Second Russian Civil War II
Second RCW PART 2
On June 20th 1993, Three Nuclear Explosions were detected 2 miles above various parts of central Siberia. Zhirinovsky’s main advantage, mobility, disappeared as his army’s transports were stranded as their transmissions were disabled. All radios, walkie-talkies, and phones were fried as well. Zhirinovsky threw a fit when he learned that his nuclear missiles were disabled. Because of top-secret updates made to their guidance systems before capture, then followed by a period of disrepair, the missiles were unable of being launched nor aimed. In the short term, food and heat for his armies in the field disappeared overnight in the middle of the summer campaign season. While the Russian SFSR was crippled on its eastern flank while Zhirinovsky’s other opponents were relatively unaffected. No army was as reliant on movement and coordination as Zhirinovsky’s. Meanwhile, within the National Russian Army morale and order collapsed completely.
The Yakutia independence forces were the first to push back to their “national borders” where they set up a defensive perimeter. Moscow Republic forces which had been pushed to the Urals and forced to destroy their oil supplies now had a fierce counterattack (supplanted famously by cavalry charges). Zhirinovsky’s empire was collapsing. Its demise would lead to the rise of one nation whose existence had previously been considered a joke.
Kaadyr-ool Bicheldey, founder of the Tuvan Independence Movement, whose alliance with general Viktor Dubynin of the 40th Army had instantly given the Tuvan Republic an outsized army, understood the importance of oil more than any other post-soviet leader. While Kaadyr-ool wanted independence for Tuva above all else, he knew that for his people to be self-sufficient and independence they would need a “Revenue source”: and that source was oil. While most of the Siberian oil was too close to the Urals and the western-supported Free Russian Republic, there were sizable reserves just north of Tuva. However, they would first have to get through Zhirinovsky.
Map of Russian Oil
The EMP's were the miracle the Tuvan Army needed. Luckily for the Tuvans, their army was unaffected as its electrical equipment was either out of range, in training on the Mongolian border, or simply non-existent. Most of Zhirinovsky’s army was not on the border of Tuva, as Zhirinovsky did not intend to attack “the worthless bastard sons of Genghis Khan”. With his army in complete disarray, Dubynin knew it was the time to strike.
In July 1993, the Tuvan army attacked north. By the end of the summer the Tuvans would more than double their landmass and take control of the key oilfields north of them, while striking a peace deal with the Yakutsk separatist forces.
Meanwhile, the Japanese, in response to Zhirinovsky’s aggression and reports of nuclear weapons, decided to intervene, as they had done in the past Russian Civil war. Firstly, they started supplying through air transports the Yakutskian army with infantry equipment and food. They considering aiding the Russian Democratic forces in the far east, however, after intelligence found that Free Russian Forces in the far east were in complete disarray, it was concluded that the Free Russian Republic was too weak to wield any serious power, and at risk of angering its WWIII allies, Japan pursued an expansionist policy. To justify their aggressiveness, they set up the puppet regime of “Free Green Ukraine” north of Chinese Manchuria. Their hand was forced when China responded to “Russian Terrorists” and invaded territories held by the Free Russian Republic in the Western Part of Manchuria.
These interventions set off a chain reaction. The Ukrainian Hetmanate, seeking to claim its ancestral territory in Don-Kuban and the oil-producing territories of the Caucusus attacked the Russian SFSR on August 1st 1993. However, they did not officially do so, instead emplying mercenaries and unmarked troops (defying military law). These were the so called "little green men" which would dominate TV screens for a short while. The various other Caucasian Republics protested, but were too unstable to do anything as they themselves were too weak at the time. The Russian SFSR, engaged in brutal trench warfare with the Free Russian Republic, poorly defended its southern flank, in part because it thought it could retake those territories after it took Moscow, which never occurred. By the end of September the Ukrainians had successfully created “Greater Ukraine”, and more importantly had struck a little oil. This immediate conquest also "helped" improve the Hetmanate’s reputation. In response to this aggression, and the tough position the Tatar rebels found themselves, the Timurid Empire attacked the Russian SFSR’s southern central flank, which just so happened to be a direct path to Russia’s central oil resources.
One would think that the Free Russian Republic would be the main beneficiary of this chaos. However, since the civil war started the Free Russian Republic had not only been battered by National Republic advances but embroiled in bitter trench warfare with the Russian SFSR, this was not the case. The Free Russian Republic couldn’t give chase to retreating opponents on any front nor could it maintain a firm handle on the countryside in areas in full revolt. Meanwhile, their was chaos in the government at home as assassinations and backstabbing were common, and compromise was not.
A Free Russian Republic trench line 30 miles South of Moscow
The Free Russian Republic and Russian SFSR also had to fight numerous new separatist movements as just about every subjugated ethnic group rebelled. In the Caucusus, the Ukrainian Hetmanate subjugated most of the new republics not recognized by the Treaty of Warsaw, besides the Kalamykia people. The Hetmanate was frustrated it could not reach the Caspian, until it finally captured the old Astrakan Oblast late in the fall. Good personal relations between the Kalamykia Lama and the Hetman sealed what would become a productive relationship.
The Moscow Republic would have to face the rise of the Free Komik State and the Nenet’s Natural Gas Workers Revolt, and in revolts by the Mansi. The Mansi would be easily, but brutally repressed, but the other two movements were too strong and had too much of a stranglehold on the Republic’s resources. Even the Tuvans would now be bordered by the Free Nation of Altai and would have to suppress a revolt by the Kahkassians. The Chinese would prop up the puppet “People’s Democratic Republic of Baryutia” to the east of Tuva in response to Japanese aggression. The Japanese in return, continued to arm the "Green Ukrainians" in Amur, and so created a subservient puppet state.
The Russian SFSR, which should have been making progress vs the Free Republic in the planned fall offensive, had to deal with a coordinated revolts in Bashkortostan, Udmurtia, and Mordovia. While these revolts often had trouble controlling large swathes of territory, as long as they could disrupt the already weak supply lines of their opponents, they would maintain some level of success. The Russian SFSR, therefore, could defend the territory they already held, but advances were impossible.
The National Russian Republic would completely collapse when Zhirinovsky was rumored to be killed in an assassination attempt by a Chinese infiltrator. His commanders started a civil war amongst themselves and all pretenses of civilization collapsed. Some of the worst debauchery, rapes, mass murders, and pillaging would occur in the chaos. When Zhirinovsky returned from hiding during his recovery he found that his dreams of a new nationalist Russia were up in smoke.
Unlike Rumsfeld, who failed desperately trying to create a functioning Russian Republic along the lines of the treaty of Warsaw in his last year of his presidency, Iaccoca thought that the whole project was “a waste of time” and “typical liberty conservatism fantasy foreign policy”. In addition, Iacocca believed that Russia, and the continued threat of Russian power, was at the heart of the three world wars of the twentieth century [See A/N below]. In a private interview post-presidency Iaccoca said “I hoped to divide and conquer the Russian Menace” and he wanted “to support the rights of those people wronged by the Russians for centuries”. Many psychologists would wonder after listening to the white-house tapes later in the 21st century whether Iaccoca was racist against Russians (Author’s note: think OTL when the Nixon tapes with his comments on minorities were released).
In September of 1993, American forces would engage in limited actions, seizing the northeastern most parts of Siberia across from Alaska in order to prevent further Japanese expansionism that would destabilize the region. Progressives protested heavily. However, the public felt that a strong US hand, as had been played in Rwanda, would ensure stability in the region.
The fall of 1993 would also bring Belarus’s entry into the war, as per Ukraine’s model pursued a “Greater Belarus” and attacked the Russian Moscow Republic on September 20th 1993. While Belarus was supposedly western-aligned, it now had attacked Europe’s “favorite” in the civil war. A week later, unmarked Ukrainian forces would attack north right into territory that had flipped between “Red” and “White” Russian hands. All the while, the French, Italians, and British, all committed to a “Free, democratic, and unified Russia” where shocked and infuriated by Ukrainian and Belorussian aggressiveness. Frey and Germany, didn’t mind in part because of the Freyist nature of Ukraine and Belarus, which infuriated the neighbor’s leadership, and stalled any allied action. Meanwhile, many voters were simultaneously afraid of another war and some even sympathized with the Ukrainians after watching numerous propaganda films about the Holodymor during WWIII. The elites and policymakers thought otherwise, but they couldn't force any European action. Iaccoca secretly was surprised at Ukrainian success and saw a Black Sea to Caspian Sea Ukraine as a potential ally. He also thought that if he could appease the Ukrainians he could persuade them to adopt a more liberal democratic regime.
Iaccoca had to personally abuse and threaten the Belorussian King over the phone to stop his armies at the eastern border of the Smolensk Oblast whilst sending his secretary of state to a “tour de force” across Europe to prevent the break-up of NATO. Bennett's skill grew apparent as the worst was weathered in the fall months, although the disputes that popped up in 1993 and the growing divide across the Atlantic would appear again. Thankfully, as winter came the fighting started to die down, and the peace process could begin ahead of schedule.
[A/N:
ITL, a need for a unifying thread between all three conflicts leads to Russia, and Communism, getting more of the blame for causing the Three World Wars than Germany at this point in time form the balance of power and political science perspective.
In WWI, Russian Industrialization, combined with desire for warm-water ports as a source of expansionism, is seen as having made Austria-Hungary and Germany more aggressive in their actions. Combined with Russian pan-Slavism, which lead to unwavering support for Serbia, and thus WWI. Russia is seen as having been partially culpable to the destabilization of Europe pre-WWI at this point in time ITL.
Russian technical assistance to the Germans in the 1920’s, World Communism polarizing domestic politics, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, west-ward expansion (which is seen to have pressured Romania, Bulgaria, etc. into chain-ganging with Hitler), is seen as key help in how Germany was able to perceive the balance of power in their favor enough to start WWII. The Germans are still responsible, but the rise of Fascism isn’t just seen as a pathology that emerged soley within the Axis powers, but a disease supported form the outside. For example, financial/ideological support of Mussolini and Hitler from the west is also seen as a more important element of the rise of fascism.
Pre-WWIII, Russian Imperialism, through the ideology of world communism, is seen as the long-term cause of the war. The rise of the Hardliners is taught as inevitable, just as historians/experts now teach that Communism was always going to fall in the early 1990’s.
In short, the old Russian/Soviet Empire, combined with Russian Imperialism/World Communism/support for a resurgent Germany pre-WW2 is the clumsy ITL attempt to have a unifyinig IR theory at this moment in time.
This is not a reflection of the writer's personal political views but an attempt to understand how I.R. Theorey would change ITL and how this would reflect in policy. It is also important to remember, that blaming Germany, and ally, is not a popular idea at this moment. ]
On June 20th 1993, Three Nuclear Explosions were detected 2 miles above various parts of central Siberia. Zhirinovsky’s main advantage, mobility, disappeared as his army’s transports were stranded as their transmissions were disabled. All radios, walkie-talkies, and phones were fried as well. Zhirinovsky threw a fit when he learned that his nuclear missiles were disabled. Because of top-secret updates made to their guidance systems before capture, then followed by a period of disrepair, the missiles were unable of being launched nor aimed. In the short term, food and heat for his armies in the field disappeared overnight in the middle of the summer campaign season. While the Russian SFSR was crippled on its eastern flank while Zhirinovsky’s other opponents were relatively unaffected. No army was as reliant on movement and coordination as Zhirinovsky’s. Meanwhile, within the National Russian Army morale and order collapsed completely.
The Yakutia independence forces were the first to push back to their “national borders” where they set up a defensive perimeter. Moscow Republic forces which had been pushed to the Urals and forced to destroy their oil supplies now had a fierce counterattack (supplanted famously by cavalry charges). Zhirinovsky’s empire was collapsing. Its demise would lead to the rise of one nation whose existence had previously been considered a joke.
Kaadyr-ool Bicheldey, founder of the Tuvan Independence Movement, whose alliance with general Viktor Dubynin of the 40th Army had instantly given the Tuvan Republic an outsized army, understood the importance of oil more than any other post-soviet leader. While Kaadyr-ool wanted independence for Tuva above all else, he knew that for his people to be self-sufficient and independence they would need a “Revenue source”: and that source was oil. While most of the Siberian oil was too close to the Urals and the western-supported Free Russian Republic, there were sizable reserves just north of Tuva. However, they would first have to get through Zhirinovsky.
Map of Russian Oil
The EMP's were the miracle the Tuvan Army needed. Luckily for the Tuvans, their army was unaffected as its electrical equipment was either out of range, in training on the Mongolian border, or simply non-existent. Most of Zhirinovsky’s army was not on the border of Tuva, as Zhirinovsky did not intend to attack “the worthless bastard sons of Genghis Khan”. With his army in complete disarray, Dubynin knew it was the time to strike.
In July 1993, the Tuvan army attacked north. By the end of the summer the Tuvans would more than double their landmass and take control of the key oilfields north of them, while striking a peace deal with the Yakutsk separatist forces.
Meanwhile, the Japanese, in response to Zhirinovsky’s aggression and reports of nuclear weapons, decided to intervene, as they had done in the past Russian Civil war. Firstly, they started supplying through air transports the Yakutskian army with infantry equipment and food. They considering aiding the Russian Democratic forces in the far east, however, after intelligence found that Free Russian Forces in the far east were in complete disarray, it was concluded that the Free Russian Republic was too weak to wield any serious power, and at risk of angering its WWIII allies, Japan pursued an expansionist policy. To justify their aggressiveness, they set up the puppet regime of “Free Green Ukraine” north of Chinese Manchuria. Their hand was forced when China responded to “Russian Terrorists” and invaded territories held by the Free Russian Republic in the Western Part of Manchuria.
These interventions set off a chain reaction. The Ukrainian Hetmanate, seeking to claim its ancestral territory in Don-Kuban and the oil-producing territories of the Caucusus attacked the Russian SFSR on August 1st 1993. However, they did not officially do so, instead emplying mercenaries and unmarked troops (defying military law). These were the so called "little green men" which would dominate TV screens for a short while. The various other Caucasian Republics protested, but were too unstable to do anything as they themselves were too weak at the time. The Russian SFSR, engaged in brutal trench warfare with the Free Russian Republic, poorly defended its southern flank, in part because it thought it could retake those territories after it took Moscow, which never occurred. By the end of September the Ukrainians had successfully created “Greater Ukraine”, and more importantly had struck a little oil. This immediate conquest also "helped" improve the Hetmanate’s reputation. In response to this aggression, and the tough position the Tatar rebels found themselves, the Timurid Empire attacked the Russian SFSR’s southern central flank, which just so happened to be a direct path to Russia’s central oil resources.
One would think that the Free Russian Republic would be the main beneficiary of this chaos. However, since the civil war started the Free Russian Republic had not only been battered by National Republic advances but embroiled in bitter trench warfare with the Russian SFSR, this was not the case. The Free Russian Republic couldn’t give chase to retreating opponents on any front nor could it maintain a firm handle on the countryside in areas in full revolt. Meanwhile, their was chaos in the government at home as assassinations and backstabbing were common, and compromise was not.
A Free Russian Republic trench line 30 miles South of Moscow
The Free Russian Republic and Russian SFSR also had to fight numerous new separatist movements as just about every subjugated ethnic group rebelled. In the Caucusus, the Ukrainian Hetmanate subjugated most of the new republics not recognized by the Treaty of Warsaw, besides the Kalamykia people. The Hetmanate was frustrated it could not reach the Caspian, until it finally captured the old Astrakan Oblast late in the fall. Good personal relations between the Kalamykia Lama and the Hetman sealed what would become a productive relationship.
The Moscow Republic would have to face the rise of the Free Komik State and the Nenet’s Natural Gas Workers Revolt, and in revolts by the Mansi. The Mansi would be easily, but brutally repressed, but the other two movements were too strong and had too much of a stranglehold on the Republic’s resources. Even the Tuvans would now be bordered by the Free Nation of Altai and would have to suppress a revolt by the Kahkassians. The Chinese would prop up the puppet “People’s Democratic Republic of Baryutia” to the east of Tuva in response to Japanese aggression. The Japanese in return, continued to arm the "Green Ukrainians" in Amur, and so created a subservient puppet state.
The Russian SFSR, which should have been making progress vs the Free Republic in the planned fall offensive, had to deal with a coordinated revolts in Bashkortostan, Udmurtia, and Mordovia. While these revolts often had trouble controlling large swathes of territory, as long as they could disrupt the already weak supply lines of their opponents, they would maintain some level of success. The Russian SFSR, therefore, could defend the territory they already held, but advances were impossible.
The National Russian Republic would completely collapse when Zhirinovsky was rumored to be killed in an assassination attempt by a Chinese infiltrator. His commanders started a civil war amongst themselves and all pretenses of civilization collapsed. Some of the worst debauchery, rapes, mass murders, and pillaging would occur in the chaos. When Zhirinovsky returned from hiding during his recovery he found that his dreams of a new nationalist Russia were up in smoke.
Unlike Rumsfeld, who failed desperately trying to create a functioning Russian Republic along the lines of the treaty of Warsaw in his last year of his presidency, Iaccoca thought that the whole project was “a waste of time” and “typical liberty conservatism fantasy foreign policy”. In addition, Iacocca believed that Russia, and the continued threat of Russian power, was at the heart of the three world wars of the twentieth century [See A/N below]. In a private interview post-presidency Iaccoca said “I hoped to divide and conquer the Russian Menace” and he wanted “to support the rights of those people wronged by the Russians for centuries”. Many psychologists would wonder after listening to the white-house tapes later in the 21st century whether Iaccoca was racist against Russians (Author’s note: think OTL when the Nixon tapes with his comments on minorities were released).
In September of 1993, American forces would engage in limited actions, seizing the northeastern most parts of Siberia across from Alaska in order to prevent further Japanese expansionism that would destabilize the region. Progressives protested heavily. However, the public felt that a strong US hand, as had been played in Rwanda, would ensure stability in the region.
The fall of 1993 would also bring Belarus’s entry into the war, as per Ukraine’s model pursued a “Greater Belarus” and attacked the Russian Moscow Republic on September 20th 1993. While Belarus was supposedly western-aligned, it now had attacked Europe’s “favorite” in the civil war. A week later, unmarked Ukrainian forces would attack north right into territory that had flipped between “Red” and “White” Russian hands. All the while, the French, Italians, and British, all committed to a “Free, democratic, and unified Russia” where shocked and infuriated by Ukrainian and Belorussian aggressiveness. Frey and Germany, didn’t mind in part because of the Freyist nature of Ukraine and Belarus, which infuriated the neighbor’s leadership, and stalled any allied action. Meanwhile, many voters were simultaneously afraid of another war and some even sympathized with the Ukrainians after watching numerous propaganda films about the Holodymor during WWIII. The elites and policymakers thought otherwise, but they couldn't force any European action. Iaccoca secretly was surprised at Ukrainian success and saw a Black Sea to Caspian Sea Ukraine as a potential ally. He also thought that if he could appease the Ukrainians he could persuade them to adopt a more liberal democratic regime.
Iaccoca had to personally abuse and threaten the Belorussian King over the phone to stop his armies at the eastern border of the Smolensk Oblast whilst sending his secretary of state to a “tour de force” across Europe to prevent the break-up of NATO. Bennett's skill grew apparent as the worst was weathered in the fall months, although the disputes that popped up in 1993 and the growing divide across the Atlantic would appear again. Thankfully, as winter came the fighting started to die down, and the peace process could begin ahead of schedule.
[A/N:
ITL, a need for a unifying thread between all three conflicts leads to Russia, and Communism, getting more of the blame for causing the Three World Wars than Germany at this point in time form the balance of power and political science perspective.
In WWI, Russian Industrialization, combined with desire for warm-water ports as a source of expansionism, is seen as having made Austria-Hungary and Germany more aggressive in their actions. Combined with Russian pan-Slavism, which lead to unwavering support for Serbia, and thus WWI. Russia is seen as having been partially culpable to the destabilization of Europe pre-WWI at this point in time ITL.
Russian technical assistance to the Germans in the 1920’s, World Communism polarizing domestic politics, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, west-ward expansion (which is seen to have pressured Romania, Bulgaria, etc. into chain-ganging with Hitler), is seen as key help in how Germany was able to perceive the balance of power in their favor enough to start WWII. The Germans are still responsible, but the rise of Fascism isn’t just seen as a pathology that emerged soley within the Axis powers, but a disease supported form the outside. For example, financial/ideological support of Mussolini and Hitler from the west is also seen as a more important element of the rise of fascism.
Pre-WWIII, Russian Imperialism, through the ideology of world communism, is seen as the long-term cause of the war. The rise of the Hardliners is taught as inevitable, just as historians/experts now teach that Communism was always going to fall in the early 1990’s.
In short, the old Russian/Soviet Empire, combined with Russian Imperialism/World Communism/support for a resurgent Germany pre-WW2 is the clumsy ITL attempt to have a unifyinig IR theory at this moment in time.
This is not a reflection of the writer's personal political views but an attempt to understand how I.R. Theorey would change ITL and how this would reflect in policy. It is also important to remember, that blaming Germany, and ally, is not a popular idea at this moment. ]
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