1917: The October Revolution in Russia fails

[All Along The Watchtower]

What would have happened if the October Revolution had failed in Russia? By "failed", I mean that the Bolsheviks never came to power.

[politicus]

We will never know, but my bid is:

Russia keeps a governing coalition of moderate leftists (Social Revolutionaries and Mencheviks) and liberals. After defeating minor groups of reactionarian Conservative rebels the country embarks on a social reform course - including a major land reform - which eventually produces some kind of market based economy (most likely with a stronger government involvement than in Western Europe) and parliamentary democracy.  

The people ousted by the Bolshies were truly the best and brightest Russia had at that time.

[The Mikado]

Been reading quite a bit about the Russian Revolution the past few months.

My take is that the Provisional Government had its fate sealed with the abysmal failure of the Kerensky Offensive.  The most appealing portion of the Bolshevik agenda was "peace without annexations or indemnities" for good reason: the Russian people wanted to get out of the war.  Kerensky's balancing act between left and right had already begun to fall through by this period due to his alienation of the right in the Kornilov debacle.  I just can't see Kerensky's regime surviving as long as Russian soldiers are being slaughtered in the Eastern Front, leading to ever-increasing desertion problems and disgust at the new government being just as culpable in the horrors of the war as the Tsarist regime had been.

In short, Kerensky's Provisional Government was likely doomed from June 1917 on.  Whether that necessitated a Bolshevik coup or not is a different story.

[kashifkhan]

The Kerensky regime would have collapsed sooner or later. I think Russia would have spent the 1920's the way Weimar Germany did, going through a series of weak governments before going through another more successful revolution, either by communists, or fascists.

[The Mikado]

The Kerensky regime would have collapsed sooner or later. I think Russia would have spent the 1920's the way Weimar Germany did, going through a series of weak governments before going through another more successful revolution, either by communists, or fascists.

I don't think the Kerensky regime would've survived to the end of World War I. The Russian army was collapsing at the seams and a German occupation of Petrograd was a very realistic possibility (and indeed almost happened in early 1918 after the initial breakdown of Brest-Litovsk, in part causing the Bolsheviks to move the capital back to the more defensible Moscow).  Whether Bolshevik or not (and I could well see a successful Kornilov military coup as an alternative), the Provisional Government's insistence on staying in the war and bleeding Russia for the sake of the Entente was untenable, and Russia would've taken quite a bit more beating before the Entente could drag Germany to the negotiating table.

[politicus]

This question has a short term and a long term answer.

I the short run for the coup not to happen/fail you need the forces behind the provisional government to act differently. First get rid of Kerensky and end the war, then create enough support in the army to defeat the extreme right wingers in the officer corps without too much blodshed. Whether or not that was possible is a tricky question.

Without the Bolshevik threat I think the reactionarians in the officer corps would have had a tough time gattering the kind of mass support they obtained in 1919-1920. The Civil War would have been much shorter and smaller in scale.

In the long run: If we assume it would have been possible to end the war for the moderates and Russia embarked on a reform course headed by moderate leftwingers the country could have played a very positive role - unlike Weimar Germany. Its economic development prior to the war was quite impressive and it had enormous resources - both mineral and agricultural. Even if parts of western Russia was ravaged by the war the country would still have experienced an economic boom in the 1920s with a market/mixed economy and with its rising demand and a growing middle class would have been a stabilizing factor in the world economy, so the Great Depression would have been less severe with less radicalization of European politics as a consequence.

[pbrower2a]

One of the significant effects is on the Jews -- with the failure of the Bolsheviks (many of them Jewish), the European Right is unable to turn the Jews into an object of hatred. Pity, maybe, if Jews flee a right-wing Russia.

No Holocaust.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

One of the significant effects is on the Jews -- with the failure of the Bolsheviks (many of them Jewish), the European Right is unable to turn the Jews into an object of hatred. Pity, maybe, if Jews flee a right-wing Russia.

No Holocaust.

A failed or non-existent October Revolution is likely going to need Russia making a separate peace soon after the fall of the czar.  That means Germany can concentrate on the Western Front sooner and it may well win.  As it was they almost broke the Allies before the Americans could reinforce them.  Instead of a German Third Reich persecuting the Jews, a French Third Empire doing so is quite possible.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The Kerensky regime would have collapsed sooner or later. I think Russia would have spent the 1920's the way Weimar Germany did, going through a series of weak governments before going through another more successful revolution, either by communists, or fascists.

I don't think the Kerensky regime would've survived to the end of World War I. The Russian army was collapsing at the seams and a German occupation of Petrograd was a very realistic possibility (and indeed almost happened in early 1918 after the initial breakdown of Brest-Litovsk, in part causing the Bolsheviks to move the capital back to the more defensible Moscow).  Whether Bolshevik or not (and I could well see a successful Kornilov military coup as an alternative), the Provisional Government's insistence on staying in the war and bleeding Russia for the sake of the Entente was untenable, and Russia would've taken quite a bit more beating before the Entente could drag Germany to the negotiating table.

There was a point at which Russia could have survived the war to the end, but that would have required different decision making not on the part of Kerensky, but on the part of Nicholas way back in 1914 and it would have involved making sure that those "best and the brightest" were in charge in the proper posts in the goverment and especially those capacities related to the military. It especially meant not appointing incompetents to replace mediocre officials at the behest of the madman Rasputin. The combination of competent officials and not ones stuck in 1878, along with the newly arrived British artillery and other equiptment that arrived in 1917 that gave "hopes" for the 1917 offensive (it is documented in Massies' book, how realistic it was I wouldn't know), would have been enough in my opinion to get Russia in a place where it could hold off further German gains and bleed them dry World War II style.

Outside of that, Kerensky falls to a right wing coup. Especially lets say that October Revolution is attempted but enough regiments rally and thwart the attempt in Petrograd, but Moscow and a bunch of other cities fall. A much more organized, right wing coup motivated by a "Red Scare Scenario" topples Kerensky and sets up a military dictatorship, possibly with Grand Duke Cyril or someone as a figurehead Tsar or maybe even its actual leader and the country descends into Civil War before Christmas. This scenario would have been far more likely if it the professionals who had made up the elite guard regiments hadn't been sent to the front and bled dry and thus replaced with draftees. These would have been far more loyal and at least far less communist.

One of the significant effects is on the Jews -- with the failure of the Bolsheviks (many of them Jewish), the European Right is unable to turn the Jews into an object of hatred. Pity, maybe, if Jews flee a right-wing Russia.

No Holocaust.

A failed or non-existent October Revolution is likely going to need Russia making a separate peace soon after the fall of the czar.  That means Germany can concentrate on the Western Front sooner and it may well win.  As it was they almost broke the Allies before the Americans could reinforce them.  Instead of a German Third Reich persecuting the Jews, a French Third Empire doing so is quite possible.

If Germany wins though, does France have enough left even to cobble together an Empire even later on that could compete, more or less overrun such a super-powdered Germany?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Yes.  Germany wasn't going after major gains in the west in the Great War and to end the war they'll need to be relatively lenient on France to get Britain and America to agree to peace and reopen the seaways.   So, the colonial possessions won't be majorly affected.   Germany's problem is to its south.  Austria-Hungary is likely to suffer a nasty breakup and if it doesn't it'll undergo reforms that could see it be willing to join with France and Russia in an anti-German alliance that could also easily have major anti-Jewish overtones.

I'm not saying that's how it would go, just that it is a plausible alternate history if Germany wins the Great War in late 1917 or early 1918.

[Rooney]

Would there be any chance that, in order to save his faltering state and fading star, Kerensky declares himself a military dictator in Spring or early Summer 1917?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Would there be any chance that, in order to save his faltering state and fading star, Kerensky declares himself a military dictator in Spring or early Summer 1917?

You have to have a military loyal to you to do that, and he didn't. All he had was the loyalty to the abstract notion of freedom and that wasn't going to feed people and keep people from dying on the front, hence why he lost all support.