Was thinking of doing a storyline with the POD of Vladmir Kappel never falling below the ice during the Great Siberian Ice March in the Russian Civil War.

Instead he only catches Pneumonia after the successful White Russian escape. While recuperating jealous superiors transfer him to Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka. There he is stuck dealing with American and Japanese forces and away from the fighting and his superiors think the glory.

As things fall apart for the White forces and the Reds start wrapping up their victory Kappel decides to make the Kamchatka peninsular an earlier version of OTL Taiwan.

I am initially thinking his call for White forces to reorganize in Kamchatka is successful and gets a big boon when Wrangel's White Fleet makes the arduous journey there.

So how long does the remnant last? How does it do so?

Does it accept Japanese suzerainty as a means to it surviving?

What does having two Russias do to the world.

Do the Soviets retake it in the 20s or 30s?

Does Stalin retake it at the end of World War II when he finally declares war on Japan.

Perhaps in this TL the Allies use Kamchatka as a chip and sell it out to the Soviets, Ala the betrayal of the Cossacks

What does the government in the Peninsular look like? How successful can it be?

Does it sell its mineral and fishing rights to the western powers in hopes they will keep it propped up?

Can it survive to modern day?
 
Kamchatka is an isolated hellhole. It's not going to last long out there. Ultimately, desertions, lack of morale and dwindling supplies would force Kappel to evacuate to Japan or Alaska permanently. Of course, the Red Army could try to storm him, but that's wholly unnecessary.

Ultimately, he's either going to join the large ranks of White emigre in the West, or in a gulag. He can't maintain a non-exiled government if he's reduced to Kamchatka. At minimum, he would need a place isolated by a waterway and hard to reach by the Pacific Fleet, and yet able to survive as an independent state (Alaska is possible, but you'll need an earlier POD eliminating Seward's Purchase).
 
Yeah, I was trying to avoid Alaska POD, too many butterflies in the years in between.

Any where else in the soon to be former Russian Empire you would recommend for the remnant?

Although, since its a hell-hole maybe they get to keep it just because the Soviets think "Whatever, if that's what you want then fine be our guests."

The more extreme Whites then go for the "Better to Rule in Hell" trope, and the belief that one day they will win it all back.
 
Yeah, I was trying to avoid Alaska POD, too many butterflies in the years in between.

Any where else in the soon to be former Russian Empire you would recommend for the remnant?

Although, since its a hell-hole maybe they get to keep it just because the Soviets think "Whatever, if that's what you want then fine be our guests."

The more extreme Whites then go for the "Better to Rule in Hell" trope, and the belief that one day they will win it all back.

A government-in-exile in Manchuria (probably the railway zone) is the best possible way, I'm afraid, and very close to OTL too. But the Japanese had shown they're more than ready to throw the White Russians under a bus to make their borders with the Soviets somewhat calmer, so something had to be done to convince them to keep up the support for the Whites.

Beyond that, not many choices. Crimea is the next best bet, but isolated in the Black Sea and with the Soviet Union a small distance from eastern shore and bordering the north, it's a doomed position. Sakhalin is somewhat more isolated, but again too close to the mainland, and too dependent on Japanese goodwill. Every other island is just too small and/or too cold.
 
A Russian "Taiwan" doesn't necessarily have to be on an island. It could also exist on land, if it's behind some kind of cordon sanitaire cutting it off from the Reds (however unlikely all this may be).

For example, there was the Mughan Military Government in southern Azerbaijan (hybrid regime of Russian Whites and ethnic Talysh who didn't want to submit to Azerbaijan). Maybe it could become a haven for White refugees and survive behind a cordon of independent Azerbijan, Georgia etc. if they become strong enough - and internationally supported enough - to stave off the Reds.

Another possibility would be Crimea, but behind some form of Ukrainian state or Polish-dominated federation. Or a state in the Kola peninsula, behind some kind of ridiculously enlarged Finland.

Alternately, it's conceivable for a White emigre microstate to be established in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. But that particular "Taiwan" wouldn't be on former Russian territory, so not sure if it counts.


As for the OP, the idea is interesting. However, I don't think Kappel would end up in Kamchatka. He was, at the time of his death, the nominal supreme commander of all White armies. And he would have a not-so-small support base to enforce and defend his authority. He would not be sent off by jealous superiors, because no leader in the Far East could claim to be his superior or force the issue.

So a surviving Kappel would become the leader, or one of the leaders, of the White Far East, and probably set up shop in Vladivostok - surely not in the frozen wastes of Kamchatka. Under his leadership, the White struggle in the Far East could become much stronger and more respectable. But I'm not sure they could do more than give the Reds a bloody nose before being defeated anyway.
 
How about the mother of all Red Scares in the US, leading them to accept a protectorate over Kamchatka in exchange for mineral and fishing rights or something, once it's clear the Whites are doomed and the Japanese are pulling out?
 
The place the Whites make their final stand in may devolve into a cross between the Wild West with all the people on the fringe of the law heading there and the Pacific States of Man in the High Castle with all of the Japanese troops present to protect their ally.

(Alaska is possible, but you'll need an earlier POD eliminating Seward's Purchase)

While an Alaska stays Russian POD has far too many butterflies what about if only part of Alaska stays Russian - St. Laurence Island

Under his leadership, the White struggle in the Far East could become much stronger and more respectable. But I'm not sure they could do more than give the Reds a bloody nose before being defeated anyway.

So combining these two streams of thought, Kappel leads the White forces as they fight an extra year or two before Vladivostok falls. The survivors flee to St. Laurence. St. Laurence becomes a Microstate. It right now has a population of only 1300 so it would be a small nation. More a poke in the bear's eye than anything else.

Perhaps the Island is named for the commander who got them there, Kappel Island.

Would they find a Romanov who wanted to be Czar to become a figurehead and hopefully attract tourism?

Also a 1920s sea battle between the Soviet Pacific Fleet and the White Fleet and some American And Japanese allied vessels has to happen at some point.
 
Crimea would have been possible because it allowed for a viable state to exist (and from ancient times to the 18th, a number of such states existed in Crimea).
Alaska had potentially the resources, the position (in connection to tradeways and proximity to the US and Canada) to host a viable state.
Kamchatka did not (I don't even speak of St Lawrence Island, and should you consider it, why not going as far as Wrangel Island?).

By the time of the revolution, the whole area outside of Petropavlosk was a backwater area, Petropavlosk itself virtually an island, nothing able to sustain a rump state without a serious prior investment in infrastructures (maybe a gold rush in late 18th or in 19th century). That said, the Reds don't have yet a navy worth the name in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Vladivostok (but they can still build one) so the only way to get to Petropavlosk is inland, but that hundreds and hundreds of kilometers in wilderness without any road, not much an option to consider unless desperate. That brings us back to the sea approach. The ships of the Black Sea Fleet would be surely enough to bar any attempt for the decade to come, but practically, there is no way Whites could at this point afford keeping a fleet, supplying, arming it, all of that for a lost place named Petropavlosk (Crimea or Alaska would have justified it, not Kamchatka). Eventually, if you have Kappel making a last stand in Kamchatka, it would end as soon as the Red navy shows up its guns in the Avacha Bay.
I couldn't pretend to know it, but there was for sure good reasons for which Whites didn't try a last stand here, even with leaders such as Pepelyayev or Diterikhs (and Kappel death wouldn't have changed the situation much).
 
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