Question by I love the Soviet Union: What would have happened if Trotsky led the USSR instead of Stalin?
Answers and Views:
Answer by Knowall
I think he was madder of the two.
Read all the answers in the comments.
Know better? Leave your own answer!
Russian Life & People Digest
Patrick says
The Communists probably would not have maintained power under a Trotsky regime.
Trotsky was caught up in his own ego — he was called *The Pen* early on for his lugubrious and voluminous prose on the Socialist/Marxist movement. He had not the skills of leadership and was not nearly as hard as Stalin. When Stalin detected the slightest problem, he focused on it and stomped it out before it could fester or spread and was always totally ruthless.
Trotsky leaned more toward the Menshevik philosophy, willing to allow many people to associate themselves with the Communist Party. This was where Trotsky and Lenin had departed ways. Lenin was a centralist, maintaining power only at the very top and Stalin followed this hard line, perhaps even more so than Lenin.
If Trotsky would have somehow found himself in charge (and I cannot envision how this might have happened over the ruthless Stalin), things would have fallen apart for his lack of organizational skills. Trotsky was a good mouthpiece and technician but clearly not a leader.
He couldn't even save himself from Stalin who ultimately had him assassinated thousands of miles away in Mexico.
David says
Trotsky was an internationalist, Stalin believed in socialism in one country. Trotsky believed in permanent revolution, that it was necessary to spread the revolution to other countries in order for socialism to be possible in Russia.
If Trotsky was in power instead of Stalin, Russia would have been more supportive of revolutions in other countries instead of holding them back like Stalin. There would have been no show trials, no purges (it was Trotsky's red army after all) and there would have been less repression of peasants. Trotsky would have been more civilised then Stalin but he would have had to have faced the same conditions. Russia was destroyed by the World war and the following Civil war, it would have been very difficult to create a socialist society where the workers were in control of the means of production which was the goal of Leon Trotsky.