Is there any non-ASB way the Soviet Union could reach this extent?

Xinjiang, which didn't have many Chinese settlers yet in 1949, is certainly a possibility: it was essentially a Soviet puppet for a while before they handed it over to China.

Bruce
 
He said it was just a "claim", so I suppose it's really nothing.

Ah okay, so as well as laying claim to the entirety of Eurasia the Soviets also claim part of the United States. So this is if the USSR was run by the leaders of the Soviets from Red Alert 2 with the same ridiculous tech?
 
Not true. Stalin gave Manchuria back in exchange for Chiang recognizing Mongolia's independence (i.e. Soviet puppethood) *and* some special rights. Those particular special rights were cancelled in 1955, before the official Sino Soviet Split.


Stalin recognized Manchukuo in exchange for Japanese recognition of Mongolia a few years into the war after a skirmish that the soviets won. Correct me if im wrong but I dont think Stalin dealt with Chiang in terms of Manchuria after Japan surrendered (and if he did it would have to have been strictly verbal with no action to follow, Manchuria was a staging ground for the Communists throughout the Civil War). Special rights were given by Mao when the Soviets returned the region since the Soviets believed the PRC was "friendly". It could also be due to western insistence (but its not like the Soviets haven't turns a deaf ear to that before) or due to the war ravaged nature of the region.

Also even if those rights were canceled in 1955 it was highly likely a byproduct of the forming rift in sino-soviet relations. Things like the handover of Port Arthur among other ends to the special rights were attempts to stave off a total split in relations (which happened anyway with Mao calling Khrushchev a revisionist and what-not)

Anyways, Manchuria as an SSR will be very dangerous for Moscow. It's now the second most populous SSR, and is overwhelmingly populated by a people with a nation-state not under Soviet control. *When* the Sino-Soviet Split occurs, the Manchu SSR would be a huge and permanent headache for the Kremlin. The gains cannot nearly make up for that.
Population may not be as much of an issue as it first seems, the Japanese killed and deported a good portion of the pre-war population when they took the region, and the Soviets returned the favor to the Japanese citizens when they took it back. So if the Soviets are smart they would keep the population down or fill it with complacent peoples. So would it be a head-ache, yes, would it be implausible to keep, no. The soviets basically had two options, hold on to the region for its benefits, various resources, a warm water port (big deal for the Russians) etc. or literally cut everything that's not nailed down and run back to Siberia with it (obviously they went with that option OTL), but they could go with keeping it without too much trouble (in the short run).
 
Stalin recognized Manchukuo in exchange for Japanese recognition of Mongolia a few years into the war after a skirmish that the soviets won. Correct me if im wrong but I dont think Stalin dealt with Chiang in terms of Manchuria after Japan surrendered (and if he did it would have to have been strictly verbal with no action to follow, Manchuria was a staging ground for the Communists throughout the Civil War). Special rights were given by Mao when the Soviets returned the region since the Soviets believed the PRC was "friendly". It could also be due to western insistence (but its not like the Soviets haven't turns a deaf ear to that before) or due to the war ravaged nature of the region.
The Red Army had occupied Manchuria in August 1945. Of course Manchukuo ceased to exist when Japan surrendered. In exchange for a Soviet withdrawal from Manchuria, Chiang was compelled to allow a referendum in Mongolia on whether to secede from China (though de facto it had been a Soviet puppet since 1922). Literally 100% voted yes. Manchuria itself experienced no fighting until the Red Army arrived and its vast industrial infrastructure was virtually intact.

The Red Army seized Manchuria's industrial equipment and gave some guns to the CPC, before taking some White Russian exiles in Harbin home with them. Stalin didn't truly want Mao to win; he merely wanted the CPC to be strong enough to harass Chiang Kai Shek. Even when the KMT was reduced to Taiwan, Stalin was still calling on Mao to cooperate with it.

Also even if those rights were canceled in 1955 it was highly likely a byproduct of the forming rift in sino-soviet relations. Things like the handover of Port Arthur among other ends to the special rights were attempts to stave off a total split in relations (which happened anyway with Mao calling Khrushchev a revisionist and what-not)
Stalin and Mao were both privately paranoid of each other, so a Sino-Soviet split was in retrospect inevitable. Khruschev's secret revisionist speech, which seriously began the split, was in 1956, after the end of the special rights.

Population may not be as much of an issue as it first seems, the Japanese killed and deported a good portion of the pre-war population when they took the region, and the Soviets returned the favor to the Japanese citizens when they took it back. So if the Soviets are smart they would keep the population down or fill it with complacent peoples. So would it be a head-ache, yes, would it be implausible to keep, no.
1) The Japanese didn't engage in genocide in Manchuria when they first invaded in 1931.

2) The Japanese settlers/colonists in Manchuria fled both of their free will and by force. In any case there were only 850000 Japanese in Manchukuo by 1945, small enough to be expelled by force.

There were 50 million people in Manchukuo in 1945, of which 95%+ were Han Chinese. 50 million! :eek: More than even the Ukrainian SSR! More than twice of all of the RSFSR east of the Urals! By contrast Stalin "only" ever deported six million "undesirable" peoples! Not even Hitler could have succeeded in changing that fact! The only time Stalin attempted to alter the region's demographics was his Jewish Autonomous Oblast, which didn't work well.

The soviets basically had two options, hold on to the region for its benefits, various resources, a warm water port (big deal for the Russians) etc. or literally cut everything that's not nailed down and run back to Siberia with it (obviously they went with that option OTL), but they could go with keeping it without too much trouble (in the short run).
In the short run everyone was exhausted from war. But in the long run having a huge SSR populated by an ethnic group with a hostile nation state would pose a huge security risk. It's likelier Manchuria would remain a Soviet puppet state like the DDR. But keeping the DDR under Soviet control was extremely costly. Keeping Manchuria as a Soviet puppet will be far more expensive. It will almost immediately cause a rapprochement between Mao and the US (since the Korean War never happens in this TL). Once that happens the USSR is entirely surrounded by hostile states.
 
You don't get the Yangtze. You just don't. And there's no real way for the Soviets to invade Japan. Otherwise, most of that is conceivable.

As for the Mongolia-Bulgaria-Finland limit, that's almost as unrealistic. They came inches from annexing Sinkiang/Xinjiang in OTL. Given that our history was witness to a Russia-screw, I think it's safe to say they could have done substantially better.
 
Note: the Malayan soviets would be crushed very quickly

1) the OTL emergency had no support from the malayans just the Chinese populations so it was doomed to fail from the start (though maybe it could hold the northern most regions?)

2) if it did succeed then the west would destroy it as it threatens all of Asia and oceania
 
In the short run everyone was exhausted from war. But in the long run having a huge SSR populated by an ethnic group with a hostile nation state would pose a huge security risk. It's likelier Manchuria would remain a Soviet puppet state like the DDR. But keeping the DDR under Soviet control was extremely costly. Keeping Manchuria as a Soviet puppet will be far more expensive. It will almost immediately cause a rapprochement between Mao and the US (since the Korean War never happens in this TL). Once that happens the USSR is entirely surrounded by hostile states.

You make a good points, im just saying its a possible move on part of the Soviet Union (not necessarily a smart one).


Maximum extent of the USSR with a better WW2 in my opinion (PRC is purple for some reason)
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