Good point, but the Americans won the war, I doubt the Entente are going to be very forgiving when the dust settles here.
Feeble Constitution - A Red-and-Green Russia 1917 Timeline
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Good point, but the Americans won the war, I doubt the Entente are going to be very forgiving when the dust settles here.
Sixteen: Russian-American Agreements (late March 1918)
Here is more in the same format, not only because it allows me to integrate lots of information, but also because the main perspective on Russia is again an American one. Thanks once again to @Betelgeuse for editing (except for the last news snippet and its footnotes, which I have just added)!
New York City (USA), The New York Times, March 26th, 1918, p. 1:
AGREEMENT WITH RUSSIA ON PEACE TERMS
RUSSIA’S FOREIGN MINISTER AXELROD SUPPORTS FOURTEEN POINTS [1] * BAN ON POISON GAS PROPOSED * DEMOCRACY FOR EASTERN EUROPE
Washington * The Department of State has confirmed that full and unambiguous agreement has been established between our government and the People’s Commission of Russia, represented by Foreign Commissar Tobias Axelrod, on the framework for the conclusion of the Great War and the construction of a just and lasting worldwide peace. Mr. Axelrod has conveyed Russia’s full support for the Fourteen Points expressed by President Wilson on January 8th. Elaborating on them, both governments also share the following goals:
- To emphasize that the use of poisonous gas has been forbidden by the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907, and to work towards a more explicit formulation in this regard [2]
- To conclude broad international covenants establishing a court which judges violations of the Conventions, determines punishment of those responsible for such violations, as well as compensations for those suffering harm resulting from violations of the Conventions [3]
- To bring before such an international court those responsible for the murderous atrocities committed in Armenia, Belgium, France, and Russia
- To recognize unambiguously the free and democratic decisions of the Estonian, Latvian, Finnish, Ukrainian, Georgian, and Armenian nations to give themselves republican constitutions and join their free states in federation within the Union of Equals
- To ensure that the Polish, Lithuanian, Czecho-Slovak, Yugo-Slav, Albanian, and Kurdish nations will enjoy a fully free and unimpeded process of democratic constitution as well, and that they are entirely free in their pursuit and conclusion of international treaties and treaties of federation [4]
- To apply the goal of a readjustment of frontiers in accordance with clearly discernible lines of nationality to a Rumania liberated from occupation
- To support the development of democracy in the central empires currently oppressed by military dictatorships, and to remove any barrier against the free circulation of democratic ideas and associations whose aims are the fostering of a global order of peace, justice, and legal resolution of international conflicts, without and within these countries. [5]
DUKHONIN’S ARMY DRAWS FIRE ON THEMSELVES
BY THE NEW YORK TIMES MILITARY EXPERT * The Russian Second Army, commanded by General Nikolai Dukhonin, continues to relieve the defenders of Petrograd by drawing German fire on themselves. After raids on German units controlling the railroad links into Petrograd on March 23rd and 24th, two German divisions have begun to engage in fighting against them. But Dukhonin apparently does not seek to frontally assault the besieging army. Instead, his forces have retreated Eastward along the railroad line towards the Wolchow River, drawing the two divisions who pursue them away from the capital. CONT. ON PAGE TWO.
A NIGHTLY FLIGHT OVER THE NEVA
FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT IN PETROGRAD * As bombs and grenades continue to kill, and German regiments are entering one district of Petrograd after the other, thousands of civilians are fleeing every night from Petrograd’s Southern districts across the Neva river, to the North, where it is still possible to leave the capital for the wide, unoccupied Karelian hinterland, or board a train for Vyborg and the Finnish Federative Republic. Last night, I was among them. A crowd of several dozen had assembled on Liteyny Prospekt; mostly men, but also a few families with sleeping or crying infants. We were held up by armed guards, who control all traffic over the bridges and receive information about plane sightings, for over a quarter of an hour. Among the Russians residential licenses or other papers were apparently checked before the gates were finally opened and we poured through. The electric lighting, a special feature of this modern bridge, has been switched off, and while Petrograd has been less lit than usual over the past weeks, here, above the black waters of the Neva, it is eerily dark. The bridge has been damaged in part, and we must tread carefully. CONT. ON PAGE SIX.
BRITISH ADVANCE ON AMMAN
The 60th London Infantry Division, the ANZAC Mounted Division and the Imperial Camel Corps have continued their advance on Amman with the capture of Es Salt. The town was taken from its minimal contingent of Ottoman defenders. The steep way ahead to Amman is open now, and an attack is expected over the course of the next week. [6]
OTTOMAN SPIES INCITING REVOLT APPREHENDED IN BAKU
In Baku, Russian secret police [7] has unveiled and dismantled a conspiratorial group of several dozen persons, aided and abetted by the Ottoman War Minister Ismail Enver [8] to incite revolts among the Mohammedan native populations of Southern Russia. Thirty-seven conspirators are awaiting their trials now, while the situation on the streets of the city on the shores of the Caspian Sea is calming down. [9]
[1] Would Wilson utter the Fourteen Points ITTL, too? I was not sure; but ultimately, many of the things often ascribed as conducive to their formulation (the Bolshevik publication of the secret treaties) appeared merely circumstantial to me or present ITTL too (the Papal peace message, the negotiations in Brest-Litowsk), whereas the primary development from which they derived, the so-called “Inquiry”, has begun in September 1917 IOTL under circumstances which did not yet radically diverge from OTL and TTL. So I thought Wilson would still outline his vision in January 1918, while the Russians and the Central Powers negotiated in Brest-Litowsk.
But would the Fourteen Points look similar to OTL’s? I checked every single one of them, and I’d be glad to discuss them in detail if anyone is interested, but I thought neither of them would have been sufficiently affected by the divergences of TTL except for no. VI (concerning the future of Russia). Even here, though, the divergences of TTL should strengthen the core message of Point No. 6 (evacuate Russia, let the Russians sort out where they want to go, they’re welcome in the international community). If Wilson uttered such comparatively Russian-friendly words after OTL’s Bolshevik takeover, I don’t see why he would be more hostile to a Russia which is a few degrees more moderate and digresses less from politico-institutional traditions of the Western world. So, while Point No. 6 would certainly be phrased differently, with less references to political uncertainty and a power vacuum, its core message would be, I reckoned, the same.
[2] The US and Russia were not among the big players in the poison gas game in WW1, so this doesn’t cost them much, and of course Russia is capitalizing on the sympathy bonus now.
[3] Ah, compensations! With the about-face concerning tsarist state debts, the demand of “no indemnities” looks a lot less appealing to Kamkov’s Commission now. To the US, ensuring that war debts are paid off is a pragmatic priority, too, which had not been included in Wilson’s well-meaning wishlist.
The establishment of a court which would give the Hague Conventions teeth and muscle is probably utopian in 1918 or any of the following years.
[4] That is more radical than Wilson’s Point No. X, but the Russians depend on the Czechoslovak and the Romanian Legion to fight on their side.
[5] That basically means the U.S. officially condones propaganda by Russia’s leftist forces, both social democratic and neo-Narodnik, in the Ottoman Empire, in Bulgaria, Austria-Hungary, and Germany, and explicit interference by the former to bring about revolutions etc. in these countries. Too big a success for a Russian foreign commissar who only months ago had negotiated for a separate peace, whose army is again being beaten by the Germans, and whose ideology is pretty much of the kind against which IOTL US institutions instigated a witch-hunt in the so-called First Red Scare? On the other hand, at this point in time, the Sedition Act of 1918 has not yet been passed, and neither has the Immigration Act. I see little reason why US domestic policies against far left anti-war activists should be much different ITTL as American war casualties will begin to rise, but then again, foreign policy will certainly look different, and that might have an effect here, too. Russia’s government, for one, has not sent Axelrod to Washington without a reason – Kamkov and Axelrod have evidently identified the U.S. as the Entente partner with the greatest potential for aid and shared goals.
[6] All OTL in Palestine. What looms big here is what is missing from TTL’s newspaper and what was in OTL’s. There is, of course, no big German Spring Offensive on the Western Front. No Michael, no Georgette, and none of the other offensive operations. Static trench warfare continues, and more and more American troops are inserted. German OHL knows the clock is ticking against them, and OTL’s plans have been made throughout TTL’s winter, too, only they’re being delayed so far, in the hope of resolving the Russian problem first. This has implications for the British campaign in Palestine, of course.
[7] Yes, the VeCheKa is still around, and it's not just terrorising bourgeois and aristocratic anti-socialists as well as anarchist pacifists, it has also taken to suppress separatist movements deemed dangerous and uncontrollable by the People's Commission, of which the former Empire's Southern Muslim underbelly has a particularly large number.
[8] IOTL, Enver Pasha and his Third Army under General Wehib Pasha were advancing through Armenian territory around this time. ITTL, they are not: the front has been stagnant for over a year now, with Russian/Union and Armenian troops not collapsing like IOTL, but also neither side having any spare forces to start a large offensive. So, instead of pressing Eastward and coming closer to implementing his Young Turkish dreams of uniting Greater Turan, from Istanbul to the Tarim Basin, through the formation of an Army of Islam, he must choose more subtle means to subvert Russian/Union control over the Muslim groups in the Caucasus and Central Asia. He begins in Azerbaijan, whose oil fields are of course of vital importance to Russia, too.
[9] Maybe it is, but in the long run, Kamkov is heading for trouble if he doesn't find a satisfactory solution for the Islamic South. The tragedy of OTL, which is even more tragical and ironical ITTL, where the respective worldviews (Jadidism and neo-Narodnichestvo) are even closer than OTL's (Jadidism vs Bolshevism), is that both SRs and Marxist socialists are in great part simply too culturally blind (or, to put it more bluntly: Eurocentrist and of a mindset inherited from colonialist racism) to see that forces like Musavat and the various Jadidist reformers among the Tatars, the Kazakhs, the Young Bukharians, Young Khivans etc. could be their allies in a big, socially-transformational, modernising, anti-imperialist family. Sure, there are socio-economical conflicts and dilemmas to be solved, and the Russian and Cossack settlers throughout Southern Russia, the former of which make up the greatest portion of the new regime's local face while the latter are still a backbone of the Union Armies, often do not espouse internationalist, universalist and national-self-determinationist views (they rather look down on the native Muslims as backward). Will Kamkov's Commission and the CA wake up in time and find a satisfactory solution (autonomy etc.) for the Muslim South, too? Because if not, there's trouble brewing there, with or without Ottoman interference.
New York City (USA), The New York Times, March 26th, 1918, p. 1:
AGREEMENT WITH RUSSIA ON PEACE TERMS
RUSSIA’S FOREIGN MINISTER AXELROD SUPPORTS FOURTEEN POINTS [1] * BAN ON POISON GAS PROPOSED * DEMOCRACY FOR EASTERN EUROPE
Washington * The Department of State has confirmed that full and unambiguous agreement has been established between our government and the People’s Commission of Russia, represented by Foreign Commissar Tobias Axelrod, on the framework for the conclusion of the Great War and the construction of a just and lasting worldwide peace. Mr. Axelrod has conveyed Russia’s full support for the Fourteen Points expressed by President Wilson on January 8th. Elaborating on them, both governments also share the following goals:
- To emphasize that the use of poisonous gas has been forbidden by the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907, and to work towards a more explicit formulation in this regard [2]
- To conclude broad international covenants establishing a court which judges violations of the Conventions, determines punishment of those responsible for such violations, as well as compensations for those suffering harm resulting from violations of the Conventions [3]
- To bring before such an international court those responsible for the murderous atrocities committed in Armenia, Belgium, France, and Russia
- To recognize unambiguously the free and democratic decisions of the Estonian, Latvian, Finnish, Ukrainian, Georgian, and Armenian nations to give themselves republican constitutions and join their free states in federation within the Union of Equals
- To ensure that the Polish, Lithuanian, Czecho-Slovak, Yugo-Slav, Albanian, and Kurdish nations will enjoy a fully free and unimpeded process of democratic constitution as well, and that they are entirely free in their pursuit and conclusion of international treaties and treaties of federation [4]
- To apply the goal of a readjustment of frontiers in accordance with clearly discernible lines of nationality to a Rumania liberated from occupation
- To support the development of democracy in the central empires currently oppressed by military dictatorships, and to remove any barrier against the free circulation of democratic ideas and associations whose aims are the fostering of a global order of peace, justice, and legal resolution of international conflicts, without and within these countries. [5]
DUKHONIN’S ARMY DRAWS FIRE ON THEMSELVES
BY THE NEW YORK TIMES MILITARY EXPERT * The Russian Second Army, commanded by General Nikolai Dukhonin, continues to relieve the defenders of Petrograd by drawing German fire on themselves. After raids on German units controlling the railroad links into Petrograd on March 23rd and 24th, two German divisions have begun to engage in fighting against them. But Dukhonin apparently does not seek to frontally assault the besieging army. Instead, his forces have retreated Eastward along the railroad line towards the Wolchow River, drawing the two divisions who pursue them away from the capital. CONT. ON PAGE TWO.
A NIGHTLY FLIGHT OVER THE NEVA
FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT IN PETROGRAD * As bombs and grenades continue to kill, and German regiments are entering one district of Petrograd after the other, thousands of civilians are fleeing every night from Petrograd’s Southern districts across the Neva river, to the North, where it is still possible to leave the capital for the wide, unoccupied Karelian hinterland, or board a train for Vyborg and the Finnish Federative Republic. Last night, I was among them. A crowd of several dozen had assembled on Liteyny Prospekt; mostly men, but also a few families with sleeping or crying infants. We were held up by armed guards, who control all traffic over the bridges and receive information about plane sightings, for over a quarter of an hour. Among the Russians residential licenses or other papers were apparently checked before the gates were finally opened and we poured through. The electric lighting, a special feature of this modern bridge, has been switched off, and while Petrograd has been less lit than usual over the past weeks, here, above the black waters of the Neva, it is eerily dark. The bridge has been damaged in part, and we must tread carefully. CONT. ON PAGE SIX.
BRITISH ADVANCE ON AMMAN
The 60th London Infantry Division, the ANZAC Mounted Division and the Imperial Camel Corps have continued their advance on Amman with the capture of Es Salt. The town was taken from its minimal contingent of Ottoman defenders. The steep way ahead to Amman is open now, and an attack is expected over the course of the next week. [6]
OTTOMAN SPIES INCITING REVOLT APPREHENDED IN BAKU
In Baku, Russian secret police [7] has unveiled and dismantled a conspiratorial group of several dozen persons, aided and abetted by the Ottoman War Minister Ismail Enver [8] to incite revolts among the Mohammedan native populations of Southern Russia. Thirty-seven conspirators are awaiting their trials now, while the situation on the streets of the city on the shores of the Caspian Sea is calming down. [9]
[1] Would Wilson utter the Fourteen Points ITTL, too? I was not sure; but ultimately, many of the things often ascribed as conducive to their formulation (the Bolshevik publication of the secret treaties) appeared merely circumstantial to me or present ITTL too (the Papal peace message, the negotiations in Brest-Litowsk), whereas the primary development from which they derived, the so-called “Inquiry”, has begun in September 1917 IOTL under circumstances which did not yet radically diverge from OTL and TTL. So I thought Wilson would still outline his vision in January 1918, while the Russians and the Central Powers negotiated in Brest-Litowsk.
But would the Fourteen Points look similar to OTL’s? I checked every single one of them, and I’d be glad to discuss them in detail if anyone is interested, but I thought neither of them would have been sufficiently affected by the divergences of TTL except for no. VI (concerning the future of Russia). Even here, though, the divergences of TTL should strengthen the core message of Point No. 6 (evacuate Russia, let the Russians sort out where they want to go, they’re welcome in the international community). If Wilson uttered such comparatively Russian-friendly words after OTL’s Bolshevik takeover, I don’t see why he would be more hostile to a Russia which is a few degrees more moderate and digresses less from politico-institutional traditions of the Western world. So, while Point No. 6 would certainly be phrased differently, with less references to political uncertainty and a power vacuum, its core message would be, I reckoned, the same.
[2] The US and Russia were not among the big players in the poison gas game in WW1, so this doesn’t cost them much, and of course Russia is capitalizing on the sympathy bonus now.
[3] Ah, compensations! With the about-face concerning tsarist state debts, the demand of “no indemnities” looks a lot less appealing to Kamkov’s Commission now. To the US, ensuring that war debts are paid off is a pragmatic priority, too, which had not been included in Wilson’s well-meaning wishlist.
The establishment of a court which would give the Hague Conventions teeth and muscle is probably utopian in 1918 or any of the following years.
[4] That is more radical than Wilson’s Point No. X, but the Russians depend on the Czechoslovak and the Romanian Legion to fight on their side.
[5] That basically means the U.S. officially condones propaganda by Russia’s leftist forces, both social democratic and neo-Narodnik, in the Ottoman Empire, in Bulgaria, Austria-Hungary, and Germany, and explicit interference by the former to bring about revolutions etc. in these countries. Too big a success for a Russian foreign commissar who only months ago had negotiated for a separate peace, whose army is again being beaten by the Germans, and whose ideology is pretty much of the kind against which IOTL US institutions instigated a witch-hunt in the so-called First Red Scare? On the other hand, at this point in time, the Sedition Act of 1918 has not yet been passed, and neither has the Immigration Act. I see little reason why US domestic policies against far left anti-war activists should be much different ITTL as American war casualties will begin to rise, but then again, foreign policy will certainly look different, and that might have an effect here, too. Russia’s government, for one, has not sent Axelrod to Washington without a reason – Kamkov and Axelrod have evidently identified the U.S. as the Entente partner with the greatest potential for aid and shared goals.
[6] All OTL in Palestine. What looms big here is what is missing from TTL’s newspaper and what was in OTL’s. There is, of course, no big German Spring Offensive on the Western Front. No Michael, no Georgette, and none of the other offensive operations. Static trench warfare continues, and more and more American troops are inserted. German OHL knows the clock is ticking against them, and OTL’s plans have been made throughout TTL’s winter, too, only they’re being delayed so far, in the hope of resolving the Russian problem first. This has implications for the British campaign in Palestine, of course.
[7] Yes, the VeCheKa is still around, and it's not just terrorising bourgeois and aristocratic anti-socialists as well as anarchist pacifists, it has also taken to suppress separatist movements deemed dangerous and uncontrollable by the People's Commission, of which the former Empire's Southern Muslim underbelly has a particularly large number.
[8] IOTL, Enver Pasha and his Third Army under General Wehib Pasha were advancing through Armenian territory around this time. ITTL, they are not: the front has been stagnant for over a year now, with Russian/Union and Armenian troops not collapsing like IOTL, but also neither side having any spare forces to start a large offensive. So, instead of pressing Eastward and coming closer to implementing his Young Turkish dreams of uniting Greater Turan, from Istanbul to the Tarim Basin, through the formation of an Army of Islam, he must choose more subtle means to subvert Russian/Union control over the Muslim groups in the Caucasus and Central Asia. He begins in Azerbaijan, whose oil fields are of course of vital importance to Russia, too.
[9] Maybe it is, but in the long run, Kamkov is heading for trouble if he doesn't find a satisfactory solution for the Islamic South. The tragedy of OTL, which is even more tragical and ironical ITTL, where the respective worldviews (Jadidism and neo-Narodnichestvo) are even closer than OTL's (Jadidism vs Bolshevism), is that both SRs and Marxist socialists are in great part simply too culturally blind (or, to put it more bluntly: Eurocentrist and of a mindset inherited from colonialist racism) to see that forces like Musavat and the various Jadidist reformers among the Tatars, the Kazakhs, the Young Bukharians, Young Khivans etc. could be their allies in a big, socially-transformational, modernising, anti-imperialist family. Sure, there are socio-economical conflicts and dilemmas to be solved, and the Russian and Cossack settlers throughout Southern Russia, the former of which make up the greatest portion of the new regime's local face while the latter are still a backbone of the Union Armies, often do not espouse internationalist, universalist and national-self-determinationist views (they rather look down on the native Muslims as backward). Will Kamkov's Commission and the CA wake up in time and find a satisfactory solution (autonomy etc.) for the Muslim South, too? Because if not, there's trouble brewing there, with or without Ottoman interference.
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I thought so, too. In today's update, we're getting a first glimpse of what this could entail, although there's still a long way towards the conclusion of the war possibly, and the outcome is probably never what people planned beforehand. Plus, of course, Britain, France, Italy etc. have a couple of ideas of their own, which might point in different directions.
I am glad that you like it so far!
Thank you! I share your Assessment that this topic is too often overlooked. Problem is, from what I've read, I can't make up my mind yet which way things are likely to go. So... Suggestions, wishes, Arguments, any input is quite welcome.
Seventeen: New Bolshevik Leader (April 1918)
Moscow: Nowaya Zhizn, April 14th, 1918:
NEW LEADER SAYS BOLSHEVIKS WILL FIGHT, BUT NOT ALONGSIDE OTHERS
By Vladimir Bazarov [1]
The conditions of the emergency situation we find ourselves in shaped the extraordinary party convention of the RSDLP(b), which assembled for the first time in Moscow last weekend. The man who is, more than anyone else, responsible for the extraordinarily unfortunate position in which the Bolsheviks find themselves has finally assumed responsibility for his past mistakes. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, reverently called “Lenin” by friend and foe alike, has stepped down from all offices he held in the party and in the Constituent Assembly. It was high time: the failed course of action has landed hundreds of Bolsheviks in prison, among them brilliant minds like Kollontai. After last November’s desertions, an entire wing of the Muscovite party section has followed their chairman Alexei Rykov in jumping off the sinking ship and joining the RSDLP unification bloc. Even to the loyal remainder, whose left fringe is crumbling off into spontaneous anarchist activism, the rumours about Lenin’s conversations with Hoffmann were the straw that broke the camel’s back [2].
High hopes for a Bolshevik return to the path of sanity will likely be dampened, however. The election of Nikolai Bukharin as the new Bolshevik leader does not bode well. Many inside the party consider him to be Lenin’s hand-picked successor (and many voted for him for this very reason), while Bukharin has criticised Lenin, so far, only from an even more extremely leftist perspective [3]. Now, in his first speech as chairman, Bukharin has spoken many lofty words about the imminent collapse of imperialist capitalism and about joining in a hypothetical worldwide revolution, but he still opposes joining the other revolutionaries in the forums and institutions which our real revolution of the Russian peoples has created. He has denounced the organs of our revolutionary state and does not want Bolshevik Red Guards to join the Republican Guards – but he has called for all efforts of his party to be concentrated on inciting and participating in revolts and uprisings against the German occupation forces and the institutions of Markov’s puppet state, as well as to “support the German proletariat in revolting against its oppressors”. This author is not sure how beneficial Bolshevik aid would be to comrade Karl Liebknecht and the USPD. It would certainly be an improvement if the presently clandestine Red Guards focused their acts of sabotage against the enemy for a change, but they would also stand a better chance if they decided to join the ranks of their other comrades and compatriots. Indeed, if they had not opposed and hampered the defensive efforts so much over the past months, perhaps they would not be faced with the task of driving out Markov’s reactionary terror clique from Petrograd now. Bukharin should have no illusions, however: Regardless of how many Bolsheviks are taking up arms against the foe as irregulars now, and regardless of who reaches the balcony of a liberated municipal duma hall first, the elected and legitimate institutions of the state will not tolerate any “Bolshevik Soviet republics”. The rules we have negotiated must be binding for all.Truly revolutionary power does not come from rifles alone, but from popular will and consent. Let us hope against all hope that the new Bolshevik leadership will understand this principle better than their predecessors.
[1] In the extremely prolific newspaper scene of revolutionary Russia, there is quite a number of Social-Democratic newspapers. This one is from the left wing of the Menshevik portion of what constitutes now the “RSDLP unification bloc” – as opposed to, for example, the “Rabochaya Gazeta”, which is the mouthpiece of those Mensheviks around Fyodor Dan who have remained outside of the Kamkov coalition realignment and the RSDLP unification bloc. Novaya Zhizn caters to a variety of positions from the centre-left to the centre-right of the new RSDLP unification bloc.
[2] What is that about conversations between von Hoffmann and Lenin?! Well, here is what has happened since the last update:
The Germans have confronted and defeated the Second Union Army, too, and then proceeded to fight their way into Petrograd, which was not quite as costly as the NYT military expert had anticipated since the city’s defenders organized the demontage, transportation, or, where impossible, demolition of the most relevant industrial machinery, and then withdrew with another wave of civilian refugees across the Neva and North-Westwards, away from where the Germans were.
Von Hoffmann has entered an almost empty Petrograd triumphantly, and after a few days, recruited a “Provisional Government of the Russian Empire” from among pro-German right-wingers whom his forces have released from prisons inside the city and from internment camps in its environs. The Provisional Government, headed by extreme right-winger, philo-German and anti-Semite Nikolai Evgenyevich Markov, is clearly just a puppet on the strings of the Germans, who have installed similar “governments” in Lithuania, Poland and the “United Baltic Duchy”, without really removing many of their troops. There is some relocation of troops Westward, where OHL has other plans for them, but altogether, less than 25 divisions are being moved from the Eastern theatre to the West, in contrast to the 50 of OTL. Germans still need to hold a front line, even if there is no new Russian offensive for the time being, and they need a full military occupation in place because without it their Baltic and Russian puppet governments would collapse within the week of their complete withdrawal.
The allegation in this newspaper about a conversation between Lenin and Hoffmann is based on the rumour that Hoffmann had a “Plan B(olshevik)” for his Russian puppet, should Markov not prove to be a viable option: release the Bolshevik prisoners instead of the right-wingers, and install Lenin as Russian dictator by Germany’s grace instead of Markov. Lenin has denied to have held any such preliminary sounding-out conversations with von Hoffmann or anyone else from Ober Ost. But allegations about him as a German agent have, of course, abounded in revolutionary Russia from the moment he arrived at Finland Station, and the utterly unpatriotic refusal of the Bolsheviks to partake in the defense of Petrograd and the Russian heartland against the Germans has drawn a lot of ire against them and makes allegations of such treacherous conspiratorial schemings plausible among much of the Russian populace – to the dismay of the remaining loyal Bolsheviks, of course, who are very much on the defensive on all fronts by now and show clear signs of disintegration. A change of leadership – Lenin is the first to acknowledge this – at least provides a slight chance for a reversal.
[3] It was only in my research for this TL that I realized that Bukharin was actually still a left-leaning communist by 1917, and in 1918. Don’t be confused by what you know about his later stances of OTL regarding the NEP etc. – the Bukharin of the immediate revolutionary years was convinced that imperialist capitalism could only be overthrown by a worldwide revolution, and he diverged from Lenin’s views both with regards to trade unions (which Bukharin saw as incurably revisionist and thus rejected) and national liberation movements (which in Bukharin’s view only detracted the proletariat from overthrowing capitalism globally).
Here is a short overview of the ideological wings of TTL’s Bolshevik Party in early 1918 (divergences from OTL are already heavy):
The Bolshevik Centre revolves around Lenin’s agenda of 1917 and his April Theses. Lenin’s position within the party was so influential and central that I was really not sure if it was plausible to unseat him ITTL – I hope you can follow my decision making and the reasons given above, especially in footnote 2; if not (and even if yes), I’ll gladly discuss this with you in greater detail. Anyway, the Centre of the Bolshevik Party ITTL stands for Vanguardism but is also open for a coalition in which the Bolsheviks would lead; it approves of national self-determination (and thus autonomy) while being internationalistically-minded and hoping for worldwide revolution; it sees the proletariat as destined to lead the revolution, but seeks an alliance with the poor peasantry, too. It is not opposed to parliamentary participation, but considers the revolution on the way of making such bourgeois institutions superfluous; it has held the soviets in high esteem when they were spontaneous outbursts of proletarian revolutionary action and/or controlled or controllable by Bolsheviks, but now that most territorial soviets are in the hands of parties which they deem either “revisionist” or populist, and pursuing policies not in accordance with how they envision socialism, they are looking to new forms of organization again, with most in the Centre still hoping to be able, in the near future, to gain hold of the soviets and change their agenda, but this hope is fading as much as the Centre’s strength is.
The Bolshevik Right wing (which is of course, in the entire political spectrum, still on the radical left) principally accepts parliamentarianism and the current soviet model as well as trade unionism and seeks collaboration with the other socialist and revolutionary parties even if the Bolsheviks are not able to lead such a coalition. On the question of national self-determination of minorities, there is a variety of positions, ranging from enthusiastic supporters like Sultan Majid Afandiev or Mykola Skrypnyk to quite a handful of Great Russian chauvinists. Currently, the Right Wing has been greatly weakened because most of its members have left the party of Lenin and joined the RSDLP Unification bloc.
The Bolshevik Left wing rejects parliamentarianism wholesale (there’s an Otzovist tradition at work here), rejects collaboration in “revisionist” trade unions, enthusiastically supports worldwide revolution and espouses unwavering internationalism, thus rejecting national liberation movements as backwardl (people like Yury Pyatakov come to mind) . A lot of theoretically inclined people are assembled here, who strive for a purer Marxism than Lenin’s policies. But at the same time, the Bolshevik Left has also been strengthened by the building up of the Red Guards and Bolshevik engagement in fabzavkomy/factory committees in the spring and summer of 1917. It is on the verge of splintering, as the Marxist theoreticians are denouncing the equally leftist radical “Actionists” as anarchists, while the Actionists are laughing at such “ivory tower” criticism. The Actionists are indeed leaning somewhat towards anarchism and have often collaborated on a local level with anarchists, but anarchism is a mixed bag, too, and Left Bolshevik Marxist Vanguardism is not facilitating that cooperation much.
The election of Bukharin means that the Bolshevik Centre should move a little to the Left, following the new membership structure. But that’s pure theory – Bukharin turned out to be a pragmatist of power, just like Lenin, so let’s see how things turn out ITTL…
NEW LEADER SAYS BOLSHEVIKS WILL FIGHT, BUT NOT ALONGSIDE OTHERS
By Vladimir Bazarov [1]
The conditions of the emergency situation we find ourselves in shaped the extraordinary party convention of the RSDLP(b), which assembled for the first time in Moscow last weekend. The man who is, more than anyone else, responsible for the extraordinarily unfortunate position in which the Bolsheviks find themselves has finally assumed responsibility for his past mistakes. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, reverently called “Lenin” by friend and foe alike, has stepped down from all offices he held in the party and in the Constituent Assembly. It was high time: the failed course of action has landed hundreds of Bolsheviks in prison, among them brilliant minds like Kollontai. After last November’s desertions, an entire wing of the Muscovite party section has followed their chairman Alexei Rykov in jumping off the sinking ship and joining the RSDLP unification bloc. Even to the loyal remainder, whose left fringe is crumbling off into spontaneous anarchist activism, the rumours about Lenin’s conversations with Hoffmann were the straw that broke the camel’s back [2].
High hopes for a Bolshevik return to the path of sanity will likely be dampened, however. The election of Nikolai Bukharin as the new Bolshevik leader does not bode well. Many inside the party consider him to be Lenin’s hand-picked successor (and many voted for him for this very reason), while Bukharin has criticised Lenin, so far, only from an even more extremely leftist perspective [3]. Now, in his first speech as chairman, Bukharin has spoken many lofty words about the imminent collapse of imperialist capitalism and about joining in a hypothetical worldwide revolution, but he still opposes joining the other revolutionaries in the forums and institutions which our real revolution of the Russian peoples has created. He has denounced the organs of our revolutionary state and does not want Bolshevik Red Guards to join the Republican Guards – but he has called for all efforts of his party to be concentrated on inciting and participating in revolts and uprisings against the German occupation forces and the institutions of Markov’s puppet state, as well as to “support the German proletariat in revolting against its oppressors”. This author is not sure how beneficial Bolshevik aid would be to comrade Karl Liebknecht and the USPD. It would certainly be an improvement if the presently clandestine Red Guards focused their acts of sabotage against the enemy for a change, but they would also stand a better chance if they decided to join the ranks of their other comrades and compatriots. Indeed, if they had not opposed and hampered the defensive efforts so much over the past months, perhaps they would not be faced with the task of driving out Markov’s reactionary terror clique from Petrograd now. Bukharin should have no illusions, however: Regardless of how many Bolsheviks are taking up arms against the foe as irregulars now, and regardless of who reaches the balcony of a liberated municipal duma hall first, the elected and legitimate institutions of the state will not tolerate any “Bolshevik Soviet republics”. The rules we have negotiated must be binding for all.Truly revolutionary power does not come from rifles alone, but from popular will and consent. Let us hope against all hope that the new Bolshevik leadership will understand this principle better than their predecessors.
[1] In the extremely prolific newspaper scene of revolutionary Russia, there is quite a number of Social-Democratic newspapers. This one is from the left wing of the Menshevik portion of what constitutes now the “RSDLP unification bloc” – as opposed to, for example, the “Rabochaya Gazeta”, which is the mouthpiece of those Mensheviks around Fyodor Dan who have remained outside of the Kamkov coalition realignment and the RSDLP unification bloc. Novaya Zhizn caters to a variety of positions from the centre-left to the centre-right of the new RSDLP unification bloc.
[2] What is that about conversations between von Hoffmann and Lenin?! Well, here is what has happened since the last update:
The Germans have confronted and defeated the Second Union Army, too, and then proceeded to fight their way into Petrograd, which was not quite as costly as the NYT military expert had anticipated since the city’s defenders organized the demontage, transportation, or, where impossible, demolition of the most relevant industrial machinery, and then withdrew with another wave of civilian refugees across the Neva and North-Westwards, away from where the Germans were.
Von Hoffmann has entered an almost empty Petrograd triumphantly, and after a few days, recruited a “Provisional Government of the Russian Empire” from among pro-German right-wingers whom his forces have released from prisons inside the city and from internment camps in its environs. The Provisional Government, headed by extreme right-winger, philo-German and anti-Semite Nikolai Evgenyevich Markov, is clearly just a puppet on the strings of the Germans, who have installed similar “governments” in Lithuania, Poland and the “United Baltic Duchy”, without really removing many of their troops. There is some relocation of troops Westward, where OHL has other plans for them, but altogether, less than 25 divisions are being moved from the Eastern theatre to the West, in contrast to the 50 of OTL. Germans still need to hold a front line, even if there is no new Russian offensive for the time being, and they need a full military occupation in place because without it their Baltic and Russian puppet governments would collapse within the week of their complete withdrawal.
The allegation in this newspaper about a conversation between Lenin and Hoffmann is based on the rumour that Hoffmann had a “Plan B(olshevik)” for his Russian puppet, should Markov not prove to be a viable option: release the Bolshevik prisoners instead of the right-wingers, and install Lenin as Russian dictator by Germany’s grace instead of Markov. Lenin has denied to have held any such preliminary sounding-out conversations with von Hoffmann or anyone else from Ober Ost. But allegations about him as a German agent have, of course, abounded in revolutionary Russia from the moment he arrived at Finland Station, and the utterly unpatriotic refusal of the Bolsheviks to partake in the defense of Petrograd and the Russian heartland against the Germans has drawn a lot of ire against them and makes allegations of such treacherous conspiratorial schemings plausible among much of the Russian populace – to the dismay of the remaining loyal Bolsheviks, of course, who are very much on the defensive on all fronts by now and show clear signs of disintegration. A change of leadership – Lenin is the first to acknowledge this – at least provides a slight chance for a reversal.
[3] It was only in my research for this TL that I realized that Bukharin was actually still a left-leaning communist by 1917, and in 1918. Don’t be confused by what you know about his later stances of OTL regarding the NEP etc. – the Bukharin of the immediate revolutionary years was convinced that imperialist capitalism could only be overthrown by a worldwide revolution, and he diverged from Lenin’s views both with regards to trade unions (which Bukharin saw as incurably revisionist and thus rejected) and national liberation movements (which in Bukharin’s view only detracted the proletariat from overthrowing capitalism globally).
Here is a short overview of the ideological wings of TTL’s Bolshevik Party in early 1918 (divergences from OTL are already heavy):
The Bolshevik Centre revolves around Lenin’s agenda of 1917 and his April Theses. Lenin’s position within the party was so influential and central that I was really not sure if it was plausible to unseat him ITTL – I hope you can follow my decision making and the reasons given above, especially in footnote 2; if not (and even if yes), I’ll gladly discuss this with you in greater detail. Anyway, the Centre of the Bolshevik Party ITTL stands for Vanguardism but is also open for a coalition in which the Bolsheviks would lead; it approves of national self-determination (and thus autonomy) while being internationalistically-minded and hoping for worldwide revolution; it sees the proletariat as destined to lead the revolution, but seeks an alliance with the poor peasantry, too. It is not opposed to parliamentary participation, but considers the revolution on the way of making such bourgeois institutions superfluous; it has held the soviets in high esteem when they were spontaneous outbursts of proletarian revolutionary action and/or controlled or controllable by Bolsheviks, but now that most territorial soviets are in the hands of parties which they deem either “revisionist” or populist, and pursuing policies not in accordance with how they envision socialism, they are looking to new forms of organization again, with most in the Centre still hoping to be able, in the near future, to gain hold of the soviets and change their agenda, but this hope is fading as much as the Centre’s strength is.
The Bolshevik Right wing (which is of course, in the entire political spectrum, still on the radical left) principally accepts parliamentarianism and the current soviet model as well as trade unionism and seeks collaboration with the other socialist and revolutionary parties even if the Bolsheviks are not able to lead such a coalition. On the question of national self-determination of minorities, there is a variety of positions, ranging from enthusiastic supporters like Sultan Majid Afandiev or Mykola Skrypnyk to quite a handful of Great Russian chauvinists. Currently, the Right Wing has been greatly weakened because most of its members have left the party of Lenin and joined the RSDLP Unification bloc.
The Bolshevik Left wing rejects parliamentarianism wholesale (there’s an Otzovist tradition at work here), rejects collaboration in “revisionist” trade unions, enthusiastically supports worldwide revolution and espouses unwavering internationalism, thus rejecting national liberation movements as backwardl (people like Yury Pyatakov come to mind) . A lot of theoretically inclined people are assembled here, who strive for a purer Marxism than Lenin’s policies. But at the same time, the Bolshevik Left has also been strengthened by the building up of the Red Guards and Bolshevik engagement in fabzavkomy/factory committees in the spring and summer of 1917. It is on the verge of splintering, as the Marxist theoreticians are denouncing the equally leftist radical “Actionists” as anarchists, while the Actionists are laughing at such “ivory tower” criticism. The Actionists are indeed leaning somewhat towards anarchism and have often collaborated on a local level with anarchists, but anarchism is a mixed bag, too, and Left Bolshevik Marxist Vanguardism is not facilitating that cooperation much.
The election of Bukharin means that the Bolshevik Centre should move a little to the Left, following the new membership structure. But that’s pure theory – Bukharin turned out to be a pragmatist of power, just like Lenin, so let’s see how things turn out ITTL…
Thanks once again @Betelgeuse for editing. He has also suggested some maps - after an Easter break, I'll try to draw a map of where the front lines presently are and of the borders of the new autonomous federative republics.
Hnau
Banned
Where does Lenin go?
The timeline is starting to get very interesting. I'm loving the detail you've put in this. There's a lot of divergences to keep track of, but you're doing a great job so far! I personally can't wait to see whether the Russians jump into the Greco-Turkish War, with one of their goals the establishment of a protectorate of some kind over the Sea of Marmara. Maybe it would be a League of Nations trust territory. It would be tough for the narodnik Russian government to justify this, but if the federation can directly access the Mediterranean Sea, it would be quite the boon for international trade. Now that they haven't repudiated the old Russian debts... there's going to be a lot of economic growth in the 1920s I'll say that much.
The timeline is starting to get very interesting. I'm loving the detail you've put in this. There's a lot of divergences to keep track of, but you're doing a great job so far! I personally can't wait to see whether the Russians jump into the Greco-Turkish War, with one of their goals the establishment of a protectorate of some kind over the Sea of Marmara. Maybe it would be a League of Nations trust territory. It would be tough for the narodnik Russian government to justify this, but if the federation can directly access the Mediterranean Sea, it would be quite the boon for international trade. Now that they haven't repudiated the old Russian debts... there's going to be a lot of economic growth in the 1920s I'll say that much.
Not having repudiated the old Russian debts (but they will ask at least some forgiveness...and frankly better something than nothing) will make the Entente financial situation a little better and this mean the USA having less influence and probably not having made public all the secret agreements of the entente, will make things a little calmer for now; still having them at the Versailles conference will be funny, they will probably at least formally support Wilson 14 points...still Finland and Poland will be some sticky point and will go with France in their attempt to take down Germany (probably to make it easier for the proletariat take control)
Both the spring offensive and the second battle of Piave will be more problematic for the CP, they have continued to fight in the east and this doesn't mean just less troops available for the western front but also less supply as ammunition and much more things are used in the east while OTL not
Lenin retains His Seat as simple CA delegate so far, but whether he'll stay under risk of losing immunity or leave for a while, I don't Know yet. Some places suggest themelves.
Thanks for your Kind words! Great questions about Turkey; I won't spoil anything. First, Russia must Recover... No Ataturkey would unleash another billion of butterflies...
The 20s were roaring iotl, If Russia will participate ittl Depends on many factors. Have to See exactly how Russia's socialism turns out.
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Good Points about ammunition, coal etc. Yes, Russia limping on is a CP Nightmare. Will the conference still be in Paris? Relations are still tense, because of Brest and the expropriations etc but not with all Entente members alike.
Why would Finland be a sticky Point? Poland certainly is a can of worms...
IRC because at the time, even the Finnish, as the Polish, want independence.
Yep the conference will be in Paris, frankly still in the war or not, it's not that the Soviet Russia had such influence and power to dictate that terms, plus economically are in worst condition of even Italy (and i expect at the moment that both Germans and Austrian will send home everything of value in the occupied territory to keep their warmachine going, making the situation worse) so basically anyone in power will need to choose what battle needed to be fought.
Speaking of the conference, well for Italy the communist russia presence can be a problem and a blessing, a problem because she will probably support Wilson stance against Italy as against an 'imperialistic' power but on the other hand she will also got a lot of attention from him and the Anglo-French in their attempt to limit her gain and spread of influence (honestly this it's not really totally related with the revolution, they will have done even for Tsarist Russia) so the Adriatic question can be seen as secondary (or italian diplomatic support against the Soviet at the conference more important) and something like the Tardieu Agreement being Oked early
As I have commented before, War Communism did more to retard Russian industrial development than either WW1 or the Civil War. None of Russia's major industrial centres were on the front line OTL nor (by and large, Russia had an inefficient bureaucracy and made mistakes) were skilled or semi-skilled workers removed from the factories. Nor were the battles of the OTL Civil War mainly fought in the main industrial centres. The decline in Russian industry during the period seems to have been a consequence of excessively ideological management, flight of technical and sales experts and the fact that Russia had so recently industrialised (during periods of insane economic behaviour, political threats or insecure food supplies most workers still had a home village and farming community to return to).
ITTL, the big problem is how the Germans (and the Hapsburg) are more starving for resources due to the continuing fighting in the east, basically i expect that they will send home everything of value in the occupied territory and every kg of grain possible...even more than OTL or/and if they retreat they go for the scorched earth tattic like France
Some lively discussion on the thread is making my heart jump with gladness! Sorry for not replying sooner – I was on an offline Easter holiday with my family. I have not yet finished the map I’ve promised, but here are my two cents regarding the topics you’ve discussed…
On Finland
ITTL, “the Finnish” don’t want independence so badly. In contrast to OTL, where the Provisional Government couldn’t decide on any scratch for this itch, ITTL negotiations both within the Constituent Assembly (between Finnish and other delegates) and between the CA and a Social Democratic/Maalaisliitto coalition Finnish Senate have brought forth a solution which satisfied both sides to a great degree towards the end of summer 1917 with the establishment of the Finnish Federative Republic. The treaty enshrining this autonomy was signed by a majority in the CA as well as the above-mentioned coalition in Helsinki’s parliament. I am still not decided whether the bourgeois parties have abstained in the vote on this treaty (because they want independence, but they don’t like populist-socialist semantics in the phrasing of the FFR’s new political framework and generally oppose the Tokoi Senate) or if autonomy is embraced more or less unanimously and there’s a great national coalition in Finland in these times of crisis (as @Karelian has declared as a possibility). Either way, though, staunch “absolute independence” is going to be a fringe position ITTL, probably strongest in the circles associated with the pro-German Jäger / Jääkari movement. Given how the Germans are likely to treat their Eastern European puppets, though, (see @lukedalton’s arguments below) I doubt that any pro-German pro-full independence stance is going to become powerful in TTL’s Finland, since in contrast to OTL, where Germany could be seen by the Finnish Whites as a relatively harmless vehicle for both independence and crushing the Reds within their country, ITTL Finland is governed by a centre-left coalition in sync with Russia’s new rulers and while the Right is still likely to resent most of the Revolution, most of them don’t want their country to become a target of German emergency regime plundering like their Baltic neighbors, either.
As far as refugees and the food crisis are concerned, @Karelian is highlighting an important point here. Yet, there are two factors at work which we need to consider, too: Firstly, there are historical allusions about US grain imports already paid for in advance by the Finnish government IOTL, but then never shipped when the October Revolution occurred (and the Finnish Civil War ensued). I was not able to ascertain how much grain this was and how likely it was to really reach Finland, but if there is any chance for it to happen in any universe, this universe may just be it: Russia (and Finland with it, why not) are actively seeking an alliance with Wilson’s government, by spring it’s clear that they’re pulling their weight in the fight against the CP, and the Finnish Senate seems to be have been able to muster quite some amount of cash IOTL, so I don’t see why such a shipment would not ultimately happen ITTL, and alleviate the situation somewhat. Now, of course, that’s probably just a drop of water in an endless sea, especially with railroad connections to the rest of Revolutionary Russia being interrupted by the German occupation forces. On the other hand, the refugees are not coming as a disorganized trek. In the first, much larger, wave of Petrograd’s evacuation, most of those who fled the city were relatively recent arrivals from the Russian countryside (in fact, a majority of Greater Petrograders were), and they went “back” to “their” villages (where their families had just recently received additional plots of land in the land reforms, probably, so there probably are ways to feed these hungry extra mouths). Evacuation to Finland is mostly a matter of the last-minute wave – militarily important industrial workforce, militia and regular army and navy units who had held out until there was no hope left of defending the city –, and this wave is going to be under Emergency Committee Chairman Trotsky’s command. That means, they’re not going to pillage the countryside or form uncontrolled slums or anything: the soldiers among them are organized into a new “Northern Front”, while the industrial workforce is going to be redirected by Trotsky towards industrial centres like Vyborg, Helsinki and others in the South of Finland, to step up the production of whatever is necessary for continuing the war. Now, that makes for a very special kind of destabilizing potential – a rivalry for factual economic control between the Senate of the Federative Finnish Republic on one side, who is going to seek to protect Finnish economic independence, and our charismatic former short-time City Dictator and wannabe General Head of Emergency Management on the Northern Front Leon Trotsky, with his hundred-thousand-strong army of desperate and well-armed men in tow. In the best case, both sides defer to the CA and Kamkov for arbitration, and Kamkov comes up with a solution which placates everybody. In the worst case, the Finnish Senate becomes alienated and no longer believes in autonomy as a solution, i.e. Finland ultimately does declare independence ITTL, too, which means that instead of a Civil War, Finland gets an Independence War against the vastly numerically superior non-Finnish military forces currently stationed on its territory. The chance for a civil war like OTL’s is quite small, I’d think. Even if Tokoi accepts a bad deal which is vastly unpopular with the hungry urban masses, that doesn’t mean we get the full OTL Red Guards experience (because most leading socialists are still backing an alliance with Revolutionary Russia), so potential proletarian rioters would be lacking organized allies and leadership. The only other potential force which also despises the Tokoi Senate and wishes to overthrow the autonomy government, too, is the Jäger / Jääkari movement. If there are signs of disintegration in Finland, Germany might finally be tempted to send in all those forces they’ve trained so far. Still, they are absolutely unlikely allies of hungry striking industrial workers of Southern Finland. I’ll make up my mind on Finland’s fate in late April and May 1918 over the next few weeks, but a Civil War akin to OTL’s is one option I’ll rule out already.
On Russia’s Economy
I tend to share @ShortsBelfast’s views on the question of economic devastations caused by the Great War vs. economic collapse caused by the systemic transformations. As you will see in the frontline map (when I finally post it), there is considerably less territory to plunder than IOTL after Operation Faustschlag, and what it yields is substantially different. IOTL, German and Austro-Hungarian forces advanced almost unopposed across Ukraine. They gained control (well, not really control… let’s say a temporary military upper hand) over extremely agriculturally productive land, a veritable breadbasket.
ITTL, an operation like Faustschlag was utterly unthinkable because the Russians / the Union of Equals are still putting up organized resistance, so they had to focus somewhere, and they focused on the North, in order to take Petrograd and knock Russia out of the war politically – the former of which they succeeded, but not the latter. Across the Belarussian, Ukrainian and Romanian sections of the front, there hasn’t been a lot of movement. The Third and Fourth Union Armies, the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces, the Polish Legion, the Czechoslovak Legion and the Bessarabian Legion as well as Republican Guards have more or less held the line here against almost merely diversionary attacks. Thus, the Ukraine is out of reach for the Central Powers, and it remains a breadbasket for the Union of Equals. This also means that Austria-Hungary is not gaining anything from this entire business – they tried their own offensives in Galicia and Romania, but without significant German support, they got nowhere.
The territories under German control and nominally governed by puppet regimes in Petrograd, Riga, Vilnius, and Warsaw are vastly different from the gains obtained by OTL’s Operation Faustschlag. Most of it had been lost in 1915 already, though, and only Latvia, Estonia and Ingria with Petrograd plus a bit more to the South of Ingria, up to Pskow, are new gains of 1917 and 1918. If we’re leaving Poland and Lithuania out of the equation (because Russian governments have made several allusions towards their possible future independence by now), then the biggest loss is the industrial potential of the former Petrograd Governorate. What do the remaining regions occupied by the Germans have to offer? Estonia and Latvia have timber, Estonia has some oil shale, Latvia some ore, Belarus has more agriculture (but it yields far less surplus than Ukrainian agriculture) and could provide potash, which is important since fertilizers are something Germany is short of. But to gain access to said potash, they’d have to get to Salihorsk first, which they haven’t managed so far. Sure there’s always something to squeeze out from peasants, even in these Northern quarters, but on the whole, the prospective gains are not going to make the German leadership salivate too much.
The industrial losses already caused by the Russians dismembering or destroying much what had been in the greater Petrograd region certainly hurt. Whether the Germans can significantly add to this by leaving behind scorched earth depends on the circumstances of their ultimate withdrawal… the situation on the Western and on the Eastern fronts are different (both IOTL and ITTL) in many ways: in the West, there was an awful lot of troops, and while the retreat was hasty, it was still proceeded along plans aimed at depriving the advancing, even more numerous Allied troops of anything that would aid them. In the East, there are both much fewer German troops and much fewer troops possibly attacking them. I am not even sure if the fate of the Eastern front is really going to be one which I’d describe as a “German retreat”.
But that doesn’t mean Russia isn’t in a weak position economically, for the moment. It’s already canon that ITTL the financial sector has more or less collapsed, which means there’s no private investment in anything really forthcoming for a while. Agricultural output had been declining from 1916 already, and the disruptions of 1917 (land reforms etc.) mean this has continued. But in those territories not ravaged by war (which includes all the black soil territories), 1918 is probably going to be a year of agricultural recovery, with land distribution well-established, higher prices for agricultural products creating incentives to produce and market surpluses which didn’t exist under the regime of controlled wartime prices put in place by the Tsarist government and continued by the Provisional Government. The question is, is there anything the peasants want to buy with their new money which could entice them to put in the extra effort?
Industrial development is the big open variable in this equation. IOTL, it was already plummeting throughout 1917 even before the October Revolution. No doubt this has happened ITTL, too. How deep this slump is going to be depends on how the new system turns out to be and how fast it can establish and consolidate itself. Not facing a Civil War would certainly help to maintain at least a higher level of production when compared to OTL. As of now, April 1918, Russia’s industry is in a state of limbo. It’s neither fully in transition towards centralized planning without markets, like OTL, nor is it a functioning capitalist economy anymore. To make matters more complicated, the situation also isn’t the same across the entire country: Finland, Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia are all pursuing their own economic policies independent from Moscow, and even in the big rest, power over structural economic decisions and policies has been placed in the hands of the Soviets, and that means something entirely different in different areas. One industrial centre can have a soviet dominated by very left-leaning Marxists who have placed the factories under full control or maybe even ownership of workers’ factory committees, meaning they now have to experiment with some sort of political planning of industrial production, which is certain to produce an immense variety of socialisms, from more syndicalist experiments to more Local Gosplan-esque ones and maybe even to market socialist ones, although I doubt the latter is going to happen in places where there has been fully fledged expropriation of the means of production. Another region, more agriculturally dominated and with a soviet full of centrist SRs, will have left the private factory owners alone and maybe even provided guarantees for their safety, allotting to the factory committees merely the roles of workplace arbitrators, and overall focusing on relief measures and maybe moving towards institutionalized welfare. And then there’s going to be all kinds of mixed variants in between.
What this means is that there’s going to be all sorts of mistakes committed by those who try more boldly socialist structures (partly for reasons inherent in these systems, partly because they’re being experimented with by people who can’t know yet what they’re doing), while the remaining privately owned industry is probably suffering from a great deal of anxiety and lack of confidence in the institutional framework, which is always bad for investment and production. So, paradoxically, the image which those higher up on the levels of political decision-making are going to get if they’d look at things from a detached perspective is both absurd and depressing: capitalism is apparently collapsing, but socialism isn’t working, either, yet. But of course nobody looks at the situation from a detached perspective; everybody is going to view it in their ideological terms. The current alliance unites a variety of interpretations of the crisis… what conclusions they’ll reach and what economic policies will be ultimately pursued in this Russia I won’t disclose yet, for this is one of the centerpieces of this TL…
On the Entente
I share your views regarding Italy’s situation as it looks at the moment. What I think is most insightful about this comment of yours is the choice of the word “battle” with regards to intra-Entente relations. IOTL already the Entente barely managed to pull in the same direction when the CP threat was greatest, but once that disappeared, there were so many divergent interests and developments that I think it is, frankly, quite a miracle that there were international covenants concluded in Paris at all. ITTL, the Entente is even more diverse… already the next regular newspaper update after the maps will deal with one aspect along this line, I think.
On Finland
ITTL, “the Finnish” don’t want independence so badly. In contrast to OTL, where the Provisional Government couldn’t decide on any scratch for this itch, ITTL negotiations both within the Constituent Assembly (between Finnish and other delegates) and between the CA and a Social Democratic/Maalaisliitto coalition Finnish Senate have brought forth a solution which satisfied both sides to a great degree towards the end of summer 1917 with the establishment of the Finnish Federative Republic. The treaty enshrining this autonomy was signed by a majority in the CA as well as the above-mentioned coalition in Helsinki’s parliament. I am still not decided whether the bourgeois parties have abstained in the vote on this treaty (because they want independence, but they don’t like populist-socialist semantics in the phrasing of the FFR’s new political framework and generally oppose the Tokoi Senate) or if autonomy is embraced more or less unanimously and there’s a great national coalition in Finland in these times of crisis (as @Karelian has declared as a possibility). Either way, though, staunch “absolute independence” is going to be a fringe position ITTL, probably strongest in the circles associated with the pro-German Jäger / Jääkari movement. Given how the Germans are likely to treat their Eastern European puppets, though, (see @lukedalton’s arguments below) I doubt that any pro-German pro-full independence stance is going to become powerful in TTL’s Finland, since in contrast to OTL, where Germany could be seen by the Finnish Whites as a relatively harmless vehicle for both independence and crushing the Reds within their country, ITTL Finland is governed by a centre-left coalition in sync with Russia’s new rulers and while the Right is still likely to resent most of the Revolution, most of them don’t want their country to become a target of German emergency regime plundering like their Baltic neighbors, either.
As far as refugees and the food crisis are concerned, @Karelian is highlighting an important point here. Yet, there are two factors at work which we need to consider, too: Firstly, there are historical allusions about US grain imports already paid for in advance by the Finnish government IOTL, but then never shipped when the October Revolution occurred (and the Finnish Civil War ensued). I was not able to ascertain how much grain this was and how likely it was to really reach Finland, but if there is any chance for it to happen in any universe, this universe may just be it: Russia (and Finland with it, why not) are actively seeking an alliance with Wilson’s government, by spring it’s clear that they’re pulling their weight in the fight against the CP, and the Finnish Senate seems to be have been able to muster quite some amount of cash IOTL, so I don’t see why such a shipment would not ultimately happen ITTL, and alleviate the situation somewhat. Now, of course, that’s probably just a drop of water in an endless sea, especially with railroad connections to the rest of Revolutionary Russia being interrupted by the German occupation forces. On the other hand, the refugees are not coming as a disorganized trek. In the first, much larger, wave of Petrograd’s evacuation, most of those who fled the city were relatively recent arrivals from the Russian countryside (in fact, a majority of Greater Petrograders were), and they went “back” to “their” villages (where their families had just recently received additional plots of land in the land reforms, probably, so there probably are ways to feed these hungry extra mouths). Evacuation to Finland is mostly a matter of the last-minute wave – militarily important industrial workforce, militia and regular army and navy units who had held out until there was no hope left of defending the city –, and this wave is going to be under Emergency Committee Chairman Trotsky’s command. That means, they’re not going to pillage the countryside or form uncontrolled slums or anything: the soldiers among them are organized into a new “Northern Front”, while the industrial workforce is going to be redirected by Trotsky towards industrial centres like Vyborg, Helsinki and others in the South of Finland, to step up the production of whatever is necessary for continuing the war. Now, that makes for a very special kind of destabilizing potential – a rivalry for factual economic control between the Senate of the Federative Finnish Republic on one side, who is going to seek to protect Finnish economic independence, and our charismatic former short-time City Dictator and wannabe General Head of Emergency Management on the Northern Front Leon Trotsky, with his hundred-thousand-strong army of desperate and well-armed men in tow. In the best case, both sides defer to the CA and Kamkov for arbitration, and Kamkov comes up with a solution which placates everybody. In the worst case, the Finnish Senate becomes alienated and no longer believes in autonomy as a solution, i.e. Finland ultimately does declare independence ITTL, too, which means that instead of a Civil War, Finland gets an Independence War against the vastly numerically superior non-Finnish military forces currently stationed on its territory. The chance for a civil war like OTL’s is quite small, I’d think. Even if Tokoi accepts a bad deal which is vastly unpopular with the hungry urban masses, that doesn’t mean we get the full OTL Red Guards experience (because most leading socialists are still backing an alliance with Revolutionary Russia), so potential proletarian rioters would be lacking organized allies and leadership. The only other potential force which also despises the Tokoi Senate and wishes to overthrow the autonomy government, too, is the Jäger / Jääkari movement. If there are signs of disintegration in Finland, Germany might finally be tempted to send in all those forces they’ve trained so far. Still, they are absolutely unlikely allies of hungry striking industrial workers of Southern Finland. I’ll make up my mind on Finland’s fate in late April and May 1918 over the next few weeks, but a Civil War akin to OTL’s is one option I’ll rule out already.
On Russia’s Economy
I tend to share @ShortsBelfast’s views on the question of economic devastations caused by the Great War vs. economic collapse caused by the systemic transformations. As you will see in the frontline map (when I finally post it), there is considerably less territory to plunder than IOTL after Operation Faustschlag, and what it yields is substantially different. IOTL, German and Austro-Hungarian forces advanced almost unopposed across Ukraine. They gained control (well, not really control… let’s say a temporary military upper hand) over extremely agriculturally productive land, a veritable breadbasket.
ITTL, an operation like Faustschlag was utterly unthinkable because the Russians / the Union of Equals are still putting up organized resistance, so they had to focus somewhere, and they focused on the North, in order to take Petrograd and knock Russia out of the war politically – the former of which they succeeded, but not the latter. Across the Belarussian, Ukrainian and Romanian sections of the front, there hasn’t been a lot of movement. The Third and Fourth Union Armies, the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces, the Polish Legion, the Czechoslovak Legion and the Bessarabian Legion as well as Republican Guards have more or less held the line here against almost merely diversionary attacks. Thus, the Ukraine is out of reach for the Central Powers, and it remains a breadbasket for the Union of Equals. This also means that Austria-Hungary is not gaining anything from this entire business – they tried their own offensives in Galicia and Romania, but without significant German support, they got nowhere.
The territories under German control and nominally governed by puppet regimes in Petrograd, Riga, Vilnius, and Warsaw are vastly different from the gains obtained by OTL’s Operation Faustschlag. Most of it had been lost in 1915 already, though, and only Latvia, Estonia and Ingria with Petrograd plus a bit more to the South of Ingria, up to Pskow, are new gains of 1917 and 1918. If we’re leaving Poland and Lithuania out of the equation (because Russian governments have made several allusions towards their possible future independence by now), then the biggest loss is the industrial potential of the former Petrograd Governorate. What do the remaining regions occupied by the Germans have to offer? Estonia and Latvia have timber, Estonia has some oil shale, Latvia some ore, Belarus has more agriculture (but it yields far less surplus than Ukrainian agriculture) and could provide potash, which is important since fertilizers are something Germany is short of. But to gain access to said potash, they’d have to get to Salihorsk first, which they haven’t managed so far. Sure there’s always something to squeeze out from peasants, even in these Northern quarters, but on the whole, the prospective gains are not going to make the German leadership salivate too much.
The industrial losses already caused by the Russians dismembering or destroying much what had been in the greater Petrograd region certainly hurt. Whether the Germans can significantly add to this by leaving behind scorched earth depends on the circumstances of their ultimate withdrawal… the situation on the Western and on the Eastern fronts are different (both IOTL and ITTL) in many ways: in the West, there was an awful lot of troops, and while the retreat was hasty, it was still proceeded along plans aimed at depriving the advancing, even more numerous Allied troops of anything that would aid them. In the East, there are both much fewer German troops and much fewer troops possibly attacking them. I am not even sure if the fate of the Eastern front is really going to be one which I’d describe as a “German retreat”.
But that doesn’t mean Russia isn’t in a weak position economically, for the moment. It’s already canon that ITTL the financial sector has more or less collapsed, which means there’s no private investment in anything really forthcoming for a while. Agricultural output had been declining from 1916 already, and the disruptions of 1917 (land reforms etc.) mean this has continued. But in those territories not ravaged by war (which includes all the black soil territories), 1918 is probably going to be a year of agricultural recovery, with land distribution well-established, higher prices for agricultural products creating incentives to produce and market surpluses which didn’t exist under the regime of controlled wartime prices put in place by the Tsarist government and continued by the Provisional Government. The question is, is there anything the peasants want to buy with their new money which could entice them to put in the extra effort?
Industrial development is the big open variable in this equation. IOTL, it was already plummeting throughout 1917 even before the October Revolution. No doubt this has happened ITTL, too. How deep this slump is going to be depends on how the new system turns out to be and how fast it can establish and consolidate itself. Not facing a Civil War would certainly help to maintain at least a higher level of production when compared to OTL. As of now, April 1918, Russia’s industry is in a state of limbo. It’s neither fully in transition towards centralized planning without markets, like OTL, nor is it a functioning capitalist economy anymore. To make matters more complicated, the situation also isn’t the same across the entire country: Finland, Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia are all pursuing their own economic policies independent from Moscow, and even in the big rest, power over structural economic decisions and policies has been placed in the hands of the Soviets, and that means something entirely different in different areas. One industrial centre can have a soviet dominated by very left-leaning Marxists who have placed the factories under full control or maybe even ownership of workers’ factory committees, meaning they now have to experiment with some sort of political planning of industrial production, which is certain to produce an immense variety of socialisms, from more syndicalist experiments to more Local Gosplan-esque ones and maybe even to market socialist ones, although I doubt the latter is going to happen in places where there has been fully fledged expropriation of the means of production. Another region, more agriculturally dominated and with a soviet full of centrist SRs, will have left the private factory owners alone and maybe even provided guarantees for their safety, allotting to the factory committees merely the roles of workplace arbitrators, and overall focusing on relief measures and maybe moving towards institutionalized welfare. And then there’s going to be all kinds of mixed variants in between.
What this means is that there’s going to be all sorts of mistakes committed by those who try more boldly socialist structures (partly for reasons inherent in these systems, partly because they’re being experimented with by people who can’t know yet what they’re doing), while the remaining privately owned industry is probably suffering from a great deal of anxiety and lack of confidence in the institutional framework, which is always bad for investment and production. So, paradoxically, the image which those higher up on the levels of political decision-making are going to get if they’d look at things from a detached perspective is both absurd and depressing: capitalism is apparently collapsing, but socialism isn’t working, either, yet. But of course nobody looks at the situation from a detached perspective; everybody is going to view it in their ideological terms. The current alliance unites a variety of interpretations of the crisis… what conclusions they’ll reach and what economic policies will be ultimately pursued in this Russia I won’t disclose yet, for this is one of the centerpieces of this TL…
On the Entente
I share your views regarding Italy’s situation as it looks at the moment. What I think is most insightful about this comment of yours is the choice of the word “battle” with regards to intra-Entente relations. IOTL already the Entente barely managed to pull in the same direction when the CP threat was greatest, but once that disappeared, there were so many divergent interests and developments that I think it is, frankly, quite a miracle that there were international covenants concluded in Paris at all. ITTL, the Entente is even more diverse… already the next regular newspaper update after the maps will deal with one aspect along this line, I think.
Hnau
Banned
Thank you so much for the response about economics, @Salvador79! Your logic is sound. The notes made by @ShortsBelfast are well-taken as well.
It's a catch-22 for the right wing - either they abstain and the SDP and Maalaisliitto go forward anyhow - making them look like they're opposed to this the restoration and expansion of Finnish autonomy, the nr. 1 goal of their prewar policies. Or they go along as a grand coalition (like they ultimately attempted to do in OTL), accepting legislation that hurts their short-term interests but keeps their political credibility more intact. I'd bet on the second option - the prewar Finnish political elite was a really small, tightly-knit societal group despite their political differences. This made the OTL Civil War all the more bitter, as both sides felt that their former friends had personally betrayed them and the national cause. This time it might benefit them.
"Rather Tokoi than Trotsky", in the sense of better the devil you know.
The question remains: by which route? See the map below:
https://i.redd.it/iezx0qx0mi001.jpg
Now, Baltic is a German lake at this point, so that is out of the question. Sweden had food riots at this time as well: https://portal.research.lu.se/ws/files/5982259/4698857.pdf
Yet the only open route comes through Norway and Sweden, via Narvik. The grain ships would still have to somehow go around the British naval blockade, the grain would have to be unloaded at the small port of Narvik that is busily shipping iron ore for Britain, then transported to Övertorneå, and reloaded to Finnish trains using the 1524 mm Old Russian standard (Five foot) gauge. Shipping the grain to Murmansk is no longer an option, because the Germans have now severed all railroad connections between Finland and rest of Russia: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Map_of_russian_railroads_1916.jpg
All Swedish ports are behind the British naval blokade as well.
Petrograd had major population of Finns in 1914, and most of them would have fled to Finland proper by now. But as it is, the Germans have now effectively trapped Trotsky and the Northern Front to Finland, cutting them away from their lines of supply and rest of Russia. This means that the food situation is going to become a critical issue and soon, especially since the Karelian Isthmus will turn to a battlefield if Germans decide to pursue the Russians northwards.