AHC: An Afghan SSR

How could Afghanistan (or a part of it) become a Soviet Republic? Maybe the Afghan civil war in 1928/1929 escalates and leads to a downfall of central government authority? The Soviet Union intervened at the time, maybe they cut a deal with tribe leaders?
 
Stalin wouldn't cut a deal. He'd just wipe out resistance ruthlessly and violently and there'd be a lot of death and suffering. As to what an Afghan SSR might look like after the violence of Stalin's purges, I'd imagine it evolving a lot like the other Central Asian SSRs: i.e. much more secular and less tribal than OTL's Afghanistan and with a significant Russian minority.
 
Wouldn't it be split into more than one SSR? Afghanistan is ethnically diverse after all.

A Pashtun dominated SSR made up of the southern half and a couple of smaller ASSRs encompassing northern Afghanistan perhaps? The Tajik and Turkmen parts, I imagine, would be attached to the pre-existing SSRs.
 
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I can't imagine the British would be happy at all. The Raj's border with the USSR is suddenly much larger and harder to control. This could mean an even larger communist contingent in India/Pakistan than there was historically.
 
A Pashtun dominated SSR made up of the southern half and a couple of smaller ASSRs encompassing northern Afghanistan perhaps? The Tajik and Turkmen parts, I imagine, would be attached to the pre-existing SSRs I imagine.

There's Uzbeks as well.

Here's an ethnic map of Afghanistan from 2001:

US_Army_ethnolinguistic_map_of_Afghanistan_--_circa_2001-09.jpg


I can see the Aimak and Hazara either getting their own SSRs, or ASSRs of the Pashto SSR.
 
There's no such thing as an Afghani cultural ethnicity. The Northern Plateau would be annexed to Tajikistan and the Southern Mountains would become the Pashtun SSR, with the subdivision of the Pathan ASSR or Autonomous Okrug.
 
Um, no? Why would a Soviet takeover of Afghanistan have any effect on Muslim nationalism in British India?
Because, the UK would not be leaving lock stock and barrel as they did OTL, and the leaders of the Pakistan movement, OTL were very much opposed to Communism. Maybe the British implement greater provincial autonomy (a key Muslim League demand) and keep a very large military force on the border.
 
Stalin wouldn't cut a deal. He'd just wipe out resistance ruthlessly and violently and there'd be a lot of death and suffering. As to what an Afghan SSR might look like after the violence of Stalin's purges, I'd imagine it evolving a lot like the other Central Asian SSRs: i.e. much more secular and less tribal than OTL's Afghanistan and with a significant Russian minority.
IIRC with the exception of Kazakhstan the other ex-Soviet “-stans” have negligible quality of Russians present.
 
Generally speaking, when the USSR intervened militarily in areas of Asia adjacent to the USSR, while it may have attempted to set up "friendly" governments there (the temporary support of Kuchak Khan's Gilan Soviet Republic in northern Persia, the creation of the Mongolian People's Republic in the 1920's, the Ili Rebellion in Xinjiang in the mid-1940's, the Azerbaijan and Kurdish "autonomous" governments in Iran in 1945-6) it did not try to incorporate those areas into the USSR, except for Tuva (and Tuva was a special case, not only because it had been a Russian protectorate but because it bordered only the USSR and Outer Mongolia). The Soviet military intervention in 1928-9 was simply an inept attempt to restore the Soviet-friendly Amanullah https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-during-the-early-1920s.446617/#post-17229196 and not even to establish a Communist regime in Afghanistan, let alone to incorporate the country into the USSR Even so, the intervention (with Soviet troops disguised as Afghanis) drew sharp criticism even from nations like Iran and Turkey that sympathized with Amanullah's reforms. Even had the intervention succeeded, it is hard for me to see the USSR incorporating Afghanistan--which as I noted was nor the purpose of their (limited) intervention and would have been contrary to their practice elsewhere in Asia.
 
The only way Afghanistan could have been incorporated into the Soviet Union would have been if the king had invaded the USSR.
 
IIRC with the exception of Kazakhstan the other ex-Soviet “-stans” have negligible quality of Russians present.

*have (as in currently).

However they had significant numbers of Russians present, unless 20% of Kyrgyzstan's population being Russian (i.e. almost half as much as the Kyrgyz in the republic and easily the second largest ethnic group, surpassing the Uzbeks) in 1989 is considered negligible. In the 1940s-1960s (the general time period Onkel Willie would have been referring to with Stalin) it actually varied between 20-30% of the population. For Tajikistan in 1989 it was 7-8% Russian, but in the 1940s-1960s it varied between 9-13%. Similarly for Uzbekistan it was 8% in 1989 but varied between 11-13% in the 1940s-1960s. For Turkmenistan it was around 10% in 1989 but between 17-19% in the 1940s-1960s.

In all cases Russians in the 1940s-1960s were either the second or third largest ethnic group (and thus either the largest minority or the second largest with anywhere between 9-30% of the population) in republics where the titular nationality (Uzbek, Kyrgyz, etc) never formed more than 66% of the population and at one point (1959 Kirgizstan)only formed 41% of the population. In fact in only 2 out of the 5 central asian republics did they form less than 15% of the population.

Chances are that in an Afghan SSR (this being a reduced area instead of the entirety of OTL Afghanistan), Russians would form at least 7% of the population and possibly grow to even 15-20% of the population. With the cleaving off of most of the Tajik, Uzbek and Turkmen areas.

Afghanistan and Uzbekistan have similar populations (30+ million in 2017-2019 and 15-16 million in 1979, which was the year of the first Afghan census). So using Uzbekistan as a model Afghanistan may have had a population of between 6-8 million in 1939-1959. As Uzbeks, Tajiks and Turkmens form approximately 30% of the population, this reduced Afghan SSR would probably have a population of 4.2 million in 1939 and 5.6 million in 1959. Outside of Kazakhstan the Russian population in the republics varied from 250,000 to 1 million by 1959. At the low end this would form around 4% of the population. At the high end this would form 14% of the population and probably be the second largest minority after the Hazara.
 
I stand corrected, sir. Do you agree that the rest of my post still stands?
Which part? How 1930s USSR would integrate Afghanistan? I don’t know enough about USSR’s Central Asia policies to comment.

That Afghanistan would end up less tribal and less religious than OTL? Seems likely, though keep in mind that OTL you still had Islamist as a significant force in the post-Communist Tajik Civil War.
 
Seems a lot more likely that Afghanistan would just be puppetized like Mongolia than outright annexed. Even that would concern the British, and make Indian independence a very different deal.

A Pashtun dominated SSR made up of the southern half and a couple of smaller ASSRs encompassing northern Afghanistan perhaps? The Tajik and Turkmen parts, I imagine, would be attached to the pre-existing SSRs.

Soviet SSR boundaries had very little to do with what ethnicity lived where. In a lot of cases, the intended effect was to split up ethnic groups and put large minorities in each SSR. Look at Armenia and Azerbaijan, or the Ferghana Valley.
 
Generally speaking, when the USSR intervened militarily in areas of Asia adjacent to the USSR, while it may have attempted to set up "friendly" governments there (the temporary support of Kuchak Khan's Gilan Soviet Republic in northern Persia, the creation of the Mongolian People's Republic in the 1920's, the Ili Rebellion in Xinjiang in the mid-1940's, the Azerbaijan and Kurdish "autonomous" governments in Iran in 1945-6) it did not try to incorporate those areas into the USSR, except for Tuva (and Tuva was a special case, not only because it had been a Russian protectorate but because it bordered only the USSR and Outer Mongolia). The Soviet military intervention in 1928-9 was simply an inept attempt to restore the Soviet-friendly Amanullah https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-during-the-early-1920s.446617/#post-17229196 and not even to establish a Communist regime in Afghanistan, let alone to incorporate the country into the USSR Even so, the intervention (with Soviet troops disguised as Afghanis) drew sharp criticism even from nations like Iran and Turkey that sympathized with Amanullah's reforms. Even had the intervention succeeded, it is hard for me to see the USSR incorporating Afghanistan--which as I noted was nor the purpose of their (limited) intervention and would have been contrary to their practice elsewhere in Asia.

I know that they didn't try to install a puppet government IOTL. But let's say the Afghan Civil War leads to the collapse of any central government authority, could the Soviet Union decide to "pacify" the area by backing either local puppet governments or annexing puppet governments as SSRs?
 
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