Search results

What if Abimael Guzman and Sendero Luminoso had achieved political victory and overthrew the government of Peru during the early Eighties?

So I think that most of us can agree that Communism was a flawed Utopian philosophy, irrespective of whatever merits it possessed. And I think that further we can agree that the World Revolution posited as the natural endpoint in Marxism's Historical Determinism is rather implausible. But what...

Okay, so for the past few days I've been reading and thinking about Lavrentiy P. Beria, and how he ran Russia for a short time after Stalin's death before being Kangaroo-Courted and promptly executed by men loyal to Krushchev. ... And damn, I'd never known that this guy was actually pretty...

So, by the time the Red Army reached the Vistula, there were about a million reasons why the Soviets just sat back and held their position while the Polish rebels just a few miles away tried, and failed after several months, to uproot the Nazis from their capital. The Russians were tired...

Well, it's been a little more than three months since Ralph Nader finally handed power over our new President Olympia Snowe, and I think that now is a good time, after emotions have cooled a little, to reflect on his eight years in the White House. So, I'd like to hear your opinions, and...

I was reading up today about national linguistic reforms - mainly, Mustafa Kemal's reforms of Ottoman Turkish into the nearly-unrecognisable Modern Turkish, in a different script, grammar reforms, etc, and I'm aware that several early Soviet politicians - the most famous one being Leon Trotsky -...

In Canadian history, 1919 is famous for one specific event: the Winnipeg General Strike. Labourers from across the country met to form 'One Big Union'. The NYT called it 'Bolshevism invades Canada' and the Winnipeg Free Press blamed it on the jews. The government stepped in, and tried to quell...

OTL, Italy, while about as anti-semitic as it is anti-Roma and generally xenophobic, never really had the firebrand racist zeal of Nazi Germany. Mussolini himself wasn't an anti-semite, but he set up anti-semitic policies in deference to his Bubba Adolf. These policies were apparently quite...

The horrors witnessed, the blood spilt, and the social change wrought by the the writings of a man named Adam Smith have had profound effects on this century. Wrangel and his 'Vanguard Party' of bourgeoisie brought a new ideology to the scene in 1918, and though the academics still debate the...

At the time of Tiberius' reign over Rome, coups hadn't come into style yet. But what if the original conniving and ambitious Praetorian commander had decided to usurp the leadership of the Roman Empire while Tiberius wallowed in his self-imposed exile? He already had coins with his face on them...

It is a profound testimony to the power of Akhenaten and the Pharaonic position that, for a good 20 years, one man managed to carry on a religious revolution in polytheistic Egypt. Of course, after his reign ended, his son Tutankhaten, only 8, was a puppet to the remaining priests of Amun and...

Exactly what it says on the tin. Have a woman as the General Secretary of the Communist Party Soviet Union or Premier of the Soviet Union at any point in its history, PoD after 1917. Go wild.

I just got back from the cinema, and I have to say, this is my favourite AH movie yet. Really intricate, great acting, and an obscure PoD to boot (though it gets pretty implausible towards the end, but hey- it's a movie, it's got to be dramatic). It's like an Alt-Hist nerdfest! I was really...

It came to my thinking that Rasputin is a rather wanked figure in popular history: he's portrayed as some nearly-invincible titan, a dark monk and magician with mind-control and healing powers or something. However, even if inaccurate, this depiction is pretty damn awesome. So, you challenge...

As the title says. Let's say, Cleopatra never retreats, so neither does Antony, and, though victory at that point in the battle was perhaps improbable, it would not be impossible, so let's say that the Octavians and Agrippa are forced into retreat and Antony has taken a victory with heavy...

As we all know, once Roosevelt and Hirohito finally managed to convince America to throw itself into the war, they adopted a 'Europe First' policy to deal with the seperate theatres of war, largely as a result of Churchill and Roosevelt's unflinching belief in its importance. But what if that...

I've been pondering very strongly recently about a mini-TL still being crafted in my mind about a world where the Soviet Union completely occupies both Germany and Austria after WWII. The basic PoD is that the Germans reached Moscow, but, throwing pretty much all of Army Group Centre against it...

On February 23, 1916, Portugal arrested German ships anchored in Portuguese ports, causing the German government to declare war. What if, rather than openly declare war on a country they had no means of attacking, Germany sent an early version of the Zimmerman telegram to Spain, offering it...

Just like the title says. Say the preemptive strike by the Iraqi Air Force goes extremely well and manages to destroy most of Iran's airforce on the ground, and the Iraqis manage to capture Abadan during the initial offensive. After a few weeks, Iran folds and agrees to Saddam's territorial...

So my thoughts have been drifting into the realm of Soviet history and politics recently. (Can you blame me?) Obviously, there's a lot of Alternate history written about Stalin and the other contenders to leadership of the Soviet Union. Some even argue Stalin's brutal drives for...