Krush 'Em All, Nick! | What If Nikita Khrushchev was Born in the US?

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    • dillguy9

    dillguy9

    Krush 'Em All, Nick!
    What If Nikita Khrushchev was Born in the United States?
    Nick Krush meets a rotund farm worker and is throughly impressed.
    ​
    Hello and welcome to "Krush 'Em All, Nick," the story of Cleveland's own, Nick Krush. Who is this Nick Krush fellow, you might ask? Well, you might be more familiar with his birth name, Nikita Khrushchev. This timeline seeks to answer what the world would be like if Premier Khrushchev was born in the U.S. and raised in Ohio, instead of the Russian Empire. This is a collaborative project with APTerminator, who will handle the Soviet Union & Foreign angle, while I will mainly cover domestic American politics. While I have done a lot of alternate history collages and wikiboxes on Twitter & Reddit, I have never tackled an in-depth written timeline like this, so this will be a learning experience for me. Enjoy!

    Part 0: The Great Laborer
    ​
    15 April, 1894— After close to a month of arduous travel from the Russian Empire, Sergei Khrushchev and Kseniya Khrushcheva finally arrived at the grand skyline of New York City, greeted with Lady Liberty guiding them towards Ellis Island. However, this moment of celebration would quickly come to a close, as Kseniya would go into labor. Their son, Nikita Sergeivich, would be delivered on the boat, right before it would dock at Ellis Island. Like millions of immigrants, before and since, Nikita and his family would go through processing with their minimal belongings, emerging with a new, more American surname, Krush.

    Cleveland, c. 1890s
    From here, they would travel westwards, briefly living in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, before finally settling down in The Forest City, Cleveland. Sergei would quickly find a job in a steel mill, while Kseniya would clean homes and raise their son in a tiny apartment on the southside of the city. Nikita, called Nicky by those close to him and Nick by most others, would walk to school, just down the road, hanging out with friends after school. However, he was not the brightest student; instead, he focused his energies on odd-jobs and tinkering around with toys and mechanical gadgets.

    So at the age of 17, Nick decided that he had enough of school and went to work at the steel mill, just like his father. The long, hot hours at the mill were a formative experience for the young Krush, as he became conscious of how he and his fellow workers were treated. As they toiled away, pouring molten steel and braving the heat from the blast furnace, their bosses smoked cigars and drank whiskey in tall, steel skyscrapers, benefitting immensely from their workers’ pains and struggles. This realization of his place in society would lead him to join the local Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers union, quickly rising up the ranks, due to his compassion for his co-workers and the ferocity of his speeches. While in the union, he would pick up ideas of socialism, syndicalism, and communism, which had become quite successful in the land of his predecessors.

    While clashes between the union and the factory bosses were frequent, they would pale in comparison to the General Steel Strike of 1919. With the end of The Great War in November of 1918, the harassment of unions in steel mills picked back up, with the company sending in Pinkerton agents to harass union leaders. When negotiations between the unions and the companies broke down, the AFL and AA voted to go on strike, starting on September 22, 1919. From Pennsylvania to Colorado, steel mills in the heartlands of the US shuttered to a halt, including all but one in Cleveland. Inspired by John Fitzpatrick and William Z. Foster, Nick would help lead the strike at his mill. By October, the steel companies were looking to reopen the mills and opted for the use of scab labor; mainly other immigrants and African-Americans. While the C
    Cleveland Steel Mills
    leveland unions tried to resist with all their might, the pressures from the community to end the strike became overwhelming. In the Cuyahoga Valley, unions always had a certain questionability around them, with the recent Russian Revolution making the American public even more suspicious.

    To exacerbate the struggle the unions were facing, the AFL and AA had little funds to send to every mill, meaning many local unions were left to fend for themselves. On October 17th two pickets outside of an American Steel mill were shot by machine guns, marking the beginning of the end of the strike. Slowly workers would cross the lines and the mills would start production again, even as Nick tried to maintain solidarity with his fellow workers. Finally, on January 8th, he would return to his job at the mill, defeated but hardened, as the strike had officially ended, with no concessions from any company.

    While heartbroken, the failure of the strike would prove pivotal in his life, as he realized that the American public hated socialism even more than they hated unions, so he gave in and joined the local vehicle of labor politics, the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party. Though not the dominant party in the city, the Democrats had a good reputation among unions and immigrants, including a promising lawyer by the name of Frank Lausche. Krush worked on both of Lausche’s unsuccessful General Assembly campaigns in 1922 and 1924, striking up a fruitful friendship. Both men came from Eastern European families, with fathers who also worked in the steel mill, giving them a lot of common ground. Nick was further to the left of Frank, but politically they bonded over their love of helping the common man. Krush continued to work with organized labor, bridging the gap between the union and the party, while Lausche was a gifted trial lawyer, working with campaigns on the side.

    With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, the Republican establishment would collapse and their city manager plan scrapped. This led to the ele
    State Rep. Krush, 1939
    ction of Democrat Ray T. Miller to mayor in 1931. Lausche would be appointed Municipal Court Judge in 1932, while Krush continued to be a liaison between the party and unions. In 1936 Krush unsuccessfully ran for the Ohio House of Representatives, getting choked out in the primary. However, his big break would be in 1938, as he worked closely with Judge Lausche in order to force an uncompetitive primary. With no opposition in the primary and weak opposition in the general, Krush would win his first election, becoming a State Representative. No longer was he a steel worker or a labor organizer, but instead a politician, advocating and fighting for the common man in Columbus. However, he quickly realized that he was not the most apt politician, easily manipulated by the party bosses, becoming a backbencher. But when he was speaking to his constituents back in Cleveland, he stretched the truth, creating the persona of The Great Laborer, vowing to never stop fighting for the little guy, no matter his job, national origin, creed, religion, color of skin, or race.

    In 1944, with the blessing of now-Mayor Lausche, Krush ran for State Senate, and won. In the same election, Lausche would run for governor and win, giving Cleveland ample representation in Columbus, along with becoming the first Roman Catholic to serve in that position. Lausche and Krush would have a great working relationship, with Krush being the Governor’s Man in the Senate, tailoring the bills that entered the chamber to the Governor’s liking. However, Lausche would narrowly lose in 1946 to Thomas J. Herbert, striking a major blow to the Democratic Party in Ohio, and especially to Nick. He would work hard to obstruct the new Governor’s agenda, while also finding every chance he could to advocate for worker safety reform, getting the Governor to sign a single bill on that front.

    Governor Frank Lausche
    With the dawn of the 1948 election cycle, it was expected from many that Lausche would run again for Governor, but President Truman had other plans for him. Being a popular and well known Democrat in the midwest, he was the perfect Vice President for Give ‘em Hell Harry. Not only a regional candidate, Lausche raised the ticket among ethnic whites and the labor class. Lausche won on the first vice presidential ballot, barely inching out Alben Barkely. Also voted on at convention was the civil rights platform plank, touted by Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey. Adopted in a close vote, it caused some Southern delegates to walk out of convention and eventually form the States' Rights Democratic Party.

    With a fractured party, Democrats across the country viewed Truman as dead in the water; no way in hell could he win with approvals that low. And that sentiment put state parties on edge, as they seeked to knock out incumbents, knowing that they would need to overperform the top of the ticket by a good margin. With their top candidate for governor now on the national ticket for November, the Ohio Democratic Party searched for a candidate. After several high profile candidates declined the proverbial suicide mission, the party eventually settled on former Congressman Byron B. Harlan. Serving as a tax judge, Harlan was hesitant to accept the nomination, as running a gubernatorial campaign would be stressful, but he was convinced by the party bosses. And for lieutenant governor, they gave the nomination to Nick Krush, mostly as a ploy to get him out of the General Assembly. While also hesitant at first, Krush accepted the nomination, viewing it as a challenge and as a duty to serve all of his fellow Ohioans. And so The Great Laborer set forth on a new course, taking down the incumbent lieutenant governor, Paul M. Herbert.
     
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    • Ryan lozano

    Zhukov would actually reform the union into a more long standing one that will not die and also make comitern more like an actual organization
     
    Fries

    Fries

    Hm. This reminds me of a timeline I had in my back pocket quite a while ago where Stalin was born in the US and became the governor of New York. Followed: definitely interested.

    NewDealChief said:
    Imagine it's Zhukov.
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    Unlikely. Zhukov had very little interest in politics.

    Ryan lozano said:
    Zhukov would actually reform the union into a more long standing one that will not die and also make comitern more like an actual organization
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    The ComIntern is dead by 1953. It was dissolved in 1944 as a compromise with the West by the Soviet government.
     
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    Fries

    Fries

    Nivek said:
    Nah Zhukov personally will lead to kill him, nobody liked Beria..no one,merely tolerated him against the Nazis
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    Beria was kind of the Trotsky of the late Stalin years, insofar as one person in the government (Stalin for Beria, Lenin for Trotsky) kept him around but literally everybody else hated him and only allied with him out of pure convenience. Heck, even Stalin didn't like him that much: Stalin kept his children away from Beria and by the end of his life was probably planning to purge Beria due to pressure from Malenkov, Khrushchev, and a few other people in the party as well as the Doctor's Plot being a complete fabrication being uncovered. It's undeniable that he felt it was prescient to purge the bureaucracy as a whole; in 1952, in Economic Problems, he indirectly called out the increasingly powerful bureaucracy of the USSR holding back the potential of the Union:

    It is said that some of the economic laws operating in our country under socialism, including the law of value, have been "transformed," or even "radically transformed," on the basis of planned economy. That is likewise untrue. Laws cannot be "transformed," still less "radically" transformed. If they can be transformed, then they can be abolished and replaced by other laws. The thesis that laws can be "transformed" is a relic of the incorrect formula that laws can be "abolished" or "formed." Although the formula that economic laws can be transformed has already been current in our country for a long time, it must be abandoned for the sake of accuracy. The sphere of action of this or that economic law may be restricted, its destructive action — that is, of course, if it is liable to be destructive — may be averted, but it cannot be "transformed" or "abolished."
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    Some comrades assert that in the course of time not only will the essential distinction between industry and agriculture, and between physical and mental labour, disappear, but so will all distinction between them. That is not true. Abolition of the essential distinction between industry and agriculture cannot lead to the abolition of all distinction between them. Some distinction, even if inessential, will certainly remain, owing to the difference between the conditions of work in industry and in agriculture. Even in industry the conditions of labour are not the same in all its branches: the conditions of labour, for example, of coal miners differ from those of the workers of a mechanized shoe factory, and the conditions of labour of ore miners from those of engineering workers. If that is so, then all the more must a certain distinction remain between industry and agriculture.

    The same must be said of the distinction between mental and physical labour. The essential distinction between them, the difference in their cultural and technical levels, will certainly disappear. But some distinction, even if inessential, will remain, if only because the conditions of labour of the managerial staffs and those of the workers are not identical.

    The comrades who assert the contrary do so presumably on the basis of the formulation given in some of my statements, which speaks of the abolition of the distinction between industry and agriculture, and between mental and physical labour, without any reservation to the effect that what is meant is the abolition of the essential distinction, not of all distinction. That is exactly how the comrades understood my formulation, assuming that it implied the abolition of all distinction. But this indicates that the formulation was unprecise, unsatisfactory. It must be discarded and replaced by another formulation, one that speaks of the abolition of essential distinctions and the persistence of inessential distinctions between industry and agriculture, and between mental and physical labour.
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    The trouble is not that production in our country is influenced by the law of value. The trouble is that our business executives and planners, with few exceptions, are poorly acquainted with the operations of the law of value, do not study them, and are unable to take account of them in their computations. This, in fact, explains the confusion that still reigns in the sphere of price-fixing policy. Here is one of many examples. Some time ago it was decided to adjust the prices of cotton and grain in the interest of cotton growing, to establish more accurate prices for grain sold to the cotton growers, and to raise the prices of cotton delivered to the state. Our business executives and planners submitted a proposal on this score which could not but astound the members of the Central Committee, since it suggested fixing the price of a ton of grain at practically the same level as a ton of cotton, and, moreover, the price of a ton of grain was taken as equivalent to that of a ton of baked bread. In reply to the remarks of members of the Central Committee that the price of a ton of bread must be higher than that of a ton of grain, because of the additional expense of milling and baking, and that cotton was generally much dearer than grain, as was also borne out by their prices in the world market, the authors of the proposal could find nothing coherent to say. The Central Committee was therefore obliged to take the matter into its own hands and to lower the prices of grain and raise the prices of cotton. What would have happened if the proposal of these comrades had received legal force? We should have ruined the cotton growers and would have found ourselves without cotton.
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    Totally incorrect, too, is the assertion that under our present economic system, in the first phase of development of communist society, the law of value regulates the "proportions" of labour distributed among the various branches of production.

    If this were true, it would be incomprehensible why our light industries, which are the most profitable, are not being developed to the utmost, and why preference is given to our heavy industries, which are often less profitable, and some-times altogether unprofitable.

    If this were true, it would be incomprehensible why a number of our heavy industry plants which arc still unprofitable and where the labour of the worker does not yield the "proper returns," are not closed down, and why new light industry plants, which would certainly be profitable and where the labour of the workers might yield "big returns," are not opened.

    If this were true, it would be incomprehensible why workers are not transferred from plants that are less profitable, but very necessary to our national economy, to plants which are more profitable - in accordance with the law of value, which supposedly regulates the "proportions" of labour distributed among the branches of production.

    Obviously, if we were to follow the lead of these comrades, we should have to cease giving primacy to the production of means of production in favour of the production of articles of consumption. And what would be the effect of ceasing to give primacy to the production of the means of production? The effect would be to destroy the possibility of the continuous expansion of our national economy, because the national economy cannot be continuously expanded with-out giving primacy to the production of means of production.

    These comrades forget that the law of value can be a regulator of production only under capitalism, with private ownership of the means of production, and competition, anarchy of production, and crises of overproduction. They forget that in our country the sphere of operation of the law of value is limited by the social ownership of the means of production, and by the law of balanced development of the national economy, and is consequently also limited by our yearly and five-yearly plans, which are an approximate reflection of the requirements of this law.
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    This same bureaucracy is where Khrushchev would root: he maintained his power base from bureaucratic reformers and members of the bureaucracy who had become comfortable, like the apparatchiks. He had very powerful allies in the Soviet bureaucracy, like Mikoyan, the Minister of Foreign Trade who became his right-hand man, and his use of the bureaucracy as a means to expand and later maintain his role led to the rise of Brezhnev and the "trust the cadres" policy: a naked rule of nepotism, unabashed corruption, and just some plain ol' nepotism.
     
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