A Russia-less world?
- Thread starter Hominid
- Start date
What do you mean by Russia? Do you mean Muscovy and the Romanoc Tsars? If so then we're looking at a POD in the 12-13th centuries and yes, the Mongols wuld probably hold power there for longer. Most likely someone like Novgorod or Kiev would take over (although I'm not sure of their power in this time period).
No, I mean any kind of Russian state. That means no Muscovy, no Novgorod, no Kiev, no nada. The PoD would be in the ninth century.
That would pretty much require near-complete extermination of the East Slavs. I think they're too numerous for that to happen.
So no Rus? You'd have to radically alter Scandinavian migration and trade patterns for that as well as drastically change Europe's political structure.
Although large parts of what today are European Russia and the Ukraine might have ended up Turkish and Muslim if things had gone differently, or a HRE which managed to unify early might have assimilated Poland and then expanded onto the southern steppe, you're going to have _some_ sort of Slavic state or states between Kiev and Novgorod, that's pretty inevitable by the 9th century. They might be Catholic rather than Orthodox, and the historical states we are familiar with might be absent, but having Slavs there sets, as it were, a basic boundary condition on how far you can go from OTL without messing up the early medieval migrations and seriously messing up the rest of Europe.
Bruce
Bruce
The closest thing to your ideas might be having all Russians in countries dominated by other peoples. The scenery I have in mind involves a the principality Moscow being less pseudo-loyal to the Mongols and not so successful in keeping its neighbors at bay. That might inspire the Khan to exert more direct power on the Russian principalities and weaken them much more than IOTL.
Nowgorod might stay independent for some time, and then perhaps fall to an expanding Sweden or a surviving successor of the Teutonic Order.
A signifcant part of Russian population may stay or become under Lithuanian rule.
But longevity of the Mongolian empire does not seem very likely.
So you need another power intervening from South-East. The Baltic abutters can't control all of the Russians, including Moscow and Twer.
Nowgorod might stay independent for some time, and then perhaps fall to an expanding Sweden or a surviving successor of the Teutonic Order.
A signifcant part of Russian population may stay or become under Lithuanian rule.
But longevity of the Mongolian empire does not seem very likely.
So you need another power intervening from South-East. The Baltic abutters can't control all of the Russians, including Moscow and Twer.
I Blame Communism
Banned
In An Alternate History of the Netherlands (vote for me!) I have Charles XII of Sweden seizing the Crown of the Tsar a couple of years after a Swedish victory at Poltova.
And that's really not plausible. Sweden had been living on borrowed time since 1658, when they were shwon that a second-rate power with finite resources trying to take on everyone at once was a bad idea. The Danes secured a draw by themselves in the Scanian War; it was only some exceptional skill and luck that got the Swedes to the field of Poltava in the first place.
And what if they had won? They're stuck in Ukraine, a hell of a way from Moscow and a heller of a way from Petersburg, and the Zaparozhian Cossacks have no interest in quitting their own country. At best, they get a compromise peace (if Charles XII had a sudden attack of common sense just when Peter the Great obligingly dies), at worst they only stave off their collapse.
As for Charles XII seizing the Russian throne, nuts. Peter the Great, who made it a constitutional requirement that the tsar be Orthodox, still pissed a lot of people off by not being Orthodox enough (and to be fair, he does seem to have basically held religion in contempt). No Protestant monarch is ever going to reign in Russia: the anti-Petrine party made a point of how much they loved Orthodoxy and hated foreigners. And the pro-Petrine party, yeah, they'll be thrilled to see their arch-nemsis on the throne...
I think B_Munro has expressed my opinion of the main question.
Last edited:
I had a young Kievan Rus' being ruthlessly defeated by a union of the Khazars and Magyars supported by a more powerful Byzantium. The Magyars converted to Judaism and eventually married into and took over the state from the Khazars. To rebuild they took in Jews from western Europe and by now you have a growing, somewhat urbanized, majority (just barely) Jewish state made up of the local Slavs, European Jews with Jewish Ugrian-Turkic Aristocracy.
The Balts are actually becoming dominant and starting to push into the interior, with the only Slav type states being the smaller principalities north of Khanate of Kiev that are being influenced by Scandinavia and (believe-it-not) Ireland.
IBC: If they win, the Ottomans are going to help them more.
The Balts are actually becoming dominant and starting to push into the interior, with the only Slav type states being the smaller principalities north of Khanate of Kiev that are being influenced by Scandinavia and (believe-it-not) Ireland.
IBC: If they win, the Ottomans are going to help them more.
I Blame Communism
Banned
But assuredly not enough to destroy the independence of Russia, and possibly not even so much. Besides Azov, there was very little at stake for the Ottomans, at a stage when Russian attacks in the Crimea and the Danube still ended in, at best, embarassment and there were bigger fish for the Porte to fry elsewhere. An autonomous Cossack Hetmanate would be nice, but that's not Swedes in Moscow. The Sultan isn't going to send his men to enforce an impossible claim which I doubt even Charles XII would ever actually have made.
Last edited:
I don't see how you are going to get rid of the Slavs and Rus, However you can Balkanise Russia.
German Crimea, Kevian Ukraine, Baltic States, Novograd, Moscow, Volga, Georgia, etc..
This then allows the Turkish Stans to remain Independent forming Other Empires in the area.
East of the Urals the Reindeer peoples/Mongolians/Others remain, unincorporated into any larger political unit.
Japan claims Sakhalin without Russian interference. May/May Not move into Amur.
German Crimea, Kevian Ukraine, Baltic States, Novograd, Moscow, Volga, Georgia, etc..
This then allows the Turkish Stans to remain Independent forming Other Empires in the area.
East of the Urals the Reindeer peoples/Mongolians/Others remain, unincorporated into any larger political unit.
Japan claims Sakhalin without Russian interference. May/May Not move into Amur.
I Blame Communism
Banned
The problem with the post-Mongol division of Russia as it stood was that because of the power of the Lithuanians, the Mongols were effectively sponsoring Muscovy as their proxy for much of the 1300s. Combined with its natural advantages of central position and population, this growing delgation of authority made it very difficult for the agrarian principalities of Central Russia not to fall under Muscovite domination, and a large, populous, agrarian state with lots of military power at its disposal is always going to eat up states based on the trading wealth of a few cities. The drive to be "Tsar of all Russias" had a long history, so if Moscow can create a Slavic state in ceetral Russia (that is to say, "Russia", although most people would consider a Kievan Rus' which survives as a meaningful state to be much nearer "Russia" than "Ukraine"), it will.
Could taking the Lithuanians out of commission and leaving all Ukraine and Belorus as small states with potential rival centres to Moscow help prevent for a time, if not "Russia" then at least "united Russia"?
Could taking the Lithuanians out of commission and leaving all Ukraine and Belorus as small states with potential rival centres to Moscow help prevent for a time, if not "Russia" then at least "united Russia"?
The Lithuanians and also the other Russian principalities, yes.
The best - and likely - way to prevent this sponsorship of Moscow is simply: Make Moscow a more defiant, unreliable Mongolian vassal.
That would leave Moscow (and similarly, the other Russias) behind;
however, I still doubt that there is a power which is capable of holding all the central Russian states at bay at the same time. The Mongols won't stay forever; even without Moscow ... but of course, they can stay longer and retain some chunk of Russian territory.
The only way to is to split the agrarian states (and if someone has a good map of agricultural fertility estimates in Russia in 1300 then I would pay for that map) in a way that they balance each other out. But as was already pointed out, an Ukraine-placed state would also have to deal with Poland, Lithuania, or both. But remember I guess, that the population is pretty equivalent in this period until the magic potato shows up.
I think it's unlikely that Poland or Lithuania get all the post-Mongol bits just because they're so far from core centers but it's not unheard of. It might be interesting though if the periphery states decide to "partition" European Russia.
I think it's unlikely that Poland or Lithuania get all the post-Mongol bits just because they're so far from core centers but it's not unheard of. It might be interesting though if the periphery states decide to "partition" European Russia.
Yes, lack of Polish/Lithuanian conquests may lead to survival of other Russian principalities counterbalancing Muscovy (Novgorod, Kiev, Halych-Volhynia). This may prevent development of common Russian national identity on such large scale as OTL. Historically Orthodox, east-Slavic peasants and boyars had good reason to rally under banner of strong Moscow being surrounded by muslim Tatars, catholic Lithuanians, and Teutonic Knights. With equally strong principality in southern Rus` we may end up with two, smaller Russian nations.
I Blame Communism
Banned
There's a vague precedent, I think, in the Cossack Hetmanate: it seems to me that one reason Ukrainian national identity has always so much stronger than Belarussian identity since they started to crystallise is that there had previously been a state in the Ukraine with its own religious and educational infrastructure.
Indeed. Belarusians had Polotsk, but it fell so long ago that it`s hard for them to relate to it. I think that in case of, lets say, large Halych-Volhynia surviving to early modern era - Ukrainian/Ruthenian/whatever-it-would-be-called, national identity would be even stronger and more widespread.
Old Airman
Banned
OK, let's make POD somewhere in 8th century. For whatever reason Kievan Rus didn't happen and Eastern Slavs (their main body, in what is today Northern Ukraine, Eastern Belarus and Southeastern Russia around, let's say Kursk and Ryazan) fell victim to "The Plains", being conquered/exterminated/assimilated by Khazars/Pecheneg/whatever. It would leave an area known today as Central Russia sparsely populated with Ugro-Finnic and (probably) Baltic tribes, who were at this point slowly going from hunting-gathering lifestyle to agriculture. Mongols, as IOTL, would stop somewhere South of Moscow/Nizhni Novgorod line, there's nothing of interest for them North of it.
My monies in this TL are on Poland and (less so) Swedes. IOTL Poles were stopped from eastward expansion by Kievans/Tatars/Muskovites (in this sequence). ITTL they would subdue what is IOTL known as Belarus very early and proceed to slowly conquer/assimilate non-Slavic Central Russian forests much the way Eastern Slavs did IOTL. Swedes would have a lot of troubles with Novgorodians (even if they would install Swedish dinasty there, it would be quickly "localized"), so whatever happens in N. Russia would be called "Novgorod", not "Sweden".
My monies in this TL are on Poland and (less so) Swedes. IOTL Poles were stopped from eastward expansion by Kievans/Tatars/Muskovites (in this sequence). ITTL they would subdue what is IOTL known as Belarus very early and proceed to slowly conquer/assimilate non-Slavic Central Russian forests much the way Eastern Slavs did IOTL. Swedes would have a lot of troubles with Novgorodians (even if they would install Swedish dinasty there, it would be quickly "localized"), so whatever happens in N. Russia would be called "Novgorod", not "Sweden".