What about Finland? I know they had a Red vs. White civil war in 1918/19 or so; what POD's would be required for the Reds to win?
Alternate First Communist Countries
- Thread starter Monopolist
- Start date
Mexico had potential. Though whether it would last long with the big guy up north is another question.
Pretty tough, Finland at the time was heavily rural and conservative. By and large, we did not have what one could call a revolutionary left. The "revolution" in 1918 was initially popular just among a fringe and even they moved only after being goaded into it (and armed) by the Russian Bolsheviks. Like many other options presented in this thread, the Finnish "revolution" was an offshoot of the events happening in Russia.
Actually, Gilded Age America is a contender if you can get the urban immigrant working class, Southern Blacks, rural whites, and native-born Northern workers to stop hating each other and unite in revolution. Of course, that's no small order. Can anyone think of a POD?
Right off the top of my head - Germany, of course. And if the GERMANS had gone Red... the revolutions they crushed/helped to crush would've succeeded... so Latvija, Hungary, Finland...
Since the RUSSIANS wouldn't have foisted it on them... perhaps if the Communists would've led the Poles to independence, they would've caught on there. (SORRY, HAVE to toss this in... from the old National Lampoon "Communists around the World" - "Poland became Communist not out of political fervour, but in the mistaken idea that it was a rite of the Catholic Church)
Since the RUSSIANS wouldn't have foisted it on them... perhaps if the Communists would've led the Poles to independence, they would've caught on there. (SORRY, HAVE to toss this in... from the old National Lampoon "Communists around the World" - "Poland became Communist not out of political fervour, but in the mistaken idea that it was a rite of the Catholic Church)
Zimmerwald1915
Banned
It had been done on small scales in the early 20th Century (the Lawrence Strike usually gets used as an example), and in various organizations, but not on a national scale.
Old Airman
Banned
H.G, Wells said that Russian revolution spare Britain of it's own. So, British are #1, Then, there's always a chance of Commune v. 2.0 in France, if "burgeous" regime collapses under German pressure in 1914. So, France is #2. Germany and Italy were mentioned here before, so I wouldn't spend much time on them. Next in the list is Hapsburg monarchy (or, rather, it's parts). Let WWI go even less successfully for Austrians (off the top of my head, no Tannenberg could very well be a breaking point, as Russians, free from Northern troubles, bear on them). Taking into account that most separatists had left-wing leanings, you can see Czech, Hungarian, Austrian socialist republics pretty soon (I wouldn't count on Slovenes and Croats much). Another candidate is Serbia. People's Radicals of Pasic were pretty much socialist so, without failed Timok uprising and following backlash they could turn Serbia into Socialist republic by 1913, methink...
I would say France would have been the best chance if the Paris Commune of 1870 had not been defeated. Marx, in fact, described it as the first "dictatorship of the proletariat". So, indeed, if it had survived and been taken over by Marxists (Blanquists were the majority of socialists in the Commune) , it would have made France the first Communist state.
1912: Annie Oakley murders Teddy Roosevelt...
http://www.uchronia.net/bib.cgi/label.html?id=newmbackin
1912: Annie Oakley murders Teddy Roosevelt...
Annie Get Your Gun....And Lead The Proletariat Revolution!
Cook
Banned
Karl Marx himself expected the United States to be the first communist nation.
It’s worth remembering that Das Kapital was written while the American Civil War was in full swing and first published in 1867.