If you could eliminate one person from history...who would it be?

[RZM]

192. Yes, but we're talking about removing him from history. Not killing him in 1918

When there was an assassination attempt against him, as I'm sure you know.

I'm talking about him never being born. Lenin was instrumental in the original split within the Russian Social Democratic Party. Without him, you wouldn't have Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in the first place. Lenin was always splitting and dividing. Always eschewing those who didn't see things his way. Without that divisive presence around at all, you might have seen much more unity in the Russian socialist movement.

As for the Civil War, who knows. My guess is that the hardcore authoritarianism of the Bolsheviks came in handy when fighting the Whites. But would the Civil War have looked at all similar without the Bolsheviks running the anti-White show? A broader-based Socialist coalition might have made the world of difference, including even mitigating the White movement from the outset. No Lenin means no 'the guard is tired' bullshit when the Constituent Assembly was sat. You might have ended up with a decently smooth transition of power after February, with Kadets, SRs, and relatively unified Social Democrats all in the mix. The right would have been excluded, but how many White supporters would have been tempted to not take up arms with at least some non-Bolshevik elements involved in the government? Probably a small but significant amount.

Of course, the Germans are the wild card. The war effort collapsed before the Bolshevik seizure of power, but I wonder if a broader-based government wouldn't have tried to continue the war (Lenin had to lobby quite hard to get his comrades to agree to peace). But in any case, after Nov. 1918, the Germans are out of the picture, no matter what happens in Russia.