More SSRs?

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How many more SSRs could plausibly have comprised the USSR? POD as early as 1900 if few effects before 1914. Borders not much past the OTL USSR's.

I could see the north caucasus becoming one. Karelia maybe, especially with a more successful winter war. Maybe a far eastern SSR instead of merging the republic back into the Russian SSR. the baltic states could have been broken up different;y. Latvia especially could easily be broken into 2 or 3. Kaliningrad oblast might be an SSR instead. Tuva easily.

What else?

What would be the effects if the USSR broke up similarly to OTL?
 
If Poland gets defeated in the Polish-Soviet war then it almost certainely would be absorbed into the USSR as a SSR. Also Transinistra, Crimea, Abhkazia, and South Ossetia all could become their own ethnic SSRs.
 
Karelia was a SSR in 1940-56. Crimea voted itself in 1990 on referendum, but had been denied.

You could probably give most of autonomous republics full SSR status, especially large ones and with significant non-Russian population. Just make more radical pro-nationalist territorial reform in 1920-s.

It is unlikely that more SSRs with Russian majority would appear, unless there is no RSFSR at all, but a few based on territory and not a nationality. But there probably would be a totally different list of SSRs.

Kaliningrad possible only with no German deportation and better without division of East Prussia at all. I believe there was even a timeline on AH :)
 
If Poland gets defeated in the Polish-Soviet war then it almost certainely would be absorbed into the USSR as a SSR.

Not necessarily. There was a disagreement between Lenin and Stalin on the future status of a Soviet Poland--and even a Soviet Germany!--in the summer of 1920:

"Stalin and Lenin also undertook preliminary planning for the kind of Europe they expected to organise when socialist seizures of power took place. Their grandiose visions take the breath away. Before the Second Comintern Congress, Lenin urged the need for a general federation including Germany, and he made clear that he wanted the economy of such a federation to be 'administered from a single organ.' Stalin rejected this as impractical:

'If you think you'd ever get Germany to enter a federation with the same rights as Ukraine, you are mistaken. If you think that even Poland, which has been constituted as a bourgeois state with all its attributes, would enter the Union with the same rights as Ukraine you are mistaken.'

"Lenin was angry. The implications of Stalin's comment was that considerations of national pride would impel Russia and Germany to remain separate states for the foreseeable future. Lenin sent him a 'threatening letter' which charged him with chauvinism. It was Lenin's objective to set up a Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia. His vision of 'European socialist revolution' was unchanged since 1917. But Stalin held his ground. The Politburo had to acknowledge the realities of nationhood if the spread of socialism in Europe was to be a success.

"These discussions were hypothetical since the Red Army had not yet reached Poland, far less set up a revolutionary government in Warsaw..."


Robert Service, *Stalin: A Biography* (pp. 179-80). http://www.rulit.me/books/stalin-a-biography-read-280295-56.html
 
The idea of a Mongolian SSR was floated from time to time--more by Mongolians than by the Soviets:

"Given Mongolia's profound dependence on the Soviet Union, Mongolians had several times proposed that Mongolia join the Soviet Union, yet Soviet leaders, wary of accusations from China, were not supportive. In the late 1920s, radical western Mongols...resented Khalkha domination and proposed that western Mongolia and Tuva together join the Soviet Union. In the 1940s and early 1950s the Soviet-trained technocrats under Choibalsang repeatedly qustioned whether socialism could be built in Mongolia without joining the Soviet Union. The procurator B. Jambaldorj raised the possibility in 1944, when Tuva joined the Soviet Union, and Daramyn Tomorochir and Yumjaagin Tsedenbal raised it again late in Choibalsang's life. Choibalsang himself violently opposed such ideas, but after his death the Mongolian Politburo in 1953 approved unification, only to be rebuked by V. M. Molotov for their 'simple-minded error.' In the mid-1970s the Soviet ruler Leonid Brezhnev sounded out his Mongolian counterpart Tsedenbal about this issue. By then, however, the very success of Mongolian industrialization with Soviet aid had decreased Mongolia's perceived need for unification, and the issue was dropped." Article "Soviet Union and Mongolia," p. 515 in Christopher P. Atwoood, *Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire* (New York: Facts on File, 2004).
 
The only way to get more SSRs into the Union would be to make the Union larger.

The Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic was never viable as a putative state, not with its Russian majority population. Once it became clear Finland was never going to be annexed into the union and merged with Karelia, that latter republic was bound to see its status downgraded.
 
The easiest way to do this is to make ASSRs into SSRs (which happened to Moldavia and Tajikistan). One potential is to combine Tartarstan, Bashkorostan, Chuvashia, Mordovia, Udmurtia, and Mari El into an Idel-Ural SSR.
 
It is worth noting that all of the SSRs had external borders, by land or sea. I think that such was a requirement. A middle Volga federative republic would not have had borders with any other power, never mind the ethnic issue--Russians would have been clearly the dominant group, demographically and even more culturally, in this territory.
 
It is worth noting that all of the SSRs had external borders, by land or sea. I think that such was a requirement. A middle Volga federative republic would not have had borders with any other power, never mind the ethnic issue--Russians would have been clearly the dominant group, demographically and even more culturally, in this territory.

Pretty much this. The ones with the best chances of becoming SSRs are those at the borders of other SSRs or foreign countries. Karelia, Tuva, the Caucasus. Even then, if the Russian population and influence is too strong, there's no will to demand or grant SSR status. My ATL thread is pretty much an exercise on how to make an SSR different from the nationality lines that every other follows, but that itself is a huge chain of changes.
 
The main feature of the USSR was that she had a (formal) right to secede from the USSR. Based on this, Stalin formulated three criteria for admission to the number of SSR
1) The population of over 1 milion / to the country in the event could stand against the capitalist states.
2) the outer boundary of / that it does not turn into an enclave.
3) The indigenous population is more than 50% or else secession would be an injustice for the majority of the population.
 
Pretty much this. The ones with the best chances of becoming SSRs are those at the borders of other SSRs or foreign countries. Karelia, Tuva, the Caucasus. Even then, if the Russian population and influence is too strong, there's no will to demand or grant SSR status. My ATL thread is pretty much an exercise on how to make an SSR different from the nationality lines that every other follows, but that itself is a huge chain of changes.

Maybe a Tatar-Bashkir republic connected to Kazakhstan?
 

yourworstnightmare

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If Poland gets defeated in the Polish-Soviet war then it almost certainely would be absorbed into the USSR as a SSR. Also Transinistra, Crimea, Abhkazia, and South Ossetia all could become their own ethnic SSRs.
Another possibility is that the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus becomes an SSR after it's defeated instead of being just alot of ASSR under the Russian SSR.

Soviets winning the Soviet- Polish war would most likely mean earlier annexation of the Baltic States, so earlier Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian SSRs.

A collapse of the Finnish army during WW2 would probably have lead to a Finnish SSR.
 
A collapse of the Finnish army during WW2 would probably have lead to a Finnish SSR.

I am usually operating under the assumption that if the Finns go the Baltic route (ie. give up without a fight) in 1939 or the Red Army wins easily in the Winter War, there would be a Finnish SSR, and if Finland is occupied in '44-'45, there would merely be a independent Finnish People's Republic as a Soviet satellite. In both cases, Finland would be dependent on Moscow, but the latter option would be based on Stalin's changed view since 1939 as to how big a pain in the ass the Finns are if occupied and annexed, and how much the Western Allies, especially the US, care about (even just de jure) Finnish independence.

In both options we would probably see some Karelian areas attached to Finland for propagandistic, etc, reasons. Especially if Finland becomes a SSR, it would probably "get" almost all of the OTL Finno-Karelian SSR. So no separate Karelian SSR in that scenario, like rfmcdonald pointed out above. In this case however, if Moscow so wills, detaching a part of the Finnish Lapland away as a Sami SSR/ASSR might be theoretically possible. Of course it would not have a real Sami majority, but rather, in time, a Russian one, and the real reason for having it would be to secure the area next to the Norwegian border in Russian hands as a trustworthy "enclave", at the same time as Moscow could make a propagandistic argument for supporting the rights of the Sami minority.:)
 
I guess:
  • Russian
  • Ukrainian
  • Belarusian
  • Moldovan
  • Georgian
  • Armenian
  • Azeri
  • Tuvinian
  • Kazakh
  • Kirghiz
  • Uzbek
  • Turkmen
  • Tajik
  • Khivan
  • Bukharan
  • Dagestani
  • Ossetian
  • Vainakh
  • Circassian
  • Yakut
  • Tatar (Tatarstan, Bashkiria, parts of Samara and Orenburgh oblast)
  • Buryat
  • Altaian
  • Crimean
  • Kalmyk
 
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