It's fine, that's what following a thread is for isn't it? If you have to take a few months off, that's no big deal.
Feeble Constitution - A Red-and-Green Russia 1917 Timeline
- Thread starter Salvador79
- Start date
I'm happy to engage in fun speculation here in the meanwhile. For example, I wonder how different Bulgakov's short story Heart of a Dog would be in this timeline: he'd likely be less bitter about the new regime, but I imagine some of the same social currents would be present. Bulgakov would be no less contemptuous of Eugenics and what he'd see as reverse-meritocracy (in giving power over "their betters" to peasants).
If we're talking about the arts, I have some significant musings to wonder about! First of all, what's going on in music? OTL, several important composers (Stravinsky and Prokofiev) left Russia about this time, apparently motivated by financial concerns (certainly in the case of Stravinsky, perhaps in the case of Prokofiev). Although the greater stability of Russia here might suppress this a bit, I suspect that they would still wander off to make money elsewhere--I don't see Russia as being in a hurry to join the Berne Convention or suddenly becoming much richer, so their motivations will probably remain. I wonder if this might give space for other artists to arise, without the instability of the Civil War decreasing interest in music or the distorting pressure of Bolshevik cultural concerns shaping everything.
I also wonder about the more avant-garde artists like Tatlin or Lissitzky, the type who did things like Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge. I can't imagine that they're getting the same level of governmental support that they did IOTL (except maybe in areas where the far-left has more political support), but on the other hand Russia has been more generally stable, so I imagine private support would be more substantial (well, leaving aside the fact that private support in the early Bolshevik years is a bit of an oxymoron...) I also wonder about constructivist architecture, for many of the same reasons. On the other hand, the more pluralistic and democratic nature of Russia here means that there's unlikely to be a severe shift to Stalinist reaction that pretty much shuts them down--surely their ideas will fall out of favor or disappear eventually, but it's likely to be a more gradual and organic process.
Furthermore, I suppose that the wilder schemes and ideas around urban planning that some modernists in the Soviet Union proposed in the 1920s are unlikely to be taken as seriously here. Le Corbusier shows that they can still arise in a non-revolutionary and democratic context, but it's notable that the French were rather lukewarm to his bigger ideas, and I suspect the relatively orientation of Russian politics to the concerns of the peasants and rural life will tend to suppress interest in hyper-modernist super-industrial projects involving the wholesale construction or demolition of entire cities.
There's also some possibility of more minor (yet significant changes) like avoiding the death of Gumilyov (though the Cheka was still around...) or generally reducing the impact of the Civil War in terms of both killing people who might later become significant figures (but who were dead IOTL) and generally avoiding disruption and allowing people to continue creating artworks instead of having to deal with war and famine and all of the other various side effects of the October Revolution. I wonder whether Pasternak has already published (or is about to publish) My Sister, Life, for instance (and presumably in Russia instead of Berlin...!) given that Russian publishing houses are probably working better now than IOTL.
(Although maybe some of this has already been discussed and I've just forgotten it over the past few years?)
I also wonder about the more avant-garde artists like Tatlin or Lissitzky, the type who did things like Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge. I can't imagine that they're getting the same level of governmental support that they did IOTL (except maybe in areas where the far-left has more political support), but on the other hand Russia has been more generally stable, so I imagine private support would be more substantial (well, leaving aside the fact that private support in the early Bolshevik years is a bit of an oxymoron...) I also wonder about constructivist architecture, for many of the same reasons. On the other hand, the more pluralistic and democratic nature of Russia here means that there's unlikely to be a severe shift to Stalinist reaction that pretty much shuts them down--surely their ideas will fall out of favor or disappear eventually, but it's likely to be a more gradual and organic process.
Furthermore, I suppose that the wilder schemes and ideas around urban planning that some modernists in the Soviet Union proposed in the 1920s are unlikely to be taken as seriously here. Le Corbusier shows that they can still arise in a non-revolutionary and democratic context, but it's notable that the French were rather lukewarm to his bigger ideas, and I suspect the relatively orientation of Russian politics to the concerns of the peasants and rural life will tend to suppress interest in hyper-modernist super-industrial projects involving the wholesale construction or demolition of entire cities.
There's also some possibility of more minor (yet significant changes) like avoiding the death of Gumilyov (though the Cheka was still around...) or generally reducing the impact of the Civil War in terms of both killing people who might later become significant figures (but who were dead IOTL) and generally avoiding disruption and allowing people to continue creating artworks instead of having to deal with war and famine and all of the other various side effects of the October Revolution. I wonder whether Pasternak has already published (or is about to publish) My Sister, Life, for instance (and presumably in Russia instead of Berlin...!) given that Russian publishing houses are probably working better now than IOTL.
(Although maybe some of this has already been discussed and I've just forgotten it over the past few years?)
Excellent suggestion. I'll be thinking about what aspects of the new UoE systems (because the Revolution has brought forth quite a variety of new social systems, from Turkestan to Latvia) he - or similar satirists - might especially make fun of. It might even be the stuff of a newspaper update, in the style of the Krokodil or the Canard enchainé, but I'm not sure I could pull that off with my writing skills even when I have the time. Maybe it would already be something for the election year coverage... but I feel quite out of my capabilities there. Before the electoral circus starts, beside eugenics and reforms of immobile property (which occurred ITTL, too) I suppose all sorts of communitarist utopianisms as well as narrow-minded emphases on revolutionary or democratic "virtues", behind whose thin veil older bigotry shines through, would invite satirisation...
I'll try to come back with replies to @Workable Goblin's excellent suggestions and questions, too, later.
There was reason why I only asked weather or not he is still alive
. There are other like Gumilyov that could have their deaths significantly postponed or ones like Bulgakov who still have years ahead of them even if they die in schedule.Some of this has been touched upon in Update 90, although certainly not very comprehensive.
The UoE is indeed not signing the Berne Convention around this time. Narodnik skepticism towards extensive property rights falls on the fertile ground of Russia being more of a "second implementer" or catcher-up in terms of technological innovations in various non-artistic domains (in the arts, Russia was very much at the forefront of developments), and in the emerging Muscovite school of political economy (remember, there is an emerging rivalry between a Narodnik-leaning intellectual centre in Moscow and a Marxist-leaning intellectual centre in Petrograd), the idea has already been formulated that intellectual property, from copyright of musical compositions to patents for vaccines or machines, is an unfounded state-enforced monopoly, and that instead of granting and protecting such intellectual property, revolutionary democratic regimes should promote public knowledge, learning and popularisation of all and any new ideas and creations.
There are serious financial limits to drawing from this the consequence of ample state stipends and a massive expansion of museums, theatres etc., though, so Stravinsky, Prokofiev and many others might still be tempted to make money elsewhere. BUT, leaving aside the fact that Stravinsky was not exactly super-successful before the Great War in Paris, this "making money abroad" need not be equated with their OTL exile, which was more or less absolute. The Russian expatriate diaspora is way smaller than they were IOTL, and the reasons not to go back to Russia are much fewer, the borders are more permeable, so working a while in Paris and then touring the UoE, then going yet elsewhere is always an option.
Most of them, even people like Kandinsky who fled IOTL, will stay and work in Russia, which stays very much the centre of abstract avant-garde art. The scene is very pluralistic, and of course, as you yourself said below, the mere absence of Bolshevik dictatorship does not mean there won't be new trends, away from pre-war trends. The Great War inevitably has shaped people deeply, and so have the Revolutions. Where things are drifting is something I've been musing about for quite a while, but I've not settled on answers yet.
Among the new SR elites, ideas not unlike those described in the speech by Santeri Alkio are popular: overcoming the divide between countryside and city, by bringing the necessary amenities of urban life - industry, higher education, hospitals etc. - into the countryside, spreading them decentrally across smaller towns instead of concentrating the population in large industrial cities. Concepts like the Garden City enjoy great popularity in such circles, as a new vision which straddles the town/countryside divide.
But does that mean that this is really how the new UoE will look like in a few decades? Like with Le Corbusier and post-war Le Havre, there are cities which have been devastated by the Great War. These cities all lie in the Western periphery of the Union, they are often large industrial hubs like Riga or Petrograd, and - these two are a particularly good example of the following - they tend to have IRSDLP communal majorities, mayors etc. who don't share this "idyllic nonsense" and who can't afford it, either: they need to rebuild fast for large amounts of people. Here, faster developments in pre-fabricated building might be a more important factor shaping urban outlook in the larger picture. WHich does not mean that a few prestigious landmarks here or there aren't shaped by ambitious architects and funded by politicians who want to immortalise themselves.
Pasternak is most probably published by a Petrograd publishing house. As for Gumilyov, his OTL encounter with Chekists was way after TTL's VeCheKa is dissolved, so he survives. And with him, I am fairly sure that we're seeing a writer who is spearheading a trend which is only just emerging to shine. Acmeism anticipated a style which, for example in Weimar Germany had its heyday in the 1920s as "Neue Sachlichkeit", and for which there are parallels as far afield as Hemingway (which has already appeared ITTL) and young anti-Confucianists in China. An industrialising society with a lively press landscape and an increasingly literate population will be an avid audience for clarity-oriented, sobre, sometimes slightly satirical, observations of what goes on in society, and who is going to like psychologically realistic characters in lively plots, preferrably set once in a while in exotic surroundings (which Gumilyov appears to have loved as much as Hemingway).
One Hundred and Eight: Savinkov's Candidacy (February 1922)
OK, I've scraped together all the time I could find, and here is a new little update, with which the electoral circus of 1922 is officially opened!!
(By the way, thanks a lot for the two Turtledove nominations for this TL! I feel very flattered. And motivated, evidently...)
Riga (Latvian Federative Republic of the Union of Equals): Rītausma [1], February 22nd, 1922, p. 1:
THE DANGERS OF ONE RECKLESS CANDIDATE
Yesterday in Tashkent, a dark shadow has fallen over this big election year. Yesterday’s nomination of Boris Savinkov as the candidate of the Socialist Revolutionary Party of Turkestan for the Presidency of the Union was a historical mistake and is bound to have fatal consequences on many different levels: the course which his campaign has taken, the agenda he stands for, and how he walked away with his nomination.
Savinkov’s campaign in Turkestan does not deserve to be called “electoral”. It was a chain of instigations, exculpations and exhortations of national and racial conflicts. Out of nowhere, he had appeared with his special commissioner camarilla [2], taken over a small and irrelevant section of the party and pushed its old leadership aside. The formation of his campaign team and especially how he “mobilised voters”, always clad in uniform, more often than not resembled the rallying of Greater Russian militias against the constitutional authorities especially in Kyrgystan [3].
His political platform is laying dynamite in the foundation of our feeble federalism: What he proposes to do as President is a lot of follies that will incite revolts and protests over land use and access to water in some of the most precarious regions of the Union. How he proposes to legislate these policies is outright unconstitutional. While plebiscites may have their merits on a local and regional scale [4], if all segments of society agree on this means of immediate and simplified decision-making, their unrestricted implementation on a Union-wide level is an unconcealed threat to the autonomy and rights of the Federative Republics. [5] Savinkov’s ideas not only have nothing in common with those held by the Progressive Peasant Party of Latvia – they are also dangerously incompatible with the entire framework of the Republic which we have proudly defended.
Now, the danger of Boris Savinkov truly becoming the next President, or even the official Green candidate, is certainly limited, as Volsky’s resounding victories in the Olonets and Vyatka races clearly show – oblasts whose electors the SRs have good chances to win, in contrast to Turkestan’s. Regardless, though, the way in which Savinkov has violated the statute of his own party and pocketed a separate list of signatures instead of merely sending delegates to the assembly of the parties affiliated to the Green Internationale, as the SRs have committed themselves to do, is going to provide a bad example for others elsewhere. [6] And in this case, our own federative republic is most likely to be just one such “elsewhere”. It is easy to predict that Karlis Ulmanis is soon going to address the press and restate the Farmers’ Union’s opinion that the Alliance of Agrarian Lists in Latvia should collect their own list of signatures for a candidate of their own – by whom he means himself, and with which he could run away and join any obscure and hopeless Republics’ Rights campaign or anything of the sort, should he find the choice for the official (most likely Socialist Revolutionary) Green presidential candidate unpalatable. If he does that, then all progressive agrarians should in turn withdraw their commitment to a common nomination campaign with the Farmers’ Union. But this would be most lamentable. Our only chance to exert influence, in the campaign and in the later government of a candidate we have elected into office, is if we stand united, instead of splintering indefinitely. Unfortunately, Savinkov’s one-man show in Turkestan has made agrarian unity on our shores unlikely, too. If our disunity should really hand the presidency to a Marxist or, Heaven forbid, to the "Gatherers" [7], then he would have pulled quite a self-defeating stunt indeed.
[1] This is a newspaper (whose name, once again, means “Dawn”, or “Aurora”) I made up because I could not ascertain historical left-agrarian Latvian interwar newspapers. But that is what it is: the newspaper of a left-agrarian Latvian party, akin to OTL’s “Latvian Agrarian Union of the Landless”, which has entered into an electoral alliance with Ulmanis’ more conservative “Farmers’ Union” and a number of other agrarian parties. The reason for the formation of this electoral alliance is that Prime Minister Peteris Stucka and his IRSDLP government have amended the electoral system so that over half of the seats in the next Saeima will be awarded through FPTP. Officially, they seek to prevent an “Estonian situation” – their neighboring republic has seen nine prime ministers come and go in little over three years in which no majority coalition in the Maanukogu has ever proved stable. Implicitly, though, the IRSDLP hopes that FPTP is going to benefit them and only them as the single largest party.
[2] Here is Boris Savinkov’s biography after the PoD: Like other defencist Narodniks, he had supported Prince Lvov’s provisional government. When Kerensky and the social democratic emissaries from the Petrograd Soviet called Lvov’s bluff and took over power directly, Savinkov, who had not been in on the game, felt personally betrayed by Kerensky (whom he came to distrust IOTL, too). He was elected to the Constituent Assembly, where he was one of very few SRs who did not vote for Chernov as Supreme Commissioner because he considered him too dovish and soft (and because he still remembered Chernov’s wise-assed distancing from terrorists like himself with resentment. As the November Realignment began to announce itself in 1917, he did not join the inner circle of conspirators who elevated Kamkov as Supreme Commissioner, either, this time not only because he rejected Kamkov’s stance on the war even more, but also because he abhorred the thought of an SR coalition with whom he saw as intellectually arrogant, anti-populist “Marxist Jews”. But he did jump on the bandwagon early enough to become one of the members of the directory of the VeCheKa in November 1917 and throughout 1918, hence the allusion of his other friends from “the special commission”. With the VeCheKa’s dissolution by Avksentiev, Savinkov was sidelined once again, and so he left the political centre-stage for a while and joined a detachment of “International Cossacks” deployed to Germany, where he also partook in taking over Berlin in May 1919 (hence his decorations). He has since sought to prepare the ground for a re-entry onto the political scene by consolidating his manifold connections in military and intelligence circles, including some very influential people in his coterie. He knew in advance that especially Kyrgystan was likely to descend into violent conflict, and, encouraged by powerful friends, seized his opportunity to create an entirely new movement within the SR which is fairly alien to how Narodnichestvo has generally developed so far in the UoE (well, so is he).
[3] The backdrop of this is that throughout 1921, in the Kyrgyz Republic, indigenous councils have at last begun their offensive against irrigation projects begun in tsarist times as well as large-scale reconversions of cotton plantations into pastures. This caused simmering conflicts between Russian and Ukrainian colonists on the one hand, and the indigenous majority in the region to erupt into open violence. Savinkov’s campaign has blamed the government of the Kyrgyz Republic for such “backwardness and prejudiced irrationality in agricultural planning” and spelt out an agenda for massive “nation-wide improvement schemes”, involving more irrigation instead of less, more support for cash crops and machinisation instead of less, and, what is more importantly, he has announced Union-wide plebiscites (a tool which isn’t even in the UoE constitution, but which he wants to put there by, you guessed it, plebiscite!) to implement it Union-wide. That is plain Great Russianism veiled in agricultural and direct-democratic terms. Thus, while the SRs elsewhere have generally become strongly identified with the federal project, with national, cultural and regional autonomy etc., Savinkov’s Turkestani section is now rabidly centralist and against divergent paths in the federative republics self-governed by minorities, and his new-formed Green Guards are basically colonist militia aimed not so much against “enemies of the revolution” (like they had been across much of the Union in 1917 and 1918) but against their Kyrgyz neighbors.
[4] Something which OTL was not a topic in the interwar Baltic states. The SR’s search for new political projects and frameworks for the emerging Republican polity and their closer connection to populist-leftist parties elsewhere is showing here, too – in this case, the goal of direct democracy has been strengthened by the Canadian Farmer-Labour lists espousing it. It does connect with existing Narodnik ideas – the soviets are an instrument of direct democracy, too, after all, and so has the idea of imitating the practices of some US states to nominate presidential candidates in local and regional gatherings.
[5] Evidently, in a plebiscite – at least in its simplest form, as Savinkov now proposes it –, the vastly greater number of Russians could crowd out all other nationalities combined; a fact against which the Constitution has guarded with a careful balance of institutional arithmetics, all of which would be unhinged with unrestricted plebiscites.
[6] The constitution of the UoE only states the constituencies in which electors are chosen and the modalities of the official presidential election as well as that candidates need a certain amount of signatures. Now, because candidacies from small parties have next to no chance, and the IRSDLP is a unified party anyway, the SRs and other agrarian parties have agreed to choose a common candidate together in a Congress of parties affiliated to the Agrarian Internationale, which means that oblast and FR sections of the SR are bound to nominate delegates to that Congress and instruct them which candidate to support, not collect lists of signatures for that candidate already. Savinkov has done the latter now. That implies that he could always hand in his candidacy on his own, if he does not get the nomination on the big Union-wide congress – or he could support another candidate’s campaign if his voters are deemed to follow his advice, which in his case they might. As our left-agrarian Latvian newspaper will go on to imply, this could set a bad example for non-SR members of the Green Internationale to do the same, which might threaten the entire bloc’s coherence. But it is a very wide tent anyway...
[7] As announced in the last regular update, a bunch of released prisoners, mostly former Octobrists and right-KDs, have announced to form a party or rather a movement around a common electoral option of their own, too, because they think they have a better chance than the KDs. These are the "Gatherers" to which this newspaper alludes: the new "Gathering for the Salvation of the Motherland".
(By the way, thanks a lot for the two Turtledove nominations for this TL! I feel very flattered. And motivated, evidently...)
Riga (Latvian Federative Republic of the Union of Equals): Rītausma [1], February 22nd, 1922, p. 1:
THE DANGERS OF ONE RECKLESS CANDIDATE
Yesterday in Tashkent, a dark shadow has fallen over this big election year. Yesterday’s nomination of Boris Savinkov as the candidate of the Socialist Revolutionary Party of Turkestan for the Presidency of the Union was a historical mistake and is bound to have fatal consequences on many different levels: the course which his campaign has taken, the agenda he stands for, and how he walked away with his nomination.
Savinkov’s campaign in Turkestan does not deserve to be called “electoral”. It was a chain of instigations, exculpations and exhortations of national and racial conflicts. Out of nowhere, he had appeared with his special commissioner camarilla [2], taken over a small and irrelevant section of the party and pushed its old leadership aside. The formation of his campaign team and especially how he “mobilised voters”, always clad in uniform, more often than not resembled the rallying of Greater Russian militias against the constitutional authorities especially in Kyrgystan [3].
His political platform is laying dynamite in the foundation of our feeble federalism: What he proposes to do as President is a lot of follies that will incite revolts and protests over land use and access to water in some of the most precarious regions of the Union. How he proposes to legislate these policies is outright unconstitutional. While plebiscites may have their merits on a local and regional scale [4], if all segments of society agree on this means of immediate and simplified decision-making, their unrestricted implementation on a Union-wide level is an unconcealed threat to the autonomy and rights of the Federative Republics. [5] Savinkov’s ideas not only have nothing in common with those held by the Progressive Peasant Party of Latvia – they are also dangerously incompatible with the entire framework of the Republic which we have proudly defended.
Now, the danger of Boris Savinkov truly becoming the next President, or even the official Green candidate, is certainly limited, as Volsky’s resounding victories in the Olonets and Vyatka races clearly show – oblasts whose electors the SRs have good chances to win, in contrast to Turkestan’s. Regardless, though, the way in which Savinkov has violated the statute of his own party and pocketed a separate list of signatures instead of merely sending delegates to the assembly of the parties affiliated to the Green Internationale, as the SRs have committed themselves to do, is going to provide a bad example for others elsewhere. [6] And in this case, our own federative republic is most likely to be just one such “elsewhere”. It is easy to predict that Karlis Ulmanis is soon going to address the press and restate the Farmers’ Union’s opinion that the Alliance of Agrarian Lists in Latvia should collect their own list of signatures for a candidate of their own – by whom he means himself, and with which he could run away and join any obscure and hopeless Republics’ Rights campaign or anything of the sort, should he find the choice for the official (most likely Socialist Revolutionary) Green presidential candidate unpalatable. If he does that, then all progressive agrarians should in turn withdraw their commitment to a common nomination campaign with the Farmers’ Union. But this would be most lamentable. Our only chance to exert influence, in the campaign and in the later government of a candidate we have elected into office, is if we stand united, instead of splintering indefinitely. Unfortunately, Savinkov’s one-man show in Turkestan has made agrarian unity on our shores unlikely, too. If our disunity should really hand the presidency to a Marxist or, Heaven forbid, to the "Gatherers" [7], then he would have pulled quite a self-defeating stunt indeed.
[1] This is a newspaper (whose name, once again, means “Dawn”, or “Aurora”) I made up because I could not ascertain historical left-agrarian Latvian interwar newspapers. But that is what it is: the newspaper of a left-agrarian Latvian party, akin to OTL’s “Latvian Agrarian Union of the Landless”, which has entered into an electoral alliance with Ulmanis’ more conservative “Farmers’ Union” and a number of other agrarian parties. The reason for the formation of this electoral alliance is that Prime Minister Peteris Stucka and his IRSDLP government have amended the electoral system so that over half of the seats in the next Saeima will be awarded through FPTP. Officially, they seek to prevent an “Estonian situation” – their neighboring republic has seen nine prime ministers come and go in little over three years in which no majority coalition in the Maanukogu has ever proved stable. Implicitly, though, the IRSDLP hopes that FPTP is going to benefit them and only them as the single largest party.
[2] Here is Boris Savinkov’s biography after the PoD: Like other defencist Narodniks, he had supported Prince Lvov’s provisional government. When Kerensky and the social democratic emissaries from the Petrograd Soviet called Lvov’s bluff and took over power directly, Savinkov, who had not been in on the game, felt personally betrayed by Kerensky (whom he came to distrust IOTL, too). He was elected to the Constituent Assembly, where he was one of very few SRs who did not vote for Chernov as Supreme Commissioner because he considered him too dovish and soft (and because he still remembered Chernov’s wise-assed distancing from terrorists like himself with resentment. As the November Realignment began to announce itself in 1917, he did not join the inner circle of conspirators who elevated Kamkov as Supreme Commissioner, either, this time not only because he rejected Kamkov’s stance on the war even more, but also because he abhorred the thought of an SR coalition with whom he saw as intellectually arrogant, anti-populist “Marxist Jews”. But he did jump on the bandwagon early enough to become one of the members of the directory of the VeCheKa in November 1917 and throughout 1918, hence the allusion of his other friends from “the special commission”. With the VeCheKa’s dissolution by Avksentiev, Savinkov was sidelined once again, and so he left the political centre-stage for a while and joined a detachment of “International Cossacks” deployed to Germany, where he also partook in taking over Berlin in May 1919 (hence his decorations). He has since sought to prepare the ground for a re-entry onto the political scene by consolidating his manifold connections in military and intelligence circles, including some very influential people in his coterie. He knew in advance that especially Kyrgystan was likely to descend into violent conflict, and, encouraged by powerful friends, seized his opportunity to create an entirely new movement within the SR which is fairly alien to how Narodnichestvo has generally developed so far in the UoE (well, so is he).
[3] The backdrop of this is that throughout 1921, in the Kyrgyz Republic, indigenous councils have at last begun their offensive against irrigation projects begun in tsarist times as well as large-scale reconversions of cotton plantations into pastures. This caused simmering conflicts between Russian and Ukrainian colonists on the one hand, and the indigenous majority in the region to erupt into open violence. Savinkov’s campaign has blamed the government of the Kyrgyz Republic for such “backwardness and prejudiced irrationality in agricultural planning” and spelt out an agenda for massive “nation-wide improvement schemes”, involving more irrigation instead of less, more support for cash crops and machinisation instead of less, and, what is more importantly, he has announced Union-wide plebiscites (a tool which isn’t even in the UoE constitution, but which he wants to put there by, you guessed it, plebiscite!) to implement it Union-wide. That is plain Great Russianism veiled in agricultural and direct-democratic terms. Thus, while the SRs elsewhere have generally become strongly identified with the federal project, with national, cultural and regional autonomy etc., Savinkov’s Turkestani section is now rabidly centralist and against divergent paths in the federative republics self-governed by minorities, and his new-formed Green Guards are basically colonist militia aimed not so much against “enemies of the revolution” (like they had been across much of the Union in 1917 and 1918) but against their Kyrgyz neighbors.
[4] Something which OTL was not a topic in the interwar Baltic states. The SR’s search for new political projects and frameworks for the emerging Republican polity and their closer connection to populist-leftist parties elsewhere is showing here, too – in this case, the goal of direct democracy has been strengthened by the Canadian Farmer-Labour lists espousing it. It does connect with existing Narodnik ideas – the soviets are an instrument of direct democracy, too, after all, and so has the idea of imitating the practices of some US states to nominate presidential candidates in local and regional gatherings.
[5] Evidently, in a plebiscite – at least in its simplest form, as Savinkov now proposes it –, the vastly greater number of Russians could crowd out all other nationalities combined; a fact against which the Constitution has guarded with a careful balance of institutional arithmetics, all of which would be unhinged with unrestricted plebiscites.
[6] The constitution of the UoE only states the constituencies in which electors are chosen and the modalities of the official presidential election as well as that candidates need a certain amount of signatures. Now, because candidacies from small parties have next to no chance, and the IRSDLP is a unified party anyway, the SRs and other agrarian parties have agreed to choose a common candidate together in a Congress of parties affiliated to the Agrarian Internationale, which means that oblast and FR sections of the SR are bound to nominate delegates to that Congress and instruct them which candidate to support, not collect lists of signatures for that candidate already. Savinkov has done the latter now. That implies that he could always hand in his candidacy on his own, if he does not get the nomination on the big Union-wide congress – or he could support another candidate’s campaign if his voters are deemed to follow his advice, which in his case they might. As our left-agrarian Latvian newspaper will go on to imply, this could set a bad example for non-SR members of the Green Internationale to do the same, which might threaten the entire bloc’s coherence. But it is a very wide tent anyway...
[7] As announced in the last regular update, a bunch of released prisoners, mostly former Octobrists and right-KDs, have announced to form a party or rather a movement around a common electoral option of their own, too, because they think they have a better chance than the KDs. These are the "Gatherers" to which this newspaper alludes: the new "Gathering for the Salvation of the Motherland".
Go for a little of Burocratic language (burocratese) and they can be called officiallly 'Territory at special administration' aka Territori ad amministrazione speciale but generally shortned in 'Territory' or Territorio. If you don't want Territory, zone (zona) mean the same thing.
Thanks for the help!
So that is canonised:
The Eritrean Territory under Special Administration and the Somali Territory under Special Administration are hereby declared integral parts of the Mediterranean League
The short answer is probably: "Still in a difficult phase of transition."
The slightly longer answer is:
Compared to the situation before the last elections, i.e. in 1918, various economic sectors and, from our present perspective, important indicators have somewhat stabilised, but that's not necessarily mirroring how people experience it in their lives. And this time - you hit the nail on the head - the economic situation is going to be a much bigger topic than in 1918, when a coalition of the Revolutionary parties had just won the war and were generally reinforced across the board because of widespread popular support for "the new system" over "the old", and the SRs mostly won against the SDs in most parts of Russia and Ukraine because, while both parties were seen as parties of the Revolution, the SRs were also seen as the party of the peasantry and the IRSDLP as the party of the industrial workers.
This time, the performance of the SRs and other governing parties is going to be critically evaluated by some voters - others will loyally vote what is becoming "their party". Other issues are going to play a role, too, but the economy is a big factor. And here, the SRs are not really exactly clear about where they're heading. I'll elaborate more on various topics and projects which dominate the debate here and there, but it's not as if they had a blueprint like apparently Lenin had it IOTL, and while years of post-revolutionary reality have concretised things, that doesn't necessarily work towards a grand idea. Therefore, voting SR amounts - to the "swing voters" at least - to implicitly saying "Don't change the way it is right now too much; let's have more of what he had in the past few years." If the economy is perceived to be in good shape, and you're doing personally better than you had done before, then that's your logical choice. What exactly voting IRSDLP means as a program is also not as set in stone as one might think - I'll come to that if I have time - but as a rough feeling, everyone knows it would mean "more radical reforms aimed at improving the workers' lot", while voting for bourgeois parties means you're generally opposed to the socialist reforms. If you're not doing too well, or you perceive the situation as generally bad, you might choose one of these two options, probably depending on your social background. All of this is grossly oversimplified, of course, and not only because it omits the national and religious peculiarities and the way regional parties align with the larger Union-wide blocs. It's all a bit in flux in 1922, though, and the absence of a general feeling that the country is going just wonderful is probably contributing to this fluidity, which is of course a bad sign for the SRs. It could not be any other way - all structural reforms cause disruptions, and 1919-22 has seen an economic downturn across the world IOTL and ITTL no less. On the other hand, time has also worked in favour of strengthening patronage/clientelist networks across the territory, and the general impression isn't utterly catstrophic, either.
And the long answer, which really still leaves lots of things uncovered, is - to the best of my current abilities... so if you see incongruities or wish to add things etc., don't hestitate to comment! - probably along these lines:
Agriculture and Provisioning
Agriculture is of utmost importance, not only because it dominates the gross domestic product and occupation of the majority of the Union's population, but also because it provides BREAD. Agriculture had been in a horrible shape in 1918. It has recovered considerably since then. New structures after the repartitioning are beginning to work, new investments have been made (not only because so many horses have perished in the war so that a new start had to be made anyway) and generally high prices have incentivised production across the Union. Now, as has been described a few updates ago, the drought has hit certain regions in Southern Russia and Turkestan pretty hard in 1920 and 1921, so things are not at all rosy and overall production probably hasn't risen by a large percentage because of these climatic adversities. In many regions not hit by this drought, though, 1920 and 1921 have continued to be good years, and the way the government and the soviets have handled the crisis (immediately by buying up foodstuff from other regions and providing it to precarious segments of the population in the famine zones so that the pressure there is reduced, and middle-term by propping up all the farmers and co-ops from those regions who couldn't repay any of their ISOMA obligations in those years either through employment in other economic sectors or through influencing the ISOMA boards towards leniency), while criticised here and there for not doing quite enough, has not been too unpopular... with either the peasantry or the population in the regions hit by the drought. Petrograders and Muscovites, and dwellers of many other cities across the Union, be they more proletarian or more middle-class, complain about the continually rising prices for foodstuff. That's in part because of ongoing inflation, but also of course because this crisis-management has done nothing to keep prices down at all.
But generally, Agriculture is the economic segment doing comparatively best, as was to be expected from an SR government, but providing the cities with everything everyone needs at affordable prices is still difficult. 1922 is going to show a more benevolent climate - well, it did in OTL, so why would it not ITTL? -, so 1922's harvest should be more bountiful than that of the previous years. This could bring down bread prices just in time for the hot phase of the electoral campaign, if things go very well for the SRs.
Industry, the Crafts, Wages and Overall Employment
Industry had been the fastest-growing sector prior to the Revolution, and then nose-dived in 1917 with the unrest, the transformations, and the financial meltdown. After the Revolution, the situation is rather heterogeneous. In Russia, many of the bankrupt factories and quite a few more are worker-run now, officially sanctioned by local soviets, and while some of them have proved astonishingly creative in adapting to the new circumstances, found new providers and clients and viable ways to organsie their work internally and thus have increased their output again, many more have not, as is to be expected. The majority of Russia's industry which is still privately owned - albeit under varyingly strict labour rules - is in part doing even worse, as they, too, have been affected by the implosion of trade contacts and financial industry, but they often don't find it easier than the afore-mentioned worker co-ops to integrate into the alternative networks of economic exchange which have grown after the Revolution, e.g. through the ISOMA. Labour conflicts continue to fester there, and there is still widespread insecurity, which is why some candidates even outside of the bourgeois spectrum are going to call for an "economic constitution" in which the soviets should commit themselves to some reliable ground rules which apply in all of Russia for the foreseeable future.
The only industrial enterprises recovering relatively fast are those with foreign direct capital investment (whom Avksentiev has protected and pushed consecutive supreme soviets to accept these terms; this has not been seriously challenged under Volsky). They have grown accustomed to dealing with the ISOMA when selling tractors to co-ops (but this has become easier over the past few years, see below), they're selling locomotives to the state, they're involved in extracting much of the Russian petrol of which a decent part is exported.
The way things are, the Russian and the Union government and soviet-based public entities are the primary drivers of industrial development now, providing orders/demand and often the necessary loans for it, too. This means that political priorities affect industrial development greatly. And on the political agenda, rural mechanisation, railroad and other infrastructure, housing and healthcare are way up. Resource extraction is mostly working under full steam again, too. Wartime-to-peace conversion was rough like everywhere, but Russia's collapse in 1917 meant that it had gone through many of its problems early on. Overall, 1922 industrial output probably still hasn't reached 1916 levels, though, and that affects living standards of the proletariat. Even quite a few of those workers who now own their factories make less than their 1914 wages, purchasing power-wise. That's not making them happy, but the conclusions they're drawing from that can be manifold.
In lots of niches, crafters have stopped some of the gaps left open by the industrial convulsions: if no new machinery is being produced, you need people to repair the old, as the Cuban example most vividly shows us for decades now. While this is not exactly good for overall labour productivity, it smoothes over the worst problems for the time being, and it's been quite a booming economic sector after the Revolution. The soviets are not always strict with professional norms and qualification requirements, and so many a jobless (or otherwise income-less) factory worker now dabbles in fixing this and improvising that. Who knows what these countless shabby little workshops will look like in a few years' time...
There aren't armies of unemployed across Russia, but a lot of people are presently under-employed, or working precariously.
Services
Outside of finances, the Revolution has created winners and losers amidst those educated town-dwellers who earn their living behind office desks and lecterns, in lab coats or doctors’ overalls. The ambitious social programmes of the Russian Federative Republic (from education to healthcare) are creating jobs here, a good part of which are often being filled with loyal enthusiasts of the Revolution or, even more narrowly, party members. Among this social group, there have been not few who have lost immobile property or financial fortunes in the repartitioning and the financial meltdown. Therefore, strong supporters and staunch enemies of the Revolution are among this growing social class, and they are doing differently economically, even though the whole segment is in full growth.
Well, except for finances maybe. But even here, the new structures need people with background knowledge to work in them, and some of them come from the bankrupt private banking system. Banks across the entire former Rouble zone (i.e. except for Finland) have crashed in 1917 and continued to do so in 1918. Except for a few branches of foreign banks, there is very little left of the former Empire’s budding banking sector. Its role in providing credit for all other economic sectors has been taken over by governments and alternative public structures like the ISOMA. Speaking of the latter: The ISOMA has undergone an important transformation over the course of 1920ff. Since the Russian and Union governments have increasingly turned to them, too, in the financial organization and cushioning of their various big investment projects, the ISOMA has become increasingly monetised, too. Instead of merely exchanging complex “quid pro quo” relations, you could abstractly refer to them as “labour notes”, they now also receive cash from the government which they can allocate and receive back, which helps in dealings with the world outside Russia, but also changes the ISOMA’s character deeply. I’ll have to come back to that at some later point in time. The ISOMA’s handled credit value is still difficult to estimate because big parts of it are still unmonetised, but I would roughly say that between 1919 and 1922, it has multiplied at least twentifold, if not more. It has become a huge “Social Credit” machine, and its various branches, tied to local and regional soviets and their oversight, are employing thousands of people by now.
Outside Russia
Russia is the biggest, but not the only federative republic. Elsewhere, the situation is markedly different. Finland, for example, has stabilised much faster after its civil war, and especially its industry is faring a lot better than Russia’s. So does Latvia – even though its IRSDLP government has taken much bolder steps, providing workers in all factories with more than 50 employees with 50.1 % of the shares by law and subjecting their activities to a sort of government-overseen cameralism which is not exactly central planning and not syndicalism, either, but a bit of both with some private elements left. But while owners (few of whom were actual Latvians, which helped) have howled, the structures are clear for everyone now, and Riga is churning out machinery, chemical products etc. at levels comparable to those of 1914.
More should be said about the situation in other federative republics, but not today. I’ll come back to this topic when I find the time.
Ethnic chauvinism, plebiscitarism, color-coded paramilitary forces... I must admit that I wasn't expecting the Socialist Revolutionaries to be the one political formation in the UoE to go Fascist. Before you reply, yes, I know that it's only the Turkestani branch of the Party, which was hijacked by a demagogue who didn't care all that much for the tenets of narodnichestvo to begin with... but it's still an unexpected turn of events (my Roubles were on the Kadets, dammit!).
Speaking of plebisicites, the TL is in early 1922, which means (if I remember correctly) that the post-WW1 plebiscites to award the contested border territories to this or that nation should have already been held. Care to give us a rundown of their results, please? 🙏
Speaking of plebisicites, the TL is in early 1922, which means (if I remember correctly) that the post-WW1 plebiscites to award the contested border territories to this or that nation should have already been held. Care to give us a rundown of their results, please? 🙏
Kadets were never going anywhere near power after 1917 for at least half a century, and the only potent alternative to the SRs are the IRSDLP.
As for Savinkov, it looks to me like the Boulanger moment of Russia. Now, he is so antagonistic he may simply unite everyone against him.
???
I think you must have misunderstood my post.
I meant that I was betting on the Russian flavor of alt-Fascism to rise among the ranks of the Kadet Party, not that the Kadets would rise to power in the UoE as a Fascist party.
Color-coded paramilitary forces predate this 1922 electoral campaign. The Black Hundreds began it, and the RSDLP formed its Red Guards in the Revolution, the SRs followed immediately during the soviet interregnum.
As you say below, the SRs as a whole going fascist would still take a lot. @galileo-034 probably aptly calls it a Boulangist moment.
But we have to take into account that Populism has always been and will always be vulnerable / inclined to such tendencies. In Romania, for example, the first wave of Narodniks (they were called "Poporanisti" there) basically fizzled out after they made a big wave because they developed an anti-semitic wing which brawled with the non-antisemitic wing and caused those who found the anti-semitic trend revulsive to relapse into a strand of liberalism. The US Populists had their dose of anti-semitic chauvinism, too, so I've heard.
Savinkov had been one of the leading figures of the SRs in the first years of the 20th century. With Azef, who would turn out to be an Okhrana spy, he led the militant/terrorist action group. While he had Marxist leanings before that, I would not say that he cared little for narodnichestvo at all. Reading his "Pale Horse", you get the impression that he was a man of action first and foremost, but he was also someone who thought Russia's unique path beyond capitalism had no chance if it was allowed to fall apart and unravel into myriads of weak entities (or prostrate itself before the Germans, as he feared with Kerensky and then even more with the Bolsheviks).
Now, I know the way I construed him (and I had to fight against the Savinkov constructed by Kaiserreich, yet realize where the roots of this representation lay in historical truth) has some uncanny parallels with Benito Mussolini of OTL, and I would agree with you that his campaign in Turkestan has proto-fascist elements to it. But I would argue that Savinkov was more of a Narodnik throughout his political life than Benny ever was a socialist.
As for the Kadets, their lurch to the Right is of a decidedly different taste. Savinkov in Turkestan is appealing to colonists under pressure in one of the non-Russian federative republics. There, the Kadets are especially ill-suited to profit from it since they've historically been closely tied to Muslim political groups. Well, there could be a lone leader pulling a Savinkov there, too, there always could. But the way most Kadets have marched in the past couple of years is towards a mixture of economic anti-socialism (market liberalism plus property fetishism / opposition to the repartitioning), political nationalism and virulent opposition to the soviet elements of the Russian constitution (and the real and perceived corruption they foster). While they're still harboring many people with socially and culturally liberal views, and while they still share an emphatically pro-modernist stance and an enthusiasm for "progress" (well, at least that view of it which developed in the late 19th century), they have become more and more of a conservative force. Now, they have new rivals in that segment, as former Octobrists and Progressives are coming back onto the political scene. They all compete for educated and propertied voters with liberal-to-conservative leanings, and while they all turn a blind eye to how people with ultra-reactionary leanings on the fringes share their opposition to socialism, I don't think any of them has yet discovered the concept or found the confidence within them to master the game of Mass Politics. They're a decidedly "anti-ochlocratic" force, if you will. Lurching to the Right, yes, but quite a few important elements of fascism are missing here.
I'll work on a map and background expalanations to answer that question. Thanks for bringing it up. Will take a bit of time, though. (No, this is not going to be another "Central Asia map" thing, but a week or so might be needed, since I really don't have much time. I know I keep repeating that.) Not all plebiscites have actually been held, but most of them, yes.
Last edited:
I have been wondering if it was Volskys intent to weaken the right. Sure kadets were not the threat IRSDLP are but nice play still.🤔
Oh, it's not that they exist, mind you. I know they are in good company in Republican Russia's recent past. It's more the way they're presented in the narrative as a factor in Savinkov's approach to electoral politics that hit me as very proto-Fascist. Seeing Green Guards active during wartime, under a shaky new political order to boot, makes a very different impression than seeing them active in the context of a peaceful, recovering Union of Equals.
I admit my ignorance about OTL Boris Savinkov. While I agree that during his youth Benito was for the most part a man who thought he was a Socialist, he still propagandized his "ideology" as a third way between plutocracy and Bolshevism, a mix of the good elements of capitalism and socialism -- in theory, of course. What's the common ground between... let's say the universally accepted interpretation of Russian narodnichestvo (i.e. the common ground that keeps the various factions of the SR party under the same umbrella) and Savinkov's political stance in 1922? Beyond appealing to the rural population, that is.
It can certainly have played a part in his considerations
But the protests were a nuisance anyway, better not to have so much bad press in an electoral year...That is probably as tough a question as the question of what keeps all the factions of the Democratic Party in the US together, or what is the common ground of the Republicans!
I think the part about the peasantry is already the biggest part of the answer. Beyond that, it gets hazy. Perhaps all SRs would still subscribe to the vision of common ownership of the land, its treasures and immovables, to some sort of democracy in managing these commons, to the vision of an alternative to "capitalism" that arises from communal practices and structures (as opposed to industrial-bureaucratic polit-machinery). Hence why Savinkov is not arguing against soviets in Kyrgystan and proposing a restoration of settler property claims, but instead calling for Union-wide plebiscites to designate specific areas for specific agricultural uses in order to develop and modernise it. The idea of forming and transforming the soil, maximising its productivity etc. is popular with quite a few SRs. (So some of the worst ecologic catastrophes of OTL's 20th century in the region may take place iTTL, too. Or they may not, depending on how this all goes.)
My 2 cents: (A) First-past-the-post voting and tradition, (B) "we cannot let those people get too uppity!"
So here is the first part of my answer to your question regarding the Plebiscites. I've listed the Romania/Hungary plebiscites and the Vorarlberg one so far.
Szatmar / Satu Mare zone:
Romania? 45.9 %
Hungary? 54.1 %
This zone became Romanian IOTL as per the Hungarian-Romanian War and the Treaty of Trianon, but the ethnolinguistic makeup is too strongly Hungarian for the Romanian attempts to influence the outcome to bear fruits.
Nagykarol / Carei zone:
Romania? 41.5 %
Hungary? 58.5 %
Same as in Szatmar here.
Varsand / Olari zone:
Romania? 60.6 %
Hungary? 39.4 %
This zone becomes Romanian like IOTL. The demographics are much more balanced, but Romania had the “stronger arguments” on her side...
Nagyszentmiklos / Sinnicolau Mare / Veliki Semiklush zone:
Romania? 59.4 %
Hungary? 33.1 %
Serbia? 7.5 %
This is the only zone with Serbia as an option where the plebiscite has been recognised by the EFP. Romanian military was present here and, from their point of view, prevented Serbian falsifications. (From the Serbian point of view, of course, the Romanians faked their victory. The truth is perhaps closer to the Romanian perspective, as the associations of the German minority in the region have pronounced themselves in favour of Romania, too, so the results are not at all implausible.)
As a consequence, Romania receives slightly less territories in the North-West. Instead of yet more Hungarians finding themselves in Romania (and often emigrating), we now have small numbers of Romanians finding themselves in Socialist Hungary (and probably often emigrating, too). Of course there are still many Hungarians in Romania since they're scattered all over Transilvania. But of the border territories where they formed majorities IOTL, some go to Hungary and some to Romania. It's an outcome that makes no-one particularly happy and leaves no-one extremely disgruntled.
The same cannot be said about the following two plebiscites:
Vorarlberg zone:
Austria? 23.4 %
Switzerland? 76.6 %
Like IOTL, the Swiss Confederacy did not admit Vorarlberg as a new canton, though, so it’s doomed to remain a part of Austria like IOTL.
In the Szabadka / Subotica region, Unitarist Serbia has held plebiscites, too, in which the (very predominantly Hungarian) population officially voted almost unanimously for Serbia. Here, the EFP has not recognised the outcome, but a UoE motion to call “bullshit!” on the Serbs and condemn them for their fraud and intimidation has failed for French and Greek resistance, too. Thus, the EFP does not recognise Serbia’s annexation, but it does not do anything against the fait accompli, either. (Proving a toothless paper tiger with regards to Serbia once again.) Budapest has protested desperately and repeatedly. A Hungarian exodus from the Vojvodina has been ongoing ever since the Unitarist coup, and it has intensified after the “plebiscite”.
More on Austria vs. Czechoslovakia and Romania vs. Bulgaria as well as a map to come (the Thracian results have already been shown on a map).