What if-Trotsky?

Whitten, evidently, wrote:

he never really came out with a list of things he'd do differently.

Yes he did. Both while in power and after exile.

The basic spirit is correct though. Counter-factual history is always a mess because there are so many variables at play. Even understanding factual history is a pain for the same reason. To throw just one thing out of the equation Frag every single other part of the equation ups to the point that it's barley a worthwhile endeavour.

Something that might be added was that Trotsky would only allow himself a "victory" under certain conditions. He could have, by every account I've read, led a military coup with some ease as he still had a lot of solid contacts in the military that he had largely built.

However, doing so would not have solved the underlying problem that he - correctly or incorrectly - perceived, and that is a caste of bureaucrats that limited the democratic underpinnings of the Soviet Republic. At best, he would have only replaced one set of bureaucrats with another in such a victory.

This is an important point to make because it underlines Trotsky's definition of the USSR against that of many so-called Trotskyites. Trotsky himself defended the USSR as a worker's state that had degenerated to a certain degree.

Many later "Trotskyists" denounced the USSR as some form of capitalism or something else.

So in Trotsky's view Stalin wasn't so much a devil figure - in some of his work an understandably emotional tone does, however, work its way in - but a component in a scientific process and largely incidental to the revolution.

The effect was that the system itself had to be changed by the encouragement of the proletarian people of the world, including Russia. This was largely what he attempted, and failed, to do.

So the idea that Trotsky would have become a kind of Red Napoleon or something of the sort is rather far-fetched. At best be able to revitalize Soviet democracy and encourage revolution elsewhere - he was particularly influential in China at the time and it's probable Spain and some of the British things would have gone differently. The history of Germany would depend too much on the related events to be accurately guessed.

Now as to if these changes would have been enough, nobody can say. At worst, as he himself alludes, he would have found himself as Stalin, a manifestation of material history more than a demon bent on ruining everything. At best things may have gone better or worse - but it would have been different.

One can optimistically say there would have been total victory and such, but it's just as possible that later down the line nukes would be falling like rain.