At the height of the great purges Stalin, working at a very cluttered desk, accidently writes his own name on the days arrest order thinking he is signing a different piece of paper above it. The list then goes to a NKVD officer to afraid of Stalin to disobey his order no mater how strange it is. So that before anybody else realizes what is happening Stalin is arrested and shot. What happens when the rest of the politburo realizes what happened?
WI: STALIN PURGES STALIN
- Thread starter TIMER
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This is not ASB merely the result of carelessness, sloppy work habits, and unbridled fear. I once was on a job where a fellow employee accidently threw away three weaks worth of design drawings for a nuclear power plant (the orignals) by leaving them sitting across the top of his wastebasket at the end of the day. Stuff happens.
A Stalin loyalist accuses Beria of a coup, and assassinates him. What will WWII be like without Beria?
The Soviet Union would likely collapse to the German onslaught in world war two. Without Stalin's determination and Beria's cult of fear spurring the Soviet peoples to industrialize and fight off the invaders the Soviet Union would be 1/ worse prepared that it was and 2/ less resistant to the invasion itself.
Probably just as well Stalin didn't do this, although he was just as bad, if not worse than Hitler for his genocide (it just wasn't aimed at a couple of select groups)
Probably just as well Stalin didn't do this, although he was just as bad, if not worse than Hitler for his genocide (it just wasn't aimed at a couple of select groups)
I wonder if that would really happen.....
What would have happened if Stalin accidentally signed his own name off on a purge list?
An officer questions the move, and is killed for it. However, Stalin realizes his mistake and takes his name off the list.
Seriously, this is ASB.
The whole point is that the feared dictator and head of the world comunist movement has just died in the most hidiously embarassing way possible. By accidentally ordering his own execution ! The mistake isn't caught or questioned in time I don't care about WW2, its years off.
What does the rest of the politburo and party do ?
What does the rest of the politburo and party do ?
The what if wasn't the officer was too scared to do it. It was that he was too scared not to.
Very possibly beria would be assinated, thats a possible outcome. But what else might happen? Maybe they fake a coup to try and cover up the truth. Maybe civilization collapses because most of the people on the planet laugh themselves to death when they learn the truth. The what if is the point. No omnipotent beings killed him, he just plain screwed the pooch one busy day.
As for asb : try
A semi-italian nobody takes over the french government and conquers most of europe.
or: a nobody austrian corporal takes over germany and conquers most of europe
or: some nobody serb starts a war that kills millions by accidentally suceeding in killing an austrian archduke after the actual plan failed
All history is asb if you claim that the merely incredibly unlikly is asb. Why isn't it asb that the decendents of a group of ragged ass religious fanatics are the worlds only super power? And why isn't it asb that in 2000 they picked the only leader around who could blow it!
I get up every morning read the paper and don't stick my head in the oven. Now that's asb!!
Frankly, I don't see the problem with Stalin playing this kind of mind game with his own Secret Police, and that's really all this is.
This is just Stalin sticking it to the NKVD in some terrible mind game. If the NKVD attempts to follow the order, Stalin's loyalists will kill the agent, and probably the NKVD leader as well. And the reverse case--that if the NKVD declines to carry out the order--the leader is dead as well.
What you have here is a fairly insane plot by Stalin against his own Secret Police Enforcers--and I remind everyone that you had Yagoda and Yezhov dead in a short amount of time. All this means is that Stalin has decided to create an incident against them. They can expect no mercy from the man of Steel.
And no, I'll grant that this is not ASB--Stalin had gone very far to create insane plots against his own loyal followers. While this probably crosses a Stalin would not be comfortable with, I don't think its outlandish. The Idea that Stalin would actually be a victim of this plot is not in the cards.
This is just Stalin sticking it to the NKVD in some terrible mind game. If the NKVD attempts to follow the order, Stalin's loyalists will kill the agent, and probably the NKVD leader as well. And the reverse case--that if the NKVD declines to carry out the order--the leader is dead as well.
What you have here is a fairly insane plot by Stalin against his own Secret Police Enforcers--and I remind everyone that you had Yagoda and Yezhov dead in a short amount of time. All this means is that Stalin has decided to create an incident against them. They can expect no mercy from the man of Steel.
And no, I'll grant that this is not ASB--Stalin had gone very far to create insane plots against his own loyal followers. While this probably crosses a Stalin would not be comfortable with, I don't think its outlandish. The Idea that Stalin would actually be a victim of this plot is not in the cards.
I maintain it was an accident you maintain it was a plot by Stalin. We have our first conspiracy theory.
Either way he's dead as a doornail. It's in the cards cause I'm the dealer and that's the POD. If you say the POD in your what if is that Ceasar survives I'll discuss that there. Not say that it didn't happen. Or that it takes an ASB (which others, not you insist) I will grant it is very unlikly and will require that at least one NKVD officer is as dumb as gen'l Short but it is the very bizarness of his death that creates the problem for the comunists. He suceeded in accidentally executing himself.
Let Molotov or whoever explain that while keeping a straight face.
I maintain it was an accident you maintain it was a plot by Stalin. We have our first conspiracy theory.
Either way he's dead as a doornail. It's in the cards cause I'm the dealer and that's the POD. If you say the POD in your what if is that Ceasar survives I'll discuss that there. Not say that it didn't happen. Or that it takes an ASB (which others, not you insist) I will grant it is very unlikly and will require that at least one NKVD officer is as dumb as gen'l Short but it is the very bizarness of his death that creates the problem for the comunists. He suceeded in accidentally executing himself.
Let Molotov or whoever explain that while keeping a straight face.
Well, let's flesh this out, then, because I think a simple acceptance is kind of weak and its probably relevant to determine how this could have happened.
Stalin decides to put his own name on the kill list for the NKVD, just to test their loyalty and force them to beg for mercy from Stalin. In his own mind, this is a surefire way to purge the NKVD, which has been getting too large for their own shoes.
Now, the NKVD leader (Yagoda? Yezhov? Beria?) recognizes this for what it is--a means to create an incident that will result in their own head. Out of desperation more than aggrandizement, the NKVD top leadership recognizes that Stalin has crudely signed their own death Warrant--but they still have a game to play. The NKVD recognizes that there is an out to its dilemma--it can actually make good on the order. Stalin will expect the NKVD to beg him for his mercy--but he might not be planning two steps ahead, where the begging and the pleading turns into a sudden reversal and the death of the general secretary of the Soviet Union.
Now, whoever is in charge of the NKVD just got into a massive pile of trouble--or more correctly, they knew that they were in this kind of trouble as soon as they saw Stalins Name on the kill list. So, the NKVD, knowing that terrible retaliation will follow, blames "Trotskyite Terrorists" for the attack, and follows up by killing or exiling Stalin's Loyalists. This becomes a forced coup, and it might be one that the NKVD can go all the way and emerge triumphant, or one that ends up with Stalin's desired purge in the works.
No matter what happens, the rest of the world is going to be massively confused over the outcome--just what is going on in the Soviet Union. If this is happening before Barbarossa, Hitler feels like the Soviet Union will fall to pieces if the Door is kicked in, and depending on how badly the nation reacted as a result this could be true. If its after WW2 is Over, I'd expect that the rest of the world would jump on the chance to cut into the Soviet Sphere of influence. Figure that this means that control of the Soviet Union--as well as its nuclear arsenal--is now disputed internally.
Either way, this is going to humiliate the Soviet Union in particular and Communism in General.
Very good Blue Max so you are one of those conspiracy buffs who believe that the coup attempt by the NKVD in the thirties was an actual conflict between Stalin and the NKVD leadership and not an attempt to cover up the actual cause of Stalins execution by a junior officer due to an improbable and embarrassing series of mistakes by the comunist hierarchy.
How do you explain the general embarrasment among Party circles whenever Stalins name is brought up or the many jokes and comedy routines that sprang up around his death, including the famous parade invitation skit by Abbot & Costello?
And how do you explain Hitlers refusal to write his name on anything starting about two weeks after Stalins death. That has long been put forward as the single cause of the complete paralasis of the German government prior to the fall of the Nazis. He must have had a good reason.
How do you explain the general embarrasment among Party circles whenever Stalins name is brought up or the many jokes and comedy routines that sprang up around his death, including the famous parade invitation skit by Abbot & Costello?
And how do you explain Hitlers refusal to write his name on anything starting about two weeks after Stalins death. That has long been put forward as the single cause of the complete paralasis of the German government prior to the fall of the Nazis. He must have had a good reason.
Hey. I'm not saying that there isn't an element of irony involved with the whole deal. One way or another, the General Secretary died because of his order, error or plot. And yeah, who better to mock and make fun of than a man who was so paranoid as to purge himself? You have comedy gold right there, but calling it evidence rather than a society's take on the incident is misleading.
The question of the low level NKVD agent can be ruled out, at least to my own satisfaction, because of the level of the target. Any member of the NKVD would go straight to the top with this--and that means, at least at this point of time, Nickolai Yezhov, the "Bloody Dwarf".
Betting on Hitler's sanity is also a poor choice. I could list all of the odd chemicals his doctor, Morell, was giving him, or his odd quirks and habits, such as drinking coffee with seven spoonfuls of sugar. Perhaps the fact that Hitler, in spite of his rabid antisemitism was also a quarter Jewish played a role. The point is that Hitler was always a loony, and he got loonier.
If anything, the whole Stalin incident goes to show one thing to a would-be dictator, and that is that a single trivial error or errant plot can lead to everything going to pieces. Its a good lesson, and one that I think serves the world well.
Youdontwanttoknow at Post #6 said
Are you saying that Soviet mass murder is genocide because the UN definition of genocide edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html can apply to Stalin's persecution of ethnic minorities, or because you believe that the scale of Soviet crimes alone ("it just wasn't aimed at a couple of select groups") justifies calling it genocide?
Or perhaps you don't give a fig about the legitimate arguments surrounding what genocide is and isn't (the link I provided is related to Pol Pot's crimes; many scholars of Shoah don't consider 'Year Zero' to have been a crime of genocide, but they're unanimous in believing that the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire was.)
Which is it?
Are you across the debate, or are you one of these Mel Gibson types who are keen to muddy the waters?
Are you saying that Soviet mass murder is genocide because the UN definition of genocide edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html can apply to Stalin's persecution of ethnic minorities, or because you believe that the scale of Soviet crimes alone ("it just wasn't aimed at a couple of select groups") justifies calling it genocide?
Or perhaps you don't give a fig about the legitimate arguments surrounding what genocide is and isn't (the link I provided is related to Pol Pot's crimes; many scholars of Shoah don't consider 'Year Zero' to have been a crime of genocide, but they're unanimous in believing that the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire was.)
Which is it?
Are you across the debate, or are you one of these Mel Gibson types who are keen to muddy the waters?
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Let's not get in to this here, Magniac. The thread topic is silly to start with, we don't need to make the thread even sillier.
Nope, I'm not being silly.
It's just whenever I hear someone say that Stalin's crimes are exactly morally equivalent to Hitler's...
You know what that 'shit like genocide happens' line of reasoning is related to, don't you?
Accuse me of anything but being silly.
Silly thread, yes.
Unapologetically non-silly issue.
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