August 1918 assassination attempt on Vladimir Lenin succeeds

[The Mikado]

On August 30th, 1918, about a month after the Bolsheviks had banned the SRs, the only remaining other political party whose existence they were tolerating, a disgruntled SR named Fanny Kaplan shot three times, hitting Lenin twice and seriously injuring him. This triggered a serious crackdown against what was left of the SRs etc.

Communist ideology tends to portray their victory as a force of historical inevitability and it's fascinating to me how Fanny Kaplan's bullets being slightly more on point probably avert the entire USSR. By late 1918, sure Kornilov and the Romanovs were already dead, but the White Armies of Denikin and Kolchak were at the height of their powers in the south and west, respectively, and a power struggle within the Bolshevik leadership over succession and the hostility of the rest of the Politburo to Trotsky, who was leading the Red Army in the fight against the White Armies, might have just about doomed the Revolution to Denikin capturing Moscow in 1919 and ending the Revolution...or would it? Petrograd was the heart of the Revolution and could be a Bolshevik capital in a prolonged, more drawn out civil war for years to come, hoping that Denikin and Kolchak turn on each other over the spoils of victory.

What you probably don't get in a long, drawn out Russian Civil War going on far longer is Soviet Russia reannexing Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and much of Central Asia, as well as reincorporating Ukraine as easily as it did. Certainly no failed invasion of Poland. The Bolsheviks, due to the incredible unpopularity of War Communism, the huge internal strife resulting from within the party, and the pressure of foreign-funded Denikin's drive north would really limit the Red Army's ambitions for a long time. Who knows, maybe Kolchak ends up basically running a Vladivostok-based separatist state out of the Far East backed by Japan (a Japanese puppet state) while Denikin crushes the Revolution and rules most of the rest of Russia...or maybe the Bolsheviks still win? Or maybe Russia gets split into three or four (with a break-off Ukraine)? And the Bolsheviks still probably crack down brutally on the SRs, dividing up their own area of control during a time of crisis, with the SRs probably galvanized by the successful assassination.

What sort of state would Denikin create if he wins, anyway? Theoretically, he wasn't a monarchist by this point and he certainly wasn't his old reactionary boss Kornilov, but he certainly wasn't an ideological believer in democracy either. Would Denikin's Russia just look like the Eastern European countries of the Interwar period IRL, like Poland, with a strongman military dictator ruling alongside a puppet parliament that "elects" a ruling party's representatives?

[Samof94]

On August 30th, 1918, about a month after the Bolsheviks had banned the SRs, the only remaining other political party whose existence they were tolerating, a disgruntled SR named Fanny Kaplan shot three times, hitting Lenin twice and seriously injuring him. This triggered a serious crackdown against what was left of the SRs etc.

Communist ideology tends to portray their victory as a force of historical inevitability and it's fascinating to me how Fanny Kaplan's bullets being slightly more on point probably avert the entire USSR. By late 1918, sure Kornilov and the Romanovs were already dead, but the White Armies of Denikin and Kolchak were at the height of their powers in the south and west, respectively, and a power struggle within the Bolshevik leadership over succession and the hostility of the rest of the Politburo to Trotsky, who was leading the Red Army in the fight against the White Armies, might have just about doomed the Revolution to Denikin capturing Moscow in 1919 and ending the Revolution...or would it? Petrograd was the heart of the Revolution and could be a Bolshevik capital in a prolonged, more drawn out civil war for years to come, hoping that Denikin and Kolchak turn on each other over the spoils of victory.

What you probably don't get in a long, drawn out Russian Civil War going on far longer is Soviet Russia reannexing Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and much of Central Asia, as well as reincorporating Ukraine as easily as it did. Certainly no failed invasion of Poland. The Bolsheviks, due to the incredible unpopularity of War Communism, the huge internal strife resulting from within the party, and the pressure of foreign-funded Denikin's drive north would really limit the Red Army's ambitions for a long time. Who knows, maybe Kolchak ends up basically running a Vladivostok-based separatist state out of the Far East backed by Japan (a Japanese puppet state) while Denikin crushes the Revolution and rules most of the rest of Russia...or maybe the Bolsheviks still win? Or maybe Russia gets split into three or four (with a break-off Ukraine)? And the Bolsheviks still probably crack down brutally on the SRs, dividing up their own area of control during a time of crisis, with the SRs probably galvanized by the successful assassination.

What sort of state would Denikin create if he wins, anyway? Theoretically, he wasn't a monarchist by this point and he certainly wasn't his old reactionary boss Kornilov, but he certainly wasn't an ideological believer in democracy either. Would Denikin's Russia just look like the Eastern European countries of the Interwar period IRL, like Poland, with a strongman military dictator ruling alongside a puppet parliament that "elects" a ruling party's representatives?

It’d definitely have some kind of fascist element to it.