG version of Homo drakensis and concluded they'd need 7000 calories a day to sustain themselves).

On the other hand, I think your dystopic high tech Soviet Union would be an interesting timeline in and of itself....

[MerryPrankster]

Originally Posted by Glen

On the other hand, I think your dystopic high tech Soviet Union would be an interesting timeline in and of itself....

Well, technically it's a dystopic former Soviet Union TL, but thanks anyway.

Think something like the TV program Dark Angel, only in the USSR.

[MerryPrankster]

Originally Posted by Glen

You assume the Transhumanist Soviet Union will be 'our' Soviet Union with extra tech.

That's not enough to make it Transhumanist. There will be some political, social, and economic changes that go along with it.

Think more along the lines of current day China's politics and economics except starting in the 1920s/30s. Also think more of the Socialist/Welfare states of the Scandinavian countries. This Soviet Union never knows Stalinism, and the NEP is just the start of innovation.

Also, in contrast 'the West' isn't going to be nearly as good as it was OTL in all those areas. Over time, its going to effect the course of the Cold War.

Quite frankly, I anticipate the Transhumanist Soviet Union winning the Cold War, though later than our own Cold War ended....

The NEP is still a command/mixed economy, even if it's a less brutal one. We're likely to see pre-Thatcher Britain style stagnation eventually.

[Glen]

Originally Posted by MerryPrankster

The NEP is still a command/mixed economy, even if it's a less brutal one. We're likely to see pre-Thatcher Britain style stagnation eventually.

Ah, but you have to put it in context, and order.

ITTL, the USSR will go from Command Economy when it needs its basic infrastructure built and its populace educated through to a more and more open and decentralized economy (with the notable exception of some wild megaprojects. ).

At the same time we have a Nazi Germany that is actually corporatist and will become increasingly more croneyist and corrupt as the old guard grasps for power until the bitter end (really, you should think of them as a lesser, fascist version of the USSR IOTL) and a USA that is paranoid about the 'Communist' threat, and more rigid and reactionary, with an ugly combination of the religious right and eco-fascist, and racist-lite elements being mostly in control. While still capitalist, it will grow over the decades to seem a tarnished dream, mired in its own hypocrisy and hamstrung by 'moral' and 'political' limitations on scientific growth.

This won't be obvious at first (except in Nazi Germany), but as the decades progress, the USSR will improve while the USA worsens, and at some point in the latter half of the 20th century their roles will almost invert.

[Glen]

Bumping this up for Communist Wizard to salivate over, and for the sheer fun of it.

Never count out the Transhumanist Soviet Union!

[Glen]

Hmmm...I'd like to get Premier Isaac Asimov at some point. And maybe Party Secretary Ayn Rand?

[Glen]

Hmmm....Transhumanism ITTL = Post-Modern Communism?