Is Russia Underrated?

Faeelin

I've noticed that recently, there are a spate of timelines where Russia seems to do significantly worse than OTL in the 18th century. In LTTW it doesn't gain the Crimea; in the Alternate War of Spanish Succession it doesn't gain the Baltic Coast and faces Civil War. In the Disaster at Leuthen the Poles get a reforming Bourbon Prince upon the throne. In Karl Peter Ulrich's War they lose the Baltic Coast to Sweden in the 1760s.

What's going on? In OTL the Russians were able to send forces into Italy in the 1790s, sail through the Baltic around Europe to threaten Constantinople, and Alexander, of course, reached Paris.
 

Elidor

I have found the board to be Russophobic... and Francophobic to a lesser degree.

Three three most commonly wanked countries on AH.com are Britain, USA and Germany, so that translates to Russia-screw and France-screw being very common.
 
MrP

MrP

Banned
As far as LttW's concerned, it appears that Russia, despite having been duffed up by a vicious civil war, is about to leap into the future on iron rails.
 

Direwolf22

I think you have a point, Russia does tend to get a short stick. I think its like Elidor said you tend to have B/US/G do better than OTL so someone has to loose. Plus I don't think there's a lot of Russians on this site so that probably plays a role.

Though, the Russians have a strong ability to bounce back. In my DaL TL they may be down but they'll be back..
 
Simon

Simon

Elidor said:
Three three most commonly wanked countries on AH.com are Britain, USA and Germany, so that translates to Russia-screw and France-screw being very common.
Click to expand...
At a guess I'd say it's a combination of a large percentage of the board members being American or British so language-wise they're easier plus you often go with what you know and all three of them being very powerful countries in our timeline so they're fairly easy to tinker with. Other countries are going to require more research and include a possible language barrier for some of the sources. Well that and nobody likes the French. ;)
 

Russian Sailor

Simon said:
At a guess I'd say it's a combination of a large percentage of the board members being American or British so language-wise they're easier plus you often go with what you know and all three of them being very powerful countries in our timeline so they're fairly easy to tinker with. Other countries are going to require more research and include a possible language barrier for some of the sources. Well that and nobody likes the French. ;)
Click to expand...

Also we have to consider the fact that most Russian wanks if we can call them has Russia reforming itself in the mid 19th century... and even this is a novelty If we do see this though they either become a losing battle in some horrible war or become the lagging industrial power in a rapidly modernizing war. If Russian wanks are only consisted in the 19th century the length of time before the 20th century and the fact that Major european powers are on the rise AKA... GB or USA and Prussia so obviously its either Russia is not on peoples minds or they are just put random stuff that makes Russia looks wanky. You can't have a considerable Russian wank without having the Russians have time to change their society so rapid reforms or helpful reforms can happen
 

lloyd007

The problem with a Russia wank is similar to the problem with a China wank in the 18th and 19th centuries i.e. massive and deeply ingrained 'flaws' in their society that mean they cannot keep up with Western Europe without a revolutionary change or massive upheaval and most TL writers as said aren't up to focusing on such a thing or devoting large amounts of time researching and pulling it off in a TL not focused on those nations without it looking like a total ass pull...

France is more as others have unPC stated... Noone likes France... :p
 
Petike

Petike

The two TLs I occasionally write go both sides - in the first, Russia ends up a balkanized hellhole after a supposedly milder version of the RCW and takes decades to recover to a semi-tolerable state (yet remains disunited), while in the second, Russia passes a few dark periods in its history and never really becomes a unified Tsardom (to the extent it did in OTL), but by the late 20th century is one of the most advanced and richest nations on Earth (despite being more of a confederation or mini-EU than a true unitary state).

But yes, making Russia, Korea and occasionally France suffer or get destroyed/enslaved is already a tired cliché in AH. I actually liked how Zack subverted this in his Napoleonic TL, where not only does ATL-Fascist-led Russia gain a lot of new territory in WWII, it gets to keep it (!) after the war is finished and then still continues to grow in terms of economic and military power (though it is hinted at it won't last forever and Morchenko's regime will fall sooner or later).
 
Last edited:

Marix

Petike said:
But yes, making Russia, Korea and occasionally France suffer or get destroyed/enslaved is already a tired cliché in AH. I actually liked how Zack subverted this in his Napoleonic TL, where not only does ATL-Fascist-led Russia gain a lot of new territory in WWII, it gets to keep it (!) after the war is finished and then still continues to grow in terms of economic and military power (though it is hinted at it won't last forever and Morchenko's regime will fall sooner or later).
Click to expand...

I would be interested in reading this TL, can you give me the full name or a link by any chance?
 

Tyr

I guess the thing is if you look at a modern map, or even better a map from the 80s or before, Russia already does look rather wanked.

Russia under-rated....well it depends how it happens I guess.
There is no saying that Russia had to suddenly start looking west and modernising. Despite its vast empty vastness it has throughout quite a lot of history been rather backward with its much smaller, less cartographlly impressive neighbours, being stronger or at least equals.

Also with Russia- its the perfect bad guy.
It was Britain's arch-enemy, it was the US' arch-enemy, it was Sweden's arch-enemy, it was Poland's arch-enemy...if you're going to have one country rise beyond its historic place then the odds are rather good that Russia shall suffer.
 

I Blame Communism

Banned
I do find it rather curious that we believe so thoroughly that Russia is "backward". They kind of beat us to space.

Obviously there have been times when Russia was much less developed than some of its rivals. It was a late industrialiser - but we only think that because it was a member of the Great Power club in the 19th C and all the others industrialised first (although remember that in 1914 there were bits of Austria just as backward and rural as Russia).

Serfdom's a good example of our desire to be a ahead, which seems strikes me as slightly insecure. I've seen sources about tsarist Russia having nothing much to do with the subject - backgrounds companions to Gogol oor what-have-you - that feel it necessarily to insert an incongruous little "(this was a long time after other countries)" note about the abolition. It was? Denmark and the Netherlands - advanced countries, surely? - abolished serfdom only in the late 18th C, which was when the Russians started to think about it. It was abolished in the Russian Baltic governorates earlier than in many German states (including, in practice, Prussia). It was only stamped out in 1848 in much of Austria. And of course, most Russian provinces beat America to it by a good few years. :p

I certainly think that Russia is made a) evil, b) ineffectual, or c) both a lot more often than some countries on this board. *cough*Germany*cough*
 
Last edited:

MerryPrankster

Y'all might want to read my Dragon/Bear TL, in which a duo of General Kornilov and Aleksandr Kerensky keep Russia in WWI long enough to relieve Austria-Hungary of Galicia and Germany of some other territories, industrialize Russia (without Stalinist horrors) and then in TTL's WWII eject the Domination of the Draka from Bulgaria, Asia Minor, Afghanistan, and Persia and at long last claim Constantinople.

The Final War ends with Russian armies playing hopscotch from Persia through Arabia down into Ethiopia and marching into Kenya on one front, marching through Syria down into the Holy Land, fighting a gigantic land battle on the Suez, and occupying Alexandria (another front), and landing another army in the Sudan and marching up the Nile Delta to threaten Alexandria from another angle.

Yob Drakanski!

Link: https://www.alternatehistory.com/Discussion/showthread.php?t=140452&highlight=dragon+bear
 
Thande

Thande

Donor
I'm surprised you say that about my TL, Faeelin, I personally was worried I was wanking Russia too much. The Crimea thing is simply the result of anyone less conniving than Catherine the Great being on the Russian throne at the time, seeing as Russia promised by treaty not to annex the Crimea.
 

I Blame Communism

Banned
Rogue Shadows said:
But that only happened because of a series of unlikely, major events in its history that, frankly, if I were looking at it from another timeline, would call it ASB.
Click to expand...

What, like Russia chucking millions of young men into a pointless meatgrinder, physically collapsing, fighting a savage civil war, industrialising itself by the bootstraps in the face of international hostility under the rule of a paranoid nutter, and then - thanks to supreme bad fortune - being unprepared to an invasion they should have anticipated and hence suffering genocidal war fought on their own territory...

...And still beating us to space? I agree. It would be much more plausible if they beat us to space only after telling Hitler what for, or if Hitler never took power and Bukharin set them on the way moonward, or whatever.

Russia has been on a run of bad luck for most of the 20th C, if anything. I strongly suspect that we think it was ASB for the Russians to go to space because Russians are backward, and we think they're backward because...

...When you break a record, break a record, break a record...

Nobody has yet shown me any facts about Russia's assumed backwardness.
 
Thande

Thande

Donor
You can say "Russia got into space so quickly because of captured German technology and scientists". This is technically true, but the US had the same. The difference is that Russia actually put the effort into using them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top