I discussed this back in 2001 at
https://www.alternatehistory.com/shwi/WI Trotskyite Sri Lanka.txt
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Normally, asking what would happen if Trotskyites gained control of country
X puts us into ASB territory. However, Sri Lanka may be a significant
exception. As Robert J. Alexander has written:
"The Trotskyist movement in Ceylon/Sri Lanka is unique. The country is one
of the few in which avowed Trotskyists had substantial membership in the
national legislature and the only one in which the Trotskyist party was the
official opposition. It was also the only nation in which Trotskyists
controlled a number of municipalities. The Ceylonese/Sri Lanka Trotskyists
were the only ones who largely dominated the national trade union movement
for several decades."--Robert J. Alexander, *International Trotskyism 1929-
1985* (Duke University Press 1991)
Alexander's chapters on Sri Lanka in his massive book are available online:
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/alex/works/in_trot/cey1_1.htm
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/alex/works/in_trot/cey1_2.htm
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/alex/works/in_trot/cey2_1.htm
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/alex/works/in_trot/cey2_2.htm
So here is my PoD for having an outright control of Sri Lanka by
Trotskyites (rather than their mere participation in a coalition government
like Mrs. Bandaranaike's in OTL): Have S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike decide not
to form a new party (the Sri Lanka Freedom Party or SLFP) in the early
1950's but to stay with the then-dominant United National Party. In OTL,
the SLFP, which portrayed itself as both a non-Leninist socialist party and
a champion of the rights of the Sinhalese, overtook the Trotskyite Lanka
Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) as the second largest party in 1952. The rise of
the SLFP presented the LSSP with all sorts of opportunities for electoral
"deals" and eventually for participation in a coalition government--but it
also pretty much eliminated the possibility of the LSSP winning power on
its own. (In particular, as a party that wanted to appeal to both
Sinhalese and Tamil workers the LSSP could not compete with the SLFP in
communal appeals to the Sinhalese--although it ultimately did go along with
making Sinhalese the only official language.) For a while after the
assassination of Bandaranaike and the ensuing political chaos of 1959-60
the LSSP seemed to think it could regain dominance on the Left but in the
end it reached electoral deals with the SLFP (now led by Bandaranaike's
widow) and the Communists. Eventually it joined Mrs. Bandaranaike's
government and was thereafter regarded by the Fourth International as no
longer being a Trotskyite party because of its participation in a
"bourgeois government."
So assume that there's no SLFP, and that public dissatisfaction with the
UNP leads voters to choose the LSSP as the major alterantive. The LSSP
either wins an outright majority in parliament or at least does well enough
to get a dominant position in a left-wing government. What effect does the
world's first Trotskyite government have on both Sri Lanka and other
countries? It is not enough to note that the LSSP as a coalition partner
in OTL was not terribly radical; after all, its power to take radical
action under the circumstances was limited. Still, one does get the
impression that after decades of making election contests and trade union
action their major field of activity, a lot of people in the LSSP were no
longer really revolutionaries (if they had ever been) and had no particular
desire to be, and that this might be true whether or not they had full
control of the government.
In any event, the history of the LSSP does suggest an interesting
possibility: if there *had* been stronger Trotskyite parties in other
countries as well, such parties might have been de-radicalized and tamed in
the same way that first Social Democratic and later Stalinist parties were
in OTL. In other words, the more "revolutionary" posture of the
Trotskyites may be at least partially a function of their lack of power.
