The Ruins of an American Party System, Part Three: Revolution
- Thread starter Emperor Julian
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I could see a new Troika forming between Tukhachevsky, Bukharin and Kirov, or perhaps Tukhachevsky will be a figurehead and still direct most efforts but Bukharin and Kirov will play junior roles just below Tukhachevsky.
After the Coup
Tukhachevsky's coup was completely successful. His allies quickly seized control of the entire state apparatus, and his enemies were quickly removed from their power. The official story was that Rykov had led a conspiracy among the Nomenklatura of the Communist Party to purge Tukhachevsky, betray large portions of Europe, and subvert the revolution. Tukhachevsky's coup was thus portrayed as a heroic effort to save the USSR and preserve the revolution. Kamenev publicly stated that he had no knowledge of the coup, but that it had been a tremendous failure on his part to not be able to stop it, and he resigned, moving to a small distant town (where he was kept under constant surveillance throughout his entire retirement). Bukharin endorsed Mikhail Tukhachevsky to be his replacement for the position of Premier. Tukhachevsky received the official position as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, while retaining his position as Grand Marshal of the Red Army.
Sergey Kirov, Tukhachevsky's chief political backer, was elected the new Chairman of the Congress of the Soviets. He quickly monopolized control over the legislative process of the Soviet Union and put it under the authority of his close allies and backers. Neither Kirov nor Tukhachevsky particularly trusted Bukharin, but judging that having a member of the Troika in their administration would give them huge legitimacy, they decided to keep him around, giving him a cabinet position dealing with economic planning. There he was forced to implement some of Kirov's greater centralization schemes, but moving the economy to the left was not the primary policy goal of the new administration.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was once one of the most powerful institutions in the world. After Tukhachevsky's coup, the Party soon found almost all of its powers removed, with the Grand Marshal proclaiming it to be "unnecessary" and the USSR to have moved onto a "post-partisan" system. He established a new branch of military law enforcement which would be responsible for previewing candidates for office instead of needing them to get the Party endorsement. The Communist Party was reduced to an organization mostly concerned with going to international meetings of Communist Parties and directing them. In its place, Tukhachevsky elevated the Red Army as the most powerful institution in Soviet society, placing the management of Eastern Europe entirely under military supervision and giving the military nearly unlimited authority to act on its own. The civilian science, research, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies were all quickly rolled into their greatly expanded military equivalents. The Soviet propaganda proclaimed the Red Army to be the vanguard of the revolution.
Upon taking control, Tukhachevsky and Kirov immediately set to implementing the foreign policy goals they had in mind. They considered the Troika too concerned with micromanaging the minutiae of ideology in foreign communist parties, versus simply trying to place them in control. Tukhachevsky figured that the quicker that he could get independent stable communist governments in control over Eastern Europe, the quicker he could move resources to more effective locations. However, at the same time, he was worried about the possibility for one of these individual communist governments to get too powerful. Identifying Germany as the main threat, he announced that not only would Prussia not be rejoining Germany, but that the Southern portion of Germany would split away and merge with Austria into its own Socialist Republic. Tukhachevsky hoped that this would reduce nationalism in the occupied territory.
There was obviously a huge international reaction to the coup. The Communist Parties across the world immediately split on whether or not Tukhachevsky was a true hero or whether he was a dangerous counter-revolutionary. The communist militias in Peru suffered yet another schism, as the Troikaist faction quickly split apart into a Rykovist and Tukhachevskist factions on their own, leading to a collapse among their ranks. The United States Communist Party announced their allegiance to Tukhachevsky; anti-Tukhachevsky members were quickly expelled en masse from the organization. Most of the groups receiving funding from the USSR decided to stay loyal to Tukhachevsky due to the fact that they would need Soviet money, while independent groups were more likely to turn against the Grand Marshal and condemn his new military regime.
The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, desperate and broken since the death of their leader Mao, decided to reach out to the new Soviet Union, hoping that with the Troika gone they could recreate the old bonds and once more get desperately needed funding and support. Unfortunately, many of the outer ranks of the party, fully indoctrinated by the Maoist anti-Soviet rhetoric, rebelled against this decision, and the Chinese Communist Party split in two. This move, by an already weak party losing badly, proved to be fatal, as Chiang crushed the exposed and broken party and completely destroyed communism in the central Chinese territories, relegating communist insurgencies to Soviet funded efforts in East Turkestan and Mongolia.
The Communist Workers' Party of Spain also saw an extreme split. The pro-Soviet Communist Party had been the second largest party in the governing coalition. However, when the leadership of the party condemned the coup, a large portion which supported Tukhachevsky split off. This led to the leftist governing coalition losing their majority for the first time since winning the civil war nine years before. New elections were called, and the Liberals and Center-left won in a huge swing, excluding the far-left from the government and announcing they would pursue a less pro-Soviet, more neutral foreign policy.
Non-communist groups were also effected by the coup. The Progressive Party in the United States became concerned by this development, with many previously pro-Soviet politicians taking a more cautious attitude toward the USSR than before. The Socialists loudly condemned the move, declaring it another example of how the authoritarian Leninist ideology betrayed the working class. In the United Kingdom, the coup led to renewed concerns of Soviet aggression, and cemented foreign policy as the main topic for the upcoming election. Winston Churchill went onto win the Conservative Party a majority in a huge landslide.
Ah, America. Where the centre-left party is more pro-Soviet than the left-wing one.
Lost Freeway
Banned
And everybody kept saying that the USSR would be less authoritarian without Stalin.
Quick question: What is the political situation in Peru right now?
The great international clash is going to be beautiful.Ah, America. Where the centre-left party is more pro-Soviet than the left-wing one.
And everybody kept saying that the USSR would be less authoritarian without Stalin.
Well, I mean it is. I don't deny that it's getting more unpleasent, but we haven't seen anything on the scale of the great purge.
Ah, America. Where the centre-left party is more pro-Soviet than the left-wing one.
If any country could get away with the violation of that amount of common sense it would be 'Murica.
What happened to the CNT and other Spanish anarchists?
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Is there anyone who knows a lot about Indian history who I could run some ideas that I have?
I know some Indian history, I guess.
Is the Muslim League still active ITTL? A POD this far back could mean that Jinnah is still in the INC. In fact, the Muslim League's prominence could be entirely butterflied away with such a POD, meaning there could be a quite securely-united India ITTL.
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The President's Challenges
President Taft condemned the coup in the Soviet Union unequivocally. He used it as evidence that the United States could not trust the USSR and that the U.S. should continue a strong stance of neutrality. His chief concern however, was not actually in Eastern Europe or Asia, but in South America. Tukhachevsky's coup led to yet another split in the communist militias in Peru, hastening their collapse. While Taft and his team thought this would be good in the long-run for the stability of the country, allowing the APRA government to cut its ties with the extremist organizations and reach out to more moderate warlords to try to bring a broader coalition which would hasten peace. However, in the short term this led to the fascist Revolutionary Union forces temporarily making gains at the communists' expense. Casualties of U.S. troops increased, leading to great resentment from the American populace.
President Taft soon found his administration under attack from two different directions. Socialist-led anti-war protests began as public opinion started to turn against the conflict. On the other side of the spectrum, word started reaching the White House that there were wild rumors being spread that he intended to destroy the communists in Peru and then let the fascists take over. Reports started appearing in newspapers of massive levels of rigged ballot boxes, voter fraud, voter suppression, and a variety of other schemes by the Republicans to steal the election. Simultaneously, a variety of fake leaks erupted across the press, with claims of scandal and corruption in various executive departments. These "scandals" were easily disproven, but still hurt the credibility of the Taft administration.
The President suspected that this massive misinformation campaign was being conducted by the Communist Party at the behest of the USSR. He ordered Attorney General Dewey to conduct a massive investigation to find which government employees were secretly Communists. Chief of Staff Buffett suggested that they escalate this investigation even further, and start taking down journalists and union officials who were secret Communists and the source of much of the misinformation. Whispers began in the House of a bill to authorize Taft to enact Wilson-style anti-sedition laws against the anti-war movement, whereas several lawyers suggested that the President could use the Internal Security Act to destroy much of this dishonest opposition. However, Taft refused to enact any such policies. He viewed those suggestions as unconstitutional and dangerous. Dewey agreed with this assessment and limited his anti-Communist investigations to employees of the federal government.
Another series of massive demonstrations erupted across the United States, calling for voting rights for African-Americans in the Southern U.S. Paul Robeson, James Ford, Harry Haywood, and the other Communist-aligned leaders of the Democracy For All movement organized a series of militant marches in the South against the Commonwealth regime. While the brutal crackdowns by many Southern governors lead to sympathy in the rest of the country when pictures of beaten and brutalized protestors began to circulate, many Republicans and business leaders began to fear that the movement was compromised by the Communist Party. However, simultaneously they saw the advantage in breaking the Commonwealth Party's stranglehold on the South. On President Taft's urging, they began to support the more moderate Fair Vote movement, led by Republican William Hastie and Progressive A. Philip Randolph. Business leaders started to donate large amounts to the Fair Voters, hoping that they would guarantee that the radical left would not take control of the African-American community.
Huey Long was uncharacteristically silent throughout these events; reports indicated that the Senator from Louisiana was tired and bitter, feeling that he'd accomplished his last great task in breaking the Southern wing of the American Party. Despite holding no official leadership position, as the party's founder and two-time nominee, many still considered him the head of the Commonwealth Party, and counter-protests, which Long suspected were organized by his Senator rival Glen H. Taylor of Idaho, soon began targeting Long and his office. The once incredibly active Huey Long became increasingly secluded; the once radical Senator ceased challenging the rules or norms of the Senate and became increasingly typical. However, Long had another enemy, one far more powerful (and some would say, more intelligent) than Taylor. President Taft told his Attorney General that "Us Tafts are not well-disposed toward hatred. But I hate that man." While most of the attention was seized by the anti-Communist efforts, Dewey began to quietly build a case against Huey Long, aiming to bring him down once and for all.
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Commerce Secretary Wendell Willkie was glad to be out of the tough political climate of the United States. In the year and half since he'd been to China, the country had really done a great job rebuilding. Franco-British investment was proving very useful, and Willkie hoped his speech and presentation at the Chinese Economic Recovery Conference - which Willkie had taken to calling the Chinese Communist Conference - would help encourage American investment as well. There's no reason why China can't become a huge economic power, Willkie thought.
After a busy few days promoting America's business and economic model, Willkie was glad that he would be able to relax at a private party at the Presidential Palace. He stared outside the window of his car, at the newly constructed buildings in Beijing, reconstructed in the traditional style. Willkie had great hope for China. He'd looked at the maps and the statistics, and he just didn't think that Britain and France could stand against the Soviet Union alone. They needed a strong China, with its huge population and resources, to keep the Red Menace at bay.
The driver parked outside of the palace; Willkie thanked him profusely and exited. He walked up the steps of the impressive, still somewhat under construction building. He saw the President and First Lady between their guards, greeting guests as they walked in. Willkie removed his sunglasses and walked up to the pair. He accepted Chiang Kai-Shek's handshake, greeting his friend formally. The Chiang's and their regime insisted on adopting western clothing and greetings; the mixture of the old and new was one of the things Willkie loved so much about China. He took Soong Mei-Ling's offered hand shook it as well, bowing moderately. If his hand held hers for too long, or if he stared at her too long afterwards, he didn't notice.
Willkie held high hopes for China indeed.
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