No Stalin .... no peace?

I am going to make a reach here and assume that many of you out there are big "alternative history" buffs.

In Part 3/5 of a fascinating series on Peter Robinson's Uncommon Knowledge at NRO, he talks with Christopher Hitchens and Robert Service about a question twittered to them,

What if Trotsky, rather than Stalin, attained control of the Soviet Union?

Very interesting take on what Europe could have seen well before National Socialism came to the fore in Germany.

Cold you imagine a war in the 1920s with Germany, Italy, France, and the UK allied against a Soviet Union with active Communist rebellion in all three nations? A Spanish Civil War writ large with, once again, Poland and the nations of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire squeezed in the middle? This time - no American troops as no way Trotsky would make that mistake and a 1920s USA was even more passive than the 1930s USA.

The interview is a discussion on Service's upcoming book, Trotsky: A Biography. It should be out in November.