With any POD after 1900, make the first half of the 20th century (1900-1950) be a wank for the Russian Empire. I have some criteria for this: 1. Russia cant go communist, it can become a constitutional monarchy like Britain. 2: It must at least maintain its borders and must russianize as much as its territory as possible. 3. Russia must own Constantinople. Bonus points if you can get russia to own become a Slavic empire in the process.
AHC: Wank the Russian Empire in the early 20th century
- Thread starter Emperor_Konstantine
- Start date
BigBlueBox
Banned
Decisive Russian victory in both the Russo-Japanese war and WWI pretty much guarantees that Russia will have a falling out with Britain and Japan after WWI. Russia should be trying its hardest to befriend America as a counter to the Japanese and British.
Would be worth seeing a wanked Russian Empire that still loses in the Russo-Japanese War (including losing all of of Sakhalin to the Japanese - which in retrospect was a white elephant for Russia at the time good for little more than as a gulag for political prisoners) yet bounces back in WW1, by having Russia succeed in establishing a Russian mandate in an ATL Sykes-Picot-Sazonov Agreement in the former Ottoman territory of Eastern Anatolia (including much of Western Armenia, OTL Turkish/Iraqi Kurdistan as well as being viewed as a savior of Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks).
1. Avoid war with Japan by sticking to the existing agreements regarding spheres of interest. Expedite construction of the TSR instead of building railroads in Korea and don’t waste money and effort on Port Arthur and Dalney: Russian commerce on the Pacific was not big enough to care about the warm water ports. Ditto for the navy. Instead spend money on building infrastructure in Vladivostok (Pacific fleet would not be split and Port Arthur had a really lousy harbor).
2. Constitutional monarchy can be introduced at any point (in OTL Russia became a constitutional monarchy in 1905). Probably having an elected responsible government would be a reality with anybody smarter than Nicky.
3. Possession of the Straits was one of the greatest idiocies of the Russian foreign policy but if Russia sticks with Germany then WWI is avoided and Russia can get it courtesy of Cousin Willy: there would be no force capable of preventing it from happening. France can’t risk a war against combination of Germany, AH and Russia and the Brits can’t project power beyond the range of a naval artillery. With that combination the Balkan states would have no option but to cooperate (all the way to letting the Russian troops to march through their territory). Basically, at tat time Russia needed Straits only as a way not to let hostile navies into the Black Sea.
2. Constitutional monarchy can be introduced at any point (in OTL Russia became a constitutional monarchy in 1905). Probably having an elected responsible government would be a reality with anybody smarter than Nicky.
3. Possession of the Straits was one of the greatest idiocies of the Russian foreign policy but if Russia sticks with Germany then WWI is avoided and Russia can get it courtesy of Cousin Willy: there would be no force capable of preventing it from happening. France can’t risk a war against combination of Germany, AH and Russia and the Brits can’t project power beyond the range of a naval artillery. With that combination the Balkan states would have no option but to cooperate (all the way to letting the Russian troops to march through their territory). Basically, at tat time Russia needed Straits only as a way not to let hostile navies into the Black Sea.
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Would a decisive Russian victory in the Russo-Japanese War still lead to Britain joining the entente in ww1? If not, it’s hard for me to see how Russo could win WW1 without the help of Britain. But that didn’t happen, how would the map look?
elkarlo
Banned
Maybe yes, maybe no. You can still Russify the eastern and southern peoples, while having Germans be your technocrats. They like the Volga Germans would probably integrate fairly well. You'd want then to stay German and industrious though.
And why can't the Russians be their own technocrats?
German immigration could be helpful, sure (more educated people is good) but ideas of different cultural groups being better for different jobs is demonstrably self-destructive for a society.
I remember when I first got into alternate history and soc.history.what-if was full of people ruminating on why Confucianism made the Chinese culturally lazy. That stereotype sure aged well didn't it?
Culture is often used as an excuse for why things are certain ways, and almost always it's damn lies and propaganda. The exceptions are things like "why do English people say "sorry" so much".
I reckon the straits are massively important to Russia and control of the Black Sea would be useful too. However, they're not worth WW1.
And the problem with sticking with Cousin Willy is that Germany comes with Austria-Hungary. Maybe if Germany chose Russia over Austria-Hungary when the 3 Emperor's League fell apart? Or a stronger Ottoman Empire means that Russia and Austria-Hungary have less to fight over in the Balkans? But those are pre-1900 PoDs.
fasquardon
elkarlo
Banned
Got me. Why are the Russians still a mess as it is now? I'm not sure the how's and why's and how to fix these problems. Better universal education?
Bug I think to move forwards quickly they need educated people asap, and importing them would be the best move. Later on home-grown talent could be developed, but in 1905 it'd take a while for Russia to produce enough engineers and the such
Willy was trying to reapproach Nicky during thr RCW (not a very good proposal but still) and confrontation between Russia and AH over BH was a pure nonsense because Russia started objecting against something it was OK with for the decades. The whole Balkan confrontation was idiotic because there was absolutely nothing for Russia in the Balkans. AH policy was to try to prevent disintegration by the worthless acquisitions (just as a matter of prestige as if they really could compensate losses in Italy). But Russia did not suffer any territorial losses so this was not a consideration. Ditto for the ‘alliances’: they were useless by a virtue of being one-sided: what Serbia could do for Russia? Economically the area was useless as well and strategically useless even against the Ottomans. Ditto for the Straits. Russia did not have navy to dominate even the Black Sea and holding enclave of Istanbul would require enormous effort: feeding the population, defending from a possible attack from Anatolia without having any strategic depth, etc. Neutral friendly Ottoman Empire would be a much better deal.
If there was any u derstanding of situation (and some sane people in charge of the Russian foreign policy) instead of the prevailing idiotic notions the whole situation that led to Ww1 could be easily avoided. Actually, IIRC, Durnovo was advocating reapproach with Germany instead of Britain (country that would always had ‘issues’ with Russia).
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They are in a mess now not because of the lack of education and by the early XX they already had a lot of competent technical cadres and had been producing more. Process was disrupted by war and revolution.
As for the SU the issue was not haw many specialists do you have (there was a lot) but how you are using them.
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elkarlo
Banned
Thing is Russia needed those educated workers and engineers in 1905, not sometime in 1920. The RR network was ineffective and needed massive expansion . Something Russia couldn't handle in peacetime as it was.
Yeah the Soviets just never understood how to make their country actually run
The Russian Civil War, Lenin, Stalin and WW2.
I guarantee you that any other culture going through traumas that severe, all in close succession, would also be showing the scars generations later.
Tsarist Russia, in its final years, was already undergoing an educational revolution. More educated person-power is helpful, but I'm not sure it's the most helpful thing in this case. Especially since these emigrants won't be entering the ruling class and won't be part of the revolutionary classes, which is where education is most needed to inoculate against stupid decisions and ideologies.
The railway system that was basically complete by 1914? The railway system that mobilized Russia so quickly at the start of WW1? The railway system that was undermined by shortages when the Ottomans entered the war and closed the main import/export route when German mines had also closed the second most important import/export route?
How was it ineffective and where did it need to be expanded? (Especially would like you to expand on this since the Soviets barely added to it, and the Soviets were world-leaders in railway efficiency.)
Nicholas II doesn't take personal command of the army during WW1, meaning that while Russia has a very rough 1917 and 1918, the Tsarist regime is able to hang on and gets its cut of Versailles, St. Germain, Trianon and Sevres. Poland joins Finland as an autonomous region in the empire and grows at German and Austro-Hungarian expense, Czechoslovakia gains independence as a close Russian ally and Yugoslavia remains a close ally as Italy replaces Austria-Hungary as the main competitor in the Balkans.
Nicholas still ends up having abdicate as Russia has no easier a post war experience than anyone else in Europe, and Grand Duke Michael is confirmed as Tsar by the Duma (another accommodation Nicholas had to make in the aftermath of WW1).
Russia, just like everyone else in Europe, spends plenty of time derping around. The nobility have basically been killed off by WW1, so land reform is easily passed, however, the SRs and other rural oriented parties are strong which means that land reform is done to the benefit of the peasant commune and while agriculture does become more efficient, the efficiency gains are slower than they could be and rural under-employment will remain a significant issue into the 1960s. As a result, Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine will experience a later demographic transition than OTL, and the surplus East Slavic population settles among the other peoples of the empire.
With no Bolsheviks assisting them, Mustafa Kemal and Reza Khan don't gain power in Turkey and Iran, respectively, and both the rump Ottoman Empire and Iran remain quasi-colonies of the Russians and the British.
While Britain and the US will grow disinterested in enforcing the Versailles peace in Europe, and Britain is likely to be working to bring Germany back into the community of great powers (because that's what they did in OTL with both Germany and the USSR). But with the Russians in TTL still very interested in getting German reparations, there's much less opportunity for Germany to seek a violent upset of the Versailles order. This may mean no WW2 at all. Though there's still a chance that a right wing regime comes to power in Germany and figures they can knock out France or Russia before the other can mobilize, especially if the Great Depression hits Russia hard enough...
I'd imagine that a continuing Tsarist Russia would be pretty likely to absorb Sinkiang and Mongolia, maybe even Manchuria, though that's much less likely. Japan and Russia were growing together both before and during WW2, so no Bolsheviks may mean a Russo-Japanese alliance which is bad news for China, but may also mean Japan doesn't go full militarist (due to not feeling so cornered).
I can't see a continued Tsarist regime as getting on with the British. But equally, I have a hard time seeing what they'd fight over. Definitely they'd be rivals though.
The great depression is where all of the tension points inside and outside Russia could blow up. Though since you've asked for a wank, we'll just say that it doesn't and Russia gets through a few foreign crises successfully and suffers so serious internal crises internally (though I suspect Russia would get less democratic and embrace central planning during the depression, as many E. European states did - though some planning would probably be a good thing at this point).
Post Great Depression we could see Russia pull Eastern Europe into an alliance/customs union leading to all the slavic countries in the world being united under one Russian dominated economic-political alliance.
fasquardon
This is a meaningless statement unless you can provide numeric data on the available vs. needed cadres.
Even as it was, the growth was quite substantial: 1891 - 27,202km, 1900 - 44,900km, 1913 - 58,500km, 1917 - 70,260km.
As you can see, the RR construction was going on in a high rate and the may problem was money, not competence. Another problem was a confused expansionist foreign policy and resulting priorities: a lot of the RR construction could happen in Russia instead of China and Korea (big part of these roads had been lost anyway by the Treaty of Portsmouth). Especially this applied to the Western parts of the European Russia where the railroads could be strategically important in the case of a major war. But the purely economic considerations prevailed: the roads in China and Korea had been sources of immediate income in gold while commercial value of the roads in Western Russia was less obvious. With these priorities Russia definitely needed to stay in peace with Germany and AH.
Even as it was, the growth was quite substantial: 1891 - 27,202km, 1900 - 44,900km, 1913 - 58,500km, 1917 - 70,260km.
As I said, this had nothing to do with the non-existing shortage of the technical specialists with the college degrees or even with their qualifications.
