[boomboomsubban]

That's a pretty tough sell. The White terror was pretty terrible during the war, supposedly killing more people than the counterpart Red terror. And given the antisemitic nature of that killing, there are some incredibly grim possibilities for what the following years would have looked like.

[Fins]

That looks like it came straight out of a Soviet textbook...

Even assuming high-end range for White Terror and low-end range for the Red one, it is not a given that whatever White faction might have theoretically won would continue to engage in persecution. For bolsheviks it is a given fact. By the 1920s they were happily gassing peasants.

And by the mid-40s USSR was quite antisemitic anyway, so I find it rather doubtful that a victory by any other party would have been worse than bolsheviks.

[boomboomsubban]

>That looks like it came straight out of a Soviet textbook...

You really think a Soviet textbook mentioned the Red Terror?

>Even assuming high-end range for White Terror and low-end range for the Red one, it is not a given that whatever White faction might have theoretically won would continue to engage in persecution. For bolsheviks it is a given fact. By the 1920s they were happily gassing peasants.

Yes, there are hypotheticals that play out better than actual events. There are also many that play out similarly or worse.

Given the main warlords controlling the White forces, winning the war probably starts with a massive purge, fairly common in those situations. Those warlords would also have more in common with Facist Italy and Nazi Germany, leading to a potentially terrifying thirties.

Russian history is filled with tyrannical cruelty, before and after the Soviet era too. That wasn't likely to end with a civil war.

[Fins]

I had to study Soviet textbooks. They definitly did mention it. Of course as a completely necessary response to those naughty Whites, and they completely glossed over concentration camps, mass executions etc. etc., but they did mention Red Terror.

Main warlords were generally tsarist generals who may or may not have went to the Provisional Government side, but at least they were generally somewhat educated and somewhat reasonable people. Which, of course, never stopped anyone from committing all kinds of atrocities, but at least one could expect that they would not, after the war was over, engage in mass slaughter for no logical reason whatsoever, which is what bolsheviks did.

[ericd]

Given that the Reds killed tens of millions of their own during peacetime, the odds are against it having been as bad the other way.

[sorokod]

Many ( most? ) of the killed were not "red" or even ethnically Russian ( see for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor ). Many of the "reds" were not ethnically Russian either. Your "of their own" doesn't really makes sense.

[ericd]

I meant their own people. People under their rule.