CH: Cold War with Imperial Russia

In this challenge, you are to make Imperial Russia rise to superpower status with a POD after 1905. The Soviet Union msut never come into being, and Russia must also experience a Cold War with the USA similar to the one in OTL.
 
In this challenge, you are to make Imperial Russia rise to superpower status with a POD after 1905. The Soviet Union msut never come into being, and Russia must also experience a Cold War with the USA similar to the one in OTL.
Hmmm, traditionally, the Russians had really good relations with the US.
 
Hmmm, traditionally, the Russians had really good relations with the US.

Perhaps it's the Russians trying to expand their influence across the world, and the US is afraid of them and tries to block them or something like that.

The Cold War was basically a competition over who would inherit the European empire after World War II. Perhaps Imperial Russia makes a grab for it, and the USA tries to stop it.
 
I`ve sometimes wondered how this would happen but I don`t how exactly it would happen. Possibly Alexander II isn`t assassinated and is able to undertake his other reforms. I know this is before the POD but I can`t see Nicholas II surviving.
 
Perhaps it's the Russians trying to expand their influence across the world, and the US is afraid of them and tries to block them or something like that.

The Cold War was basically a competition over who would inherit the European empire after World War II. Perhaps Imperial Russia makes a grab for it, and the USA tries to stop it.




Ive always considered the Cold War just one big dick waving contest between the US and USSR. :p


But yeah. this is a bit tough to achieve through. as Tsarist Russia and the US historically had fairly friendly relations. not impossible through. as others have stated. in the right scenario, it can be done.
 
Well post 1905 means either you butterfly or at least delay WW1, or have the whites win the post WW1 civil war and then go on to do the forced industrialisations that happened under Stalin.

First point, if WW1 is delayed the Russian economy will be that much further developed and thus that much stronger. Also, reform of the autocratic sysem will be further advanced, thus making socialism less atractive to the peasentry. Every year past 1914 that WW1 is delayed the stronger France and Russia get and the proportionately weaker Germany and AH become (The Germans were aware of this in OTL) making the war more and more of a sure thing for the Entente. A victorious Imperial Russia will straddle eastern europe like a titan and effectively will be a superpower. No doubt at some point the Germans will want a rematch, hastening the decline of Britain and France's colonial empires and leaving Russia and the USA to fill the void (A squabble here could lead to cooling relations and a balkanisation of power blocs).

Second point, in many ways mirrors OTL, except that its an Imperial White Russia rather than a Socialist Red Russia;). Bit of a cope out imho:p
 
Perhaps it's the Russians trying to expand their influence across the world, and the US is afraid of them and tries to block them or something like that.

The Cold War was basically a competition over who would inherit the European empire after World War II. Perhaps Imperial Russia makes a grab for it, and the USA tries to stop it.

The SU had an ideology that threatened the West internally. And with the occupation of eastern Europe and the threatening of Western Europe was in a position to dominate the world, to the detriment of US interests.


If you can have a POD where Russian Imperialism seems to have a similar threat to US interests, and have Imperial Russia be in a similarly threatening position then you can have a similar Cold War.

Now Imperialism isn't generally seen as an attractive ideology to people outside the Imperial Heartland (if even then) so this is difficult.

Now you could try to imagine a scenario where the lack of the first is made up with a increase in the second.


So a WWII where Imperial Russia ends up with an even stronger position than SU OTL.


Perhaps as Russia begins it's long slog back against the Red Germany armies, in order to cause a quicker end game and grab more spoils of war the vast Imperial Bomber fleet starts using mass chemical attacks, with worse then OTL loss of life.

This leads to both Russian troops on the French border and a real negative image for the Czar in the US.
 
Hmmm, traditionally, the Russians had really good relations with the US.
Well, they have, but maybe huge Russian pogroms against Jewish population in belorussian and ukrainian areas could trigger decline in their relations and eventually they will end in some kind of cold war.
 
Well, they have, but maybe huge Russian pogroms against Jewish population in belorussian and ukrainian areas could trigger decline in their relations and eventually they will end in some kind of cold war.

Not by itself.

But maybe if Imperial Russia became infected with fascist ideals that included such progroms...


And a aggressive foreign policy...


Still needs more.
 
If WW1 began 5 years later in 1919, could Russia successfully capture and annex Constantinople? In OTL WW1 in 1915 the British and French promised to give it to Tsarist Russia when they won.

How much land could Imperial Russia gobble up if it won a slightly later WW1?
 
If WW1 began 5 years later in 1919, could Russia successfully capture and annex Constantinople? In OTL WW1 in 1915 the British and French promised to give it to Tsarist Russia when they won.

How much land could Imperial Russia gobble up if it won a slightly later WW1?

A warm water port for the SU was a great fear of the West during the Cold War. Would be very useful for Imperial Russia. Could play some interesting games in the Med.

If Imperial Russia can dominate the ME or even come close to doing so, this would help start or keep going a Cold War with the West.
 
I know in Rule Britannia (Britiwank) TL that Imperial Russia and the British Empire were staring each other down for a long while. Perhaps that with minor alterations?
 
ISTM, that, leaving aside the economic problems a surviving Tsarist Russia would have, the Cold War was a peculiarly ideological battle which you won't see replicated with Tsarist Russia. So a great game, maybe; but a vision of Russian conquest of America? Nah.
 
ISTM, that, leaving aside the economic problems a surviving Tsarist Russia would have, the Cold War was a peculiarly ideological battle which you won't see replicated with Tsarist Russia. So a great game, maybe; but a vision of Russian conquest of America? Nah.

As the man said earlier, you need some sort of Russian version of Fascism or some other totalitarian ideology to have a real cold war: absolute monarchism is positively quaint and absurd as an alternative from the American POV, and while the Czars certainly don't like democracy, it's not 1815: it's not an existential threat, and they aren't going to be launching any crusades to stamp it out.

Bruce
 
-1905: Russo-Japanese War and resulting riots afterwards result in limited governmental reforms in Russia, the Diet is given limited powers though the Czar still maintains a great deal of power

-1917: White Revolution succeeds only to be replaced by monarchist elements in the military, resulting in a little bit more power being taken from the monarchy. They are able to maintain control over Finland and the Baltic States, but the brutal reconquest of the Ukraine and near-conquest of Poland lose a lot of prestige for the Tsar. Wilson's policies of self-determination come into direct conflict with Imperial policies and erode at US-Tsarist relations

-1919: Russian execution of V.I. Lenin and aid to Germany in Spartacist revolt bring Germany more towards Russian sphere of influence

-1920s: Russia begins steady expansion using prisoners and dissidents as forced labor, especially in rural areas. Czar Alexis marries and has two sons shortly before dying of complications of hemophilia at age 24, his sons can not carry the disease. Nicholas II raises them. Russia also institutes compulsory education for the masses and begins training a modern workforce.

-1930s: Russia feels less of the effects of the Depression and continues with "miraculous" industrialization, especially with help from the UK. US interests grow concerned as the Russian Bear seems to be growing stronger claws

-World War II leaves the Russians barely alive with significant American assistance, something they deny when Berlin falls and the war ends. Moscow and Washington are the last two major powers standing, with an Iron Curtain along recognizable lines. With the ascenion of Czar Ivan VI in 1948 at age 24, whose father has raised him to hold a tough autocratic line, the Empire of all Russias begins powerplays around the world against the "corrupt Americans and their toadies". A Space Race, computer age, and Internet later, Russian is the third most popular business language in the world (behind Chinese and English) and the Russian sphere stretches into Africa, eastern Europe, the Middle East, and even Japan. China is forging its own path while South America, Australia, India, Brazil, and South Africa work together as a third-power bloc.
 
I know of at least 1 TL that involves a cold war between the US & Imperial Russia- Snake Featherstone's Up With the Star.

Although it starts as an ACW POD & TL, as the TL develops, it involves an alt-WW1 with Britain, Germany, and later the US (as well as Italy & the Ottoman Empire) against France, Russia, & A-H, which the US/German/British alliance wins.

Really short version is that after the war, attempted revolution & civil war in Russia results in a 'White' victory that leads to a 'constitutional' figurehead Tsar as window dressing for what amounts to a revanchist fascist dictatorship that starts a round 2 in the 1940s with Russia, Italy, & a few others against the US, Britain, Germany, & Japan. The alt-WW2 ends as a bloody stalemate as both sides develop nuclear weapons & use them repeatedly on the battlefield (along with chemical weapons), & as things start heading towards MAD territory, both sides call it off, realizing that things are getting way out of hand.

Britain, Germany, & Japan are hit hard enough that they can't really be be considered first-rate powers anymore, and become supporting allies of the US, which enters a cold war with Russia that has some parallels with OTL, as Russia pursued traditional Tsarist goals of aggrandizement in Asia, India (split into rival proxy states), & the Mideast, as well attempting to exploit European decolonization for their own ends. The fascist government in Russia collapses in the early 1980s as over several years starting in the late 1970s, the Tsar of the time exploits dissatisfaction over Vietnam-type failures & a collapse of the fascist government in Italy to weaken the fascists & reassert his traditional powers, culminating in a purge of the fascists when he learns of a planned putsch against him & prepares a counterstroke using the military, followed by detente with the US.
 
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