Whites win Russian CW

[Melvin Loh]

Could anybody design a POD where the Whites, supported by the Western Allies, the Japanese, Poland, Baltic countries, and other anti-Communist forces, win the Russian CW at some point between 1919 and 1922 ? What circumstances would've been necessary for the Reds to have been defeated, esp. in terms of greater co-ordination between the various rival anti-Bolshevik forces ? How would a non-Bolshevik successor of Tsarist Russia have looked like during the 1920s ?

[Tielhard]

Wow! No reply to this, everyone must have been absolutely certain back in July 2004 that the Bolsheviks would inevitably win the Civil War in all possible histories - amazing.

[Wozza]

I have done a timeline where the revolution is still born.
I think there are twists on this

1) Germans win the war, almost certainly the Whites could then be kept going idefinitely
2) US does not enter the war, Allies put massive resources into the RCW in order to re-open the Eastern front
3) Military factors, about which I know very little, the early ones - release of Kornilov(?), mobilization of the officers in St Petersburg, a role for Krasnov and his Cossacks, seem most likely to allow white victory

[Tielhard]

B%$$£y typical everyone else in the universe thinks a Bolshevik victory is inevitable ... except Wozza :D

[Redbeard]

Have Trotsky choke in his borsch and the Red Army will be short of a very important organiser and leader. Or let the Whites have acess to a similar personality.

Defeating the Reds will still leave the Whites with a lot of trouble about who among the Whites is going to take the prize. The Whites were not really one group but included anything from monarchists over oligarchs to opportunistic warlords and even including something resembling democrats. I guess we will see a rather chaotic period which in best case will resemble that after the fall of the wall and in worst case another bloody civil war. I think there is a considerable risk of a fascist like regime based on traditionalist and religious values. It will hate anything not Russian/Orthodox and not be a faithful ally of the west European fascists, but as capable of a Rippentrop pact as Stalin's regime. If/when this regime consolidates if will be a threat to any neighbor of Russia.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

[Norman]

Let's consider timing of the conflict- how long can this go on? What if the Royal family (or some significant portion there of) escapes the Bolsheviks to the West, or some portion of Russia where they can't easily be gotten? Is it possible that the British could then get involved in an effort to 'carve out' that portion of Russia for them, which if not agreeable to the communists is accepted to avoid the conflict with England.

We would then have a large Communist Russia and a smaller Royalist "white" Russia. Then might the ATL conflict that followed WWI be oriented more to liberating Russia from the Communists?

In the end the Whites would win, but the civil war would be measured in decades, but this sort of civil war happens all the time these days.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Have Trotsky choke in his borsch and the Red Army will be short of a very important organiser and leader. Or let the Whites have acess to a similar personality.

Steffen Redbeard

How the hell do you choke on borsch?

[Faeelin]

How the hell do you choke on borsch?

Maybe he could drown in it?

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Here are some possibilities:

1. Michael accepts the throne instead of turning it down.
2. Nicholas (or at least Alexei) is rescued by the Whites
3. The Germans win the war.
4. Lenin and Trotsky refuse to pay a ruble to use a public restroom and are bludgeoned to death by the attending babushka.

[Wozza]

He chokes in his borsch it says
technically that could involve some other sufficient cause of termination

[Forum Lurker]

How the hell do you choke on borsch?

A nameless gentleman in a suit provides you with the opportunity to closely examine the bottom of a bowl of borscht for several minutes.

[Gladi]

How the hell do you choke on borsch?

Bright day
Maybe spoiled cream can cause uncontrolled throat muscle contractions?
(Borshtch is with cream, right?)

[wkwillis]

No Russian civil war is easy. Just have the Kerensky faction tell the British that if they don't get some consumer goods and gold to prop up their government, they are going to make a separate peace.
The Germans deal directly with Kerensky instead of that traitor Kornilov. The Russians lose Poland, the Baltics, Finland, and Moldova. They spend 1917 and 1918 getting the farms back in shape and rehabilitating the railroads, then rejoin the war as the Germans are launching their final attack on France in the teeth of the American army.
The German retreat to the Rhine is outflanked when the allies pressure the Netherlands to join the war, followed by another entire American army unloading in Copenhagen and establishing a new front on Jutland.
Austria-Hungary collapses completely when the Hungarians change sides in the Christmas Betrayal of 1918, in return for the promise of not losing all their land in Transylvania to the Rumanians.
Germany's industrial wealth is essentially destroyed in the war. The first part of the war has an exchange rate of two to one in favor of Germany. The second part has an exchange rate of two to one against Germany due to the weight of American ammunition and aircraft. This is especially true for the period during and after the firebombing of Hamburg by the huge American Jutland front air fleets in July of 1920, after the American Liberty aircraft program gets into high gear.
The war ends in the smoldering ruins of Berlin in autumn 1920, as the Kaiser dies in his bunker with a gun in his hand.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Bright day
Maybe spoiled cream can cause uncontrolled throat muscle contractions?
(Borshtch is with cream, right?)

You guys are pretty creative. Borsch can be with or without cream. You ought to know, you're the Slav!

[Ivan Druzhkov]

I did read about one interesting possibility for a Bolshevik defeat. In mid-1919, the Whites in the south had advanced to the city of Orel, about 400 km south of Moscow. However, they were and the end of their ropes, and the Red offensive in October smashed them to the point that the whole southern front collapsed.

Now, if the Whites had gotten some assistance, possibly from an earlier Polish attack to the west, this might have helped them out enough to make it to Moscow.

And on the borscht debate, maybe you can choke on a hunk of beet? It'd be like choking on a banana, but doable.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

I did read about one interesting possibility for a Bolshevik defeat. In mid-1919, the Whites in the south had advanced to the city of Orel, about 400 km south of Moscow. However, they were and the end of their ropes, and the Red offensive in October smashed them to the point that the whole southern front collapsed.

Now, if the Whites had gotten some assistance, possibly from an earlier Polish attack to the west, this might have helped them out enough to make it to Moscow.

And on the borscht debate, maybe you can choke on a hunk of beet? It'd be like choking on a banana, but doable.

But borscht doesn't have actual CHUNKS of beet in it does it? At least it doesn't in Poland.

[Forum Lurker]

Good borscht doesn't have chunks. This could be very badly made.

[Thande]

"For want of a good borscht cook, the Revolution was lost..." :)

[Brilliantlight]

Here are some possibilities:

1. Michael accepts the throne instead of turning it down.
2. Nicholas (or at least Alexei) is rescued by the Whites
3. The Germans win the war.
4. Lenin and Trotsky refuse to pay a ruble to use a public restroom and are bludgeoned to death by the attending babushka.

Or have the Germans lose quicker, if the Germans lose in August or September for some reason then Kerinski is strengthened a lot.

[Count Dearborn]

Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky all die in the Siberian Gulags.

[Scarecrow]

i had been thinking of a TL where Russia is 'fashist' and Germany is communist, with a remnant Weimar state in East Prussia...

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

i had been thinking of a TL where Russia is 'fashist' and Germany is communist, with a remnant Weimar state in East Prussia...

What does "fashist" mean? Are they very well-dressed?

[Scarecrow]

yep. in 1938 the fashist Russian designers launch an all-out fashion invasion of Poland, replacing the drab farmers clothing with new sharper, brighter lines. :D Russian Eye for the Polish Guy? ;)

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

yep. in 1938 the fashist Russian designers launch an all-out fashion invasion of Poland, replacing the drab farmers clothing with new sharper, brighter lines. :D Russian Eye for the Polish Guy? ;)

Nice save.

[Scarecrow]

Nice save.

yeah i can do that sometimes.

[Gladi]

You guys are pretty creative. Borsch can be with or without cream. You ought to know, you're the Slav!

Bright day
If being Slav was about eating Borsch I, and I believe most of my countrymen, would quickly petition to join the Germanic family...

But this thread is not about soup or HOWthe win occurs... there are many chances for this to hapen, just grab one go with the flow...

And about theocracy- you ought to read "Forbidden Fairy Tales" which are not only very entertaining and naughty, but also represent true Russian folk belief about clergyman.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Bright day
If being Slav was about eating Borsch I, and I believe most of my countrymen, would quickly petition to join the Germanic family...

But this thread is not about soup or HOWthe win occurs... there are many chances for this to hapen, just grab one go with the flow...

And about theocracy- you ought to read "Forbidden Fairy Tales" which are not only very entertaining and naughty, but also represent true Russian folk belief about clergyman.

Did someone mention theocracy? I've noticed that a lot of people around here seem to confuse a state with an established religion with a theocracy. The Russians were never, nor were ever likely to be, a theocracy. Neither was Japan, nor the Ottoman Empire.

[Ivan Druzhkov]

Did someone mention theocracy? I've noticed that a lot of people around here seem to confuse a state with an established religion with a theocracy. The Russians were never, nor were ever likely to be, a theocracy. Neither was Japan, nor the Ottoman Empire.
I'll agree with you on that one. Despite the impression we tend to get here, Tsarist Russia wasn't in the thrall of the church. Quite the opposite, in fact. Ever since Peter the Great, and probably earlier, the tsars were using the church as a means of legitimizing their control in the eyes of the masses. And the church usually had to do whatever the tsar wanted.

[Wozza]

Yes, or Caesaropapism for short...

[Max Sinister]

Some people say the same thing about the Islamic countries (well, most of them, today things are changing) as well.

[Wozza]

That's a fairly crude generalisation
plenty of dictatorships in Islamic countries are highly secular
there is in fact a whole strain of radical Islamist, non-violent and democratic train of thought.
These will probably prove amongst the most challenging people for the West to do business with in the long run

Diversion off topic over

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Some people say the same thing about the Islamic countries (well, most of them, today things are changing) as well.

OK, name all the theocratic Muslim countries. Hint: There's one. That ties them with Christianity.

[Max Sinister]

I was referring to "And the church usually had to do whatever the tsar wanted." Such is/was the reality in most Islamic states: The rulers ruled how the Quran has to be interpreted, so they could do what they wanted.

[Wozza]

Umm.. err... no!

You have to study for for 12 years to be Quranic scholar
Wahhabism allows no Quranic hermeneutics
The Shah of Iran's rule was detroyed by the religious heirarchy
The rulers of Egypt and Syria are secular

Where exactly does this rule by Quranic misinterpretation occur?

[MarkA]

There was, of course, massive Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. It included not only armed intervention by tens of thousands of troops, but also direct military assistance to several groups (the Whites were not a single group but were often bitterly divided and hostile to each other) and covert operations including bribery, political assasinations and sabotage. The Western allies poured millions of dollars, pounds and francs into the coffers of the Whites.

Despite all this the Bolsheviks won. They won because of their social and political acumen and support not just because they had a better army. There was not any significant support inside Russia proper or its empire for the return of the monarchy. It had squandered all its political capital because of past scandals and military incomptence. The aristocrats who led the counterrevolutionary armies were never popular nor trusted by the majority of the people.

Even after the Bolshevik coup and the supression of the Petrograd sailors,all the remaining Social Revolutionaries, Mencheviks and members of peasants parties who had won the vast majority of the seats in the Soviets, sided with the Bolsheviks. The Whites could never win the hearts and minds of the people and that is why they could not win the Civil War.

[MerryPrankster]

Umm...the Socialist Revolutionaries were anti-Bolshevik, at least at the beginning. They formed a government called the "Komuch" and controlled several cities on the Volga.

Unfortunately, they ended up unequally yoked with Admiral Kolchak, who didn't really like them and crushed them. That came back to haunt him when he fell into SR hands after the Reds defeated his army.

[MarkA]

You are right in saying the Socialist Revolutionaries were anti-Bolshevik but so were all the other left wing groups. My point is that while many Mensheviks, SRs and others continued to oppose the Bolsheviks the bulk of the rank and file when faced with the choice of a White victory or the continuation of the revolutionary state chose to join the Red Army and actually changed their political alliegences.

In 1920 the Mensheviks were excluded from the Soviets while the SRs continued in some regional power bases until 1922. The Bolsheviks never recognised the legitimacy of the other revolutionary parties but were forced by circumstances to tolerate them until victory was assured.

A number of SRs were put on trial and imprisoned in the early 1920s but considering the support they got in the 1918 elections, by 1922 most of their supporters must have already joined the Bolsheviks.

Just a few interesting facts - Kerensky was a Socialist Revolutionary and I suspect that many SRs who did not join the Bolshevik cause did so because of their relationship with him. Trotsky himself was a Menshevik although he did defect before the October coup, so it seems clear that very many Mensheviks defected all through the period between 1917 and 1920.

As for the prospects of a White victory, Cpt. George Hill, the senior British Intelligence officer in Russia, was so confident of this the only doubt he raised with Churchill or the Foreign Office was whether Denikin or Kolchak would get to Moscow first!

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

I was referring to "And the church usually had to do whatever the tsar wanted." Such is/was the reality in most Islamic states: The rulers ruled how the Quran has to be interpreted, so they could do what they wanted.

Oh, sorry, I misread what you meant.

Actually, that depends. For instance, the Ottoman Empire had several parallel sytems of laws - there was the Sheriat, which in theory bound the Sultan as well as the lowliest subject, that was interpreted by the Kadis - but there are four different schools of interpretation of varying flexibility, and subdivisions of even theses.

On top of that was the Kanuname, or the laws set by the decrees of the Sultan, which were supposed to be in accord with the Sheriat but often weren't, or were not technically in accord, but were judged "in the spirit".

Later, an entirely secular, rationalized legal code was established, that was parallel to the Sheriat court system, although the latter was still used in more fundamentalist areas of the empire like Yemen.

On top of that, there were millet courts for the various other faiths, mixed courts for various intercommunal suits, foreign consular courts, etc.. Note that the Sultan was generally much less absolute than is generally assumed, large numbers of them having been deposed for incompetence, as able and just rule were criteria for his right to reign.