If the outcome was different in Dublin, 1916, then what will happen in Russia, 1917, Germany, 1917-18, Britain 1919 and 1926 etc?
I would like to see a popular rising and movement in Germany preventing the Freikorps (see image) and Nazis, aiding Russia and thus preventing Stalin but that will not be how the twentieth century of SM Stirling's Black Chamber develops!
Poul Anderson's Time Patrol has to ensure that Hitler and Stalin come to power on schedule. In that timeline, if I had a time machine, then I would be a time criminal.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And, of course, what might have happened if Austria-Hungary had survived WW I? The Habsburg Monarchy tends to be mistakenly ignored, scorned, minimized, etc.
I looked up the Freikorps and discovered they too were a "popular" reaction to the confusion following the defeat of Germany in WW I. And I would have ABSOLUTELY opposed any aiding of Russia. You seem to have forgotten that Stalin was not yet misruling Russia at that time. Rather, the tyrant then in power was Lenin, who was just as evil as Stalin.
If you had tried to prevent to Stalin and Hitler (why did you omit Lenin?) from rising to power in Anderson's Time Patrol series, then you would have been prevented from doing so. And probably either killed or banished to the exile planet.
Sean
Sean,
Stalin murdered Bolsheviks and reversed their policies. I see him as defeating, not completing, the Revolution. Lenin I see as trying - and failing - to give a lead to the self-emancipation of proletarians and peasants. The October seizure of power was backed by a majority in the workers' councils. In July, the Bolsheviks held back the Petrograd workers who would have seized power in their city immediately but would then have been isolated.
National isolation and civil war destroyed industry and the working class with it, creating a power vacuum filled by bureaucrats led by Stalin.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
First, I don't care if Stalin murdered many of his old cronies. Because you have to expect faction fights and purges in such a dictatorship.
And Stalin was not reversing Lenin's policies. He was continuing, extending, and completing what Lenin had started. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, knowing how important the myth of the "noble" Lenin was to many among leftists and left leaning "liberals," shows us in massive detail in THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO the cruelty, fanaticism, utter cynicism, and sheer opportunism of Lenin. And does so quoting extensively from Lenin's own writings and words. It was Lenin who authorized the first Soviet secret police, the Cheka, and the first gulags.
I would also remind you of how Lenin took money from the Germans in 1916-17 to assist in overthrowing the Provisional Government. The greatest mistake of Prince George Lvov and his successor as Prime Minister, Alexander Kerensky, was in not having Lenin and his chief associates shot for treason.
No, I continue to have only contempt for Lenin, a monstrous and appalling person.
Sean
Kaor, Sean!
I’m another emphatic non-admirer of Lenin.
Best Regards,
Nicholas
Kaor, Nicholas!
Thanks! The more one learns about Lenin, such as in Solzhenitsyn's historical novel, LENIN IN ZURICH, the more contemptible he is shown to be.
Sean
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