Happy Russia

Tsao

Banned
Are there any TLs on this board where Russia does not turn into a authoritarian state or depressing hellhole?
 
Are there any TLs on this board where Russia does not turn into a authoritarian state or depressing hellhole?

My Dimension 459 . . . at least the part that ends up being ruled by Monarchist France or Britain-Japan. The rest. . . pretty typical unpleasantness. I will present no spoilers for my current tl though.
 

Tsao

Banned
My Dimension 459 . . . at least the part that ends up being ruled by Monarchist France or Britain-Japan. The rest. . . pretty typical unpleasantness. I will present no spoilers for my current tl though.

What's the POD?
 
In MyTL, I hope to write that in the future, Russia is a Enlightened monarchy...when monarchies are becoming scarce...
 
I started and then stopped work on (other priorities) a TL focused on Russia in which it reforms earlier and eventually forms a liberal democratic Eurasian Union in the 1910-1930 period which then goes on to be one of the dominant states on Earth.


Oh, and here's the link to a map of it.
 

mowque

Banned
My TL has a more Banana Republic style Russia, firmly in the American sphere of influence but generally, after the warlords leave off, and the right wingers come to power, it is a nicer place to live. No gulags, anyway.
 

Tsao

Banned
Depressing hellhole? I think that's all a matter of opinion. Although i totally understand what you're getting at.

I agree that I may have exaggerated, but I think in general Russia always seems to get the short end of the stick compared to other European powers like France or Germany.
 
I agree that I may have exaggerated, but I think in general Russia always seems to get the short end of the stick compared to other European powers like France or Germany.
Ah, well I gave France a rather nasty thrashing near the end, as with a bunch of other places, so its not like Russia is exceptional.
 

Tsao

Banned
Ah, well I gave France a rather nasty thrashing near the end, as with a bunch of other places, so its not like Russia is exceptional.

But living conditions in France never seems to sink to the same level that Russia has in any of the ATLs I've read.
 
Haven't really sorted out how it gets there, but I'm planning on a Russia for my timeline that's not much worse than say, Imperial Germany OTL.

Strong tsars working energetically to develop and improve Russia (for the good of the state, which incidentally is for the good of the average Russian in the long run).

But that's with a very different Russia - the Mongols, after the second invasion (in the 1230s) , never return.

But this is a monarchist (not necessarily absolute monarchy) timeline, so it might still be authoritarian.
 
Have you read "Look to the West" by Thande? It's still only the 1840's there but things have been looking up for the realm of the Tsars there for most of a century, by and large. And the foreshadowing of the later centuries of that timeline suggests that Russia will be among the foremost of the "Diversitarian" powers, perhaps the leading nation.

Is that good? We don't entirely know; there are aspects of the dominant "Diversitarian" ideology that seem downright nasty to me, but if you listen to their sources the "Societists" based mainly in South America are creepier. So say the Diversitarians, who have an elaborate system of information clearances for different nations, altering texts according to preset international agreement. And they arrange historical reenactments of riots, massacres and so forth apparently to emphasize the point that different peoples live in different nations and hate each other for sound reasons and this is as it should be; the Societist thing seems to be rooted on the idea that actually national divisions are some kind of scam and there should be unity.

All we know for sure is, the Anglosphere appears to be in the Diversitarian camp, the nations we think of OTL as the rich and powerful ones, analogous to the capitalist West of OTL, seem to be Diversitarian. And weirdly by OTL standards, South America is (or was, anyway, before the Societist takeover, and may still be) economically far ahead of OTL. And oh yes, Russia is a leading Diversitarian nation.

One which may be more liberal by our standards that England of that timeline--which is not saying too much as England of that timeline might well be among the worst of the nations in the Diversitarian sphere.

So Russia has had some big crises in its past already, and may well have to weather some very nasty future storms, but it seems on the whole that Thande's Russia is by most metrics we could apply better than OTL, and no worse in other respects.

Another potential "nice" Russia may persist in "A Central East" by LordInsane; there the key seems to have been a shorter WWI the Germans win. They don't invade Belgium, Britain and the USA stay out of the war, they win sooner in the East where they concentrated their attack thereby triggering an earlier wave of republican/socialist revolution. Somehow this leads to Bolsheviks, Social Revolutionaries, and so forth all the way rightward to the Kadets playing nicer with each other, fighting things out in the Duma and not on the streets; the leftists wind up dominating a rump Red Russia--they lose vast swathes of territory to various German and other foreign-sponsored or ethnically separatist White realms, but it seems again the Civil War in the core was much shorter and less devastating and this appears to me to be the key to how they can have a balanced market/socialist directed economy under a collective democratic, multiparty regime.

LordInsane has been updating it a glacial pace, and perhaps won't ever continue it; if it stops here that rump Red Russia (not called "Soviet" though it has soviets) is at any rate better off than the USSR of OTL at that date, though it is surrounded by hostile or potentially hostile rival successor states that OTL the Soviet Union owned, and conceivably the rosy Red social order I perceive there is unstable. But it certainly has potential to secure itself both politically (by solidifying its domestic support among peasants and workers and even middle-class types who never had it so good--but being a freer regime than OTL it's all too likely they won't all appreciate it and be malcontented on the "grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" principle) and internationally/militarily--they have neither the total numbers nor the deep geographical buffer zones the USSR of OTL had, but they do have a relatively high standard of technical development, good morale, decent relations with the more distant major capitalist powers, and the success of their system may well subvert the more mindlessly militant of their neighbors, so they might wind up acquiring both buffer terrain and greater population after all.

Meanwhile the Germans though they went on quite a spree of acquiring broader spheres of influence seem by that very token less likely to pose a sudden and massive threat from the West.


I would dub any timeline where the Bolsheviks, or analogues of a comparable degree of commitment to a radical populist path, are more successful at developing an alternative economy, to be a better outcome for Russia. As things are, I do believe the Soviet system of OTL, for all its faults and shortcomings, was in fact a better case for Russia than the likely outcomes of any crushing of the leftists completely which for some people seems to be the very definition of a "happy Russia!:rolleyes:" I'm very skeptical a continuing Tsardom, or the Whites in the best case scenario, or Kerensky even if he were quite sincere about being a Social Revolutionary, could have done even as well as the Bolsheviks did, and God knows that's a low bar to clear--until you reflect on the degree of industrialization, the social transformation of the populace, the technical milestones the Soviets cleared--including doing most of the work of defeating Hitler. Maybe in a White timeline there would be no Hitler, and perhaps no predatory Germans whatsoever, but I suspect if that is the case it would mainly be because whoever does rule there fails to develop Russian industry to the point that they demonstrate the value of Russian resources and labor.

So maybe Russia can be "happy" as a decentralized, bucolic realm of peasant farmers, and they don't need to be making Sputniks and the like. Just maybe such a Russia would be left alone.

But my personal bet for Russian happiness is to have better, more successful Bolsheviks.
 
Are there any TLs on this board where Russia does not turn into a authoritarian state or depressing hellhole?

My alt-Draka TL "The Dragon and the Bear" features a successful occupation of St. Petersburg by General Lavr Kornilov, who proceeds to wipe out the Bolsheviks and intimidates Kerensky into being more moderate. Russia stays in the war until Germany collapses and snarfs Galicia from A-H.

Kornilov essentially serves as Shogun for Kerensky and his successors until his death after TTL's "Eurasian War," in which the Draka seize territory in Europe but are driven out of Afghanistan, Persia, the Balkans, and Asia Minor.

The Kornilov/Kerensky program has all the benefits of Stalin's program but none of its drawbacks--Russia remains a democracy and funds industrialization by exporting grain to the West, only not to the point of starving millions of people to death.
 
Are there any TLs on this board where Russia does not turn into a authoritarian state or depressing hellhole?

I did write Tsar Michael The Great in which Nicholas dies at Livadia in 1901, and his brother takes over a reforming tsar. Its a constitutional monarchy by the 1950s, but then comes the world war and Russia gets the hell nuked out of her, but it was happy before that :)

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Top