As we all know, Russia became a Fascist dictatorship in 1934 after the weak Russian Republic which developed after the White Russians won the civil war was taken over by the Russian National Front, which took advantage of the Great Depression's economic impact to seize power via political maneuvering, but what if Russia didn't go Fascist? What PODs might be needed to avoid Russia going Fascist? How would Russia's neighbors have been affected if Russia didn't go Fascist? Was the Eurasian War (OOC: TTL's World War 2 analogue) inevitable even without a Fascist Russia or could it have been averted?
DBWI: No Fascist Russia
- Thread starter Whiteshore
- Start date
The usual argument is Russia loses the war badly absent the Facist dicipline. The converse is less internal trouble from the left.
Or another country starts the Eurasian War analogue (like a hypothetical Fascist or Communist Germany).
The obvious POD would be for the White Russians to lose in favour of the Red(?) Russians. Though given that communism just doesn't scale, you can run a village on it, but not a country, I'm not sure what you'd actually get for a government and economic form. They might call themselves communist, but as I said. Maybe some kind of coordination of collectives? It still sounds like a pretty weak form of government and an exceptionally fragile economy.
There's a reason why syndicalism became the main flavor of left-wing revolutionary thought.
I think a non-fascist Russian Empire still would have dominated Eurasia, having 200 million people, more than any other great power, and dominance over the world's oil resources, at the height of industrial warfare. Even historians of the former Poland agree that Russian hegemony was pretty much inevitable. However, a non-fascist Russia may have dominated Eurasia through economics and culture instead of war.
Certainly the population of Europe and Asia would have been higher without the war and forced resettlements.
Ultimately, I think the Phony War (OOC: Cold War) still would have happened, and it still would have been between the US and Russia (Germany was always continental focused, and the British Empire was going to break apart due to economics). But instead of the US having a loose sphere of allies and Russia having a ton of vassal states, we would see the US and Russia both focusing on soft power. Perhaps there would be a democratic US sphere and a monarchist Russian sphere.
Certainly the population of Europe and Asia would have been higher without the war and forced resettlements.
Ultimately, I think the Phony War (OOC: Cold War) still would have happened, and it still would have been between the US and Russia (Germany was always continental focused, and the British Empire was going to break apart due to economics). But instead of the US having a loose sphere of allies and Russia having a ton of vassal states, we would see the US and Russia both focusing on soft power. Perhaps there would be a democratic US sphere and a monarchist Russian sphere.
So, how do you think would the German Empire have developed without the rise of Fascist Russia? I'd imagine there wouldn't be the "frontline/fortress of the free world" mentality which developed after the Eurasian War, for starters.
Well Russia's ethnic minorities would likely avoid the forced resettlements.
An intact German Empire probably would have been the 3rd largest economy after the US and Russia, and its language probably spoken across Europe as a lingua franca second to English and French. While Western and Southern Germany, the core of the modern Republic, were always the wealthiest parts of Germany, the loss of the Elbe, and deportation of Germans in Eastern Europe to Central Asia and Manchuria, really gutted German influence.
Since the German Empire had been so Prussian dominated, I don't know if we can say a German Empire that retains its eastern territories would have been less militarized than the German Republic we have today. However the German Empire's foreign policy would have been focused on extending its own influence as a great power, as compared to the German Republic's foreign policy focused on cooperating with the US, France, and Britain and deterring the Russians.