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Lenin Lives

In this alternate history, Lenin is alive and in good health, and in charge of the Union as a Triumphant Revolutionary. No vanilla officers or other named characters in the game will be purged, though you have to terminate the New Economic Policy (NEP) and its supporters instead. You WILL get a nasty civil war in '38 if the power of the independent businessmen and their growing dissatisfaction with communism aren't terminated by then. You were warned.

It also does a couple of minor changes to the focus tree, to implement that and to make sure you don't run out of focuses to research.

A few cities are renamed by default to the names they had during Lenin's reign. They are as follows:
Leningrad: Petrograd (the name it got after the revolution)
Stalingrad: Tsaritsyn (the name Volgograd only came in 1961.)
Stalino: Trotsk (renamed from Yuzovka to Trotsk briefly at the end of 1923, but then Stalin promptly renamed it after himself in 1924)
Stalinabad: Dushanbe (the original name until Stalin renamed it after himself in 1929)

Since not everyone seemed to agree with my choice of names, now you get events that let you choose the name of the first three. Which name would Lenin have picked? Well, you're playing as Lenin, so you choose :p

Renamed ideas:
Stalingrad Tractor Factory: to "Saratov Technical University" (Frankly a better research institution.)
Leningrad Polytechnical Institute: to "Electrotechnical University"

New Events:
- renaming the cities
- Bukharin defends the NEP
- Zhdanov flavour events
- flavour news events about Trotsky and Lenin


OTHER CHARACTERS

Trotsky is available as a very good field marshall, thanks to his long experience as a war minister during actual war, and his political power. The traits have been chosen to reflect that.

Stalin has largely fallen out of favour, and is only the head of Pravda, the Communist Party's official newspaper. He'd be willing to lead troops to regain some favour, though. He's not a very good general, BUT he has a powerful and extremely rare trait that can't be gained otherwise. So if you level him up in Spain and other wars, he could be actually useful. (Basically you have to work for that reward.)

New character: Nikolai Bukharin: silent workhorse. (+15% political power) Just like in the real universe, Bukharin recently fell out of favour for his rabid support of the NEP. He IS loyal and a patriot, though, as well as a highly intelligent, skilled and popular journalist. As the head of the Izvestia newspaper he could generate a fair bit of political power for you. He is currently the only character you CAN purge, if you want to.

New character: Andrei Zhdanov: backroom backstabber (+5% political power, +15% ideology drift defense,) only available after you complete Socialist Realism. In the real universe Zhdanov was one of the most active perpetrators of the Great Purge. Since 1946 he was in charge of enforcing the new Socialist Realism and punishing the artists who don't conform. In this alternate universe, well, it's up to you when you research Socialist Realism, and he can be your cultural enforcer from that date if you want him to. Also, you can't purge him, but he can die, depending on your choices in events.


NOTE

Since I'm just one guy with limited time to test all the combinations, I expect that some things may not be entirely finished. I'm grateful for any feedback, though. If you find a bug, I'll at least try to fix it.


COMPATIBILITY

It is incompatible with almost any other mods that overwrite the Soviet focus tree or events file. This includes virtually any total conversion (e.g., Road To 56.) It is compatible with mods that add NEW events, but not with anything that overwrites the existing events.

It will try to FIX the conflict with mods that overwrite the country history file, such as:
- Armed Forces Overhaul
- Trotsky's Coup
- Expanded Resources
- Expanded Industry
- Hearts of Overhaul
A small script will run when you start a NEW game, to check if Lenin is the current leader, and if not, it will create Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. That means, if you see Stalin as a choice at game start, try starting the game anyway, and see if you have Lenin as the leader in the game instead. It should work in most cases.

Of course, it can't fix other changes that a conflicting mod might do.


KNOWN ISSUES

1. Some events or tooltips may still reference Stalin. I'll get to them as time permits. Any feedback is welcome though.

2. The mod is currently only in English, but it does have the internationalization files. So if anyone wants to translate it in Russian or whatever, you can give me the file for that language and I'll add it.

3. Currently only tested for the '36 campaign, though the '39 campaign has been fixed to reflect the new timeline too.


FINAL NOTE

This mod is not about making some ideology point. The itch I had to scratch with this mod was merely that in the vanilla game both Stalin and Trotsky do their own purges, and basically I wanted an alternative that doesn't purge any named characters in the game. Plus, I'm not really a fan of either Stalin or Trotsky. Lenin, while not necessarily nicer than either (you don't lead a revolution without breaking a few eggs,) seemed to me at least more sane than both.