Russian History after a Bolshevik Defeat

Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution argued that in economically backward countries like early 20th-century Russia, the bourgeoisie was too weak and reactionary to carry out a full capitalist transformation, including land reform and democratic rights. Instead, he believed that only the working class, leading the peasantry, could overthrow the old order and usher in profound change.

In so doing, it could not simply hand over affairs to the politically-impotent bourgeoisie; instead the workers’ movement would have to forge on, working to establish a socialist state. Thus the communist revolution would be ‘permanent’, i.e. completed once and for all.

Trotsky never anticipated that the revolution would not expand beyond Russia itself. Russia was so backward economically, its productivity so low, that a society of equality based on abundance was unthinkable. It would have to be helped by workers’ states in prosperous western europe. 

Trotsky’s model, however, was fatally flawed; tragically simplistic: centrally planned economies controlled by workers’ councils simply do not work in practice. And so Russia proceeded to Stalinism, heckled by Trotsky from increasing distances, until the exiled dissident was eventually assassinated.

Perhaps, contrary to Trotsky's vehemently-expressed views, there really was no ‘Trotskyist’ alternative to Stalinism after the revolution succeeded in 1917. But what would have happened if Lenin’s Bolsheviks had failed in their putsch against the collapsing Kerensky government? Despite the disintegration of the army, enough units of the Russian military were, after all, standing by, as the Bolsheviks discovered in the long civil war which followed.

Had the Bolsheviks failed in 1917, Russia would certainly have fallen under a military dictatorship, facing the same challenge Stalin later confronted: dragging a feudal, agrarian society towards a modern industrial economy and state. The military dictatorship would have been forced to depopulate the countryside, dismantling peasant agriculture to create a mass urban workforce. This brutal transition - akin to enclosures in Europe but imposed at breakneck speed - would have been necessary to fuel rapid industrialisation, driven by the imperatives of security and military rivalry, particularly with Germany.

Schumpeter’s insight applies: authoritarian command economies, whether Stalinist or capitalist, can be equally effective at economic take-off. The regime would have pursued state-directed capitalism, using repression to discipline labor, expand heavy industry, and consolidate large-scale capitalist farming. Political rhetoric would frame these measures as national survival, not class struggle, but the human toll - displacement, famine, and political terror - would mirror Stalin’s forced modernisation.

Yet, no dictatorship lasts forever. Spain, Portugal, and Greece transitioned from authoritarianism to democracy as modernisation weakened their regimes. A Russian junta, once its industrial goals were met, might have faced internal power struggles, economic stagnation, or public unrest in the second half of the twentieth century. However, Russia’s deep imperial and autocratic traditions could have prolonged authoritarian rule, replacing one strongman with another rather than fostering genuine democracy.

In the end, a post-1917 military dictatorship would have shaped Russia much as Stalinism did - through coercion, industrial might, and state-driven modernisation. Whether it collapsed into reform or prolonged despotism would depend less on economic success than on Russia’s historical inertia: a state that has long thrived on repression is rarely eager to let go.

But a capitalist Russia emerging from dictatorship would have had a working civil society, an economic power-base separate from the state apparatus. Consequently, the chances of a democratic transition would have been far greater than with the Russia we currently have, where civil society (weak to begin with) has been thoroughly crushed for a century by the power of an overweening state.

Without Stalinism to discredit it, it’s possible that the revolutionary left in a Bolshevik-defeat world would be more vigorous than in our actual world; but overall, if the Bolsheviks had been defeated, that world today would most likely be a better and more peaceful place than our own, too.