Well, if nothing else, the implication is that the Republicans win the civil war, then get beaten down in TTL's WWII, and the Romanovs return to power. In short, they went to all this trouble, and in the end amounted to nothing.
Place In the Sun: What If Italy Joined the Central Powers? (1.0)
- Thread starter Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth
- Start date
For all we know they win and then have a communist-liberal/democrat conflict to pass the time.
Well, I'm sure even a dysfuncional Republic would be preferable to Lenin coming to power, if OTL is anything to go off of. Still, the best case for Russia would ve been a Constitutional Monarchy modeled off of the British or even the Germans (where the Kaiser still held sizable political power).
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I know I've been beating that horse carcass for quite some time by now, but I still hold out hope for this and do see it as a genuinely possible outcome.
The OTL Russian Civil War, in the grand scheme of things (i.e. ignoring foreign interventionists, the anarchists, and the Greens) can roughly be drawn up as a war of three cliques - the Tsarists, Republicans, and Communists - split between two factions (the Whites and Soviets). Within the Soviets you had relative unity between the varying cliques of socialists, in spite of their comprising a spectrum between vaguely democratic elements and what would later become Stalin's clique. Contrasting this, the Whites had vast ideological diversity within their main compositional guilds, what with the Tsarists divided between multiple claimants and multiple ideas about how strong the monarch's role in government should be, and the Republicans between social democrats, liberals, and conservatives. The latter were defeated and politically silenced, leaving a very limited subset of vogue ideological vehicles for the state to operate in; this, coupled with the prevalence of communist hardliners among the remaining political elite, lent itself to the effective centralization of totalitarian power under the Marxist-Leninists.
TTL's Russian Civil War has a similar overall structure (three cliques divided between two factions), but compositionally the makeup consistency between the status quo faction (the Tsarists) and the revolutionaries (the Republicans + Marxists) has been nearly flipped. The Tsarists are, while divided between constitutionalists and absolutists, reasonably united in support of a single government apparatus - there aren't any Kirill loyalists anymore, and Mikhailovich isn't really contesting the throne against his son. Contrast the anti-Tsarists, who have people ranging from Kerensky to Antonov to Zinoviev to Lenin in positions of political relevance; such heterodoxy does not lend itself to an easy and stable peace, but it also makes any one faction gaining substantial enough support to take on and suppress the others hard. This incentivizes working with other groups in coalition to advance positions of mutual interest - something that the key actors of the Republic have been doing throughout a lot of the story, from the base alliance between Kerensky and Zinoviev to more popular forms of solidarity as seen in the people of Petrograd after its conquest - which is a basal element of parliamentarianism and one further weakening the notion of revolt due to the value in appealing to others rather than warring on them.
It's by no means guaranteed in the event the Republic wins the Civil War (in the event the republic pisses the soviets off too much, it's possible the various left-wing factions could unite against the government given similarities to the Lvov government of Xenia I's empire), but I certainly feel it's possible for political necessity and mutual weakness to establish seeds of cross-party dialogue in the near-term postwar period, and from then on internal conflict fading as a motivator due to the positive feedback loop of normalized inter-party negotiations. But we'll just have to see how the story goes, and wherever Russia ends up is liable to be reached only after a long and painful journey to at least some degree.
Of course, that also touches on a great risk for an extra extended civil war - what happens the moment Lenin and Kerensky decide the other is more likely to kill them than the Tsarists ever will (on account of losing)? Will they fall out, pitting republicans against communists leading to a Tsarist resurgence, or will they hang together until the Tsar is out (and presumably a clear claimant, or the current Tsar himself, is in exile).
It's a valid point, and I am pretty suspicious myself that Lenin will try to pull something in the near future before he and his vanguardists stand to be sidelined completely; I'm personally doubtful that he would succeed at executing much more than something more like a revolt than a civil war on the scale of the current one, though.
For one, influence among the communists seems to be fragmented decently well between Zinoviev and Lenin, and while there is an argument that revolutionary unity could see both turn on the Kerenskyites in the immediate term, Lenin is increasingly suspicious that the Zinovievites are in league with the bourgeoise Republicans. More likely I feel is that a revolt attempt would lead to a large breach between the left wings of the Provisionals, and unless Lenin's clique contains most of the left-aligned generalship, I don't see it posing an existential threat to the republic. If he could sway Antonov and the agrarian Greens to such a cause, it's possible that such a revolt could stand on its own legs and effectively contest the leadership; that seems quite out of character for both individuals, though, given their conflicting interests between the rural/urban divide.
The other reason I feel a wholescale Marxist/Republican schism is unlikely for at least a few years is that Russia is simply a shelled-out husk, and will be all the more so by the time the war ends. It's going to be hard to ask the population to rise up against the government which they are both theoretically a part of and which is winning against a shared enemy when said population is demographically devastated and living in squalor under wartime restrictions; the fact that these devastations fall worst on the urban populations, theoretically the core supporting demographic of a communist rising, further hampers a Leninist rising's odds of success.
As for the possibility of Kerensky acting against his current Marxist allies, I view that as unlikely while the war is still going on because of how many of the best Provisional generals would become his enemies. Trying to conduct a purge would at best go cleanly and decimate the ranks of their military leadership, and at worst simply remove the impetus of communicable elements such as Zinoviev to digress with Lenin.
Damn. Finally caught up, which means I need to wait for another post for the first time. Gah!
@Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth i must tip my hat to you for this remarkable TL. This is one of the best written and best researched works I have encountered on this site in my two years here. Absolutely stunning work, that puts me to shame - and impressive for someone as young as you are. You’ll have my enthusiastic vote for the Turtledove’s when those roll around in the new year.
(as an aside - since I know you’re doing countries in blocs and then going back rather than purely stream of time, did I miss an update on how the 1918/1920 US elections went?)
@Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth i must tip my hat to you for this remarkable TL. This is one of the best written and best researched works I have encountered on this site in my two years here. Absolutely stunning work, that puts me to shame - and impressive for someone as young as you are. You’ll have my enthusiastic vote for the Turtledove’s when those roll around in the new year.
(as an aside - since I know you’re doing countries in blocs and then going back rather than purely stream of time, did I miss an update on how the 1918/1920 US elections went?)
Thank you very much for the kind words! As a matter of fact, in the real world I'm deep into college application season on top of my usual academic demands, both of which are a pain and a half, so there may be some delays to normal service. Thus, it's comments like these which keep me going...
Regarding the US election: no, I've yet to make one. Will do so today!
Oh of course! Best of luck with the admissions season that is quite a time. Hopefully your preferred choices align.
Looking forward to it!
Personally it would be interesting if there was a split between the republicans however, instead of kerensky, lenin comes out on top. However, because of the damage sustained by the offensives the tsarist are unable to properly capitalise on it. But neither can Lenin defeat the tsarist resulting in stalemate. OR big or instead of lenin which would be alright, the republicans totally collapse and the peasant revolt actually takes their place and then the stalemate forms. It would be fascinating to see what a stalemate and possibly a compromise between the peasant revolt and tsarist would look like. Personally I would vote for that outcome
Sorry guys. Senior year is keeping me so busy... the last thing I want to do when I get home exhausted is sit down and use up more brainpower even on this. It's not dead but it might be a while.
I feel you man. I'm not nearly as busy as you are, but there are times when the last thing I want to do is work on something that doesn't matter (it's more of the case with my music blog, but occasionally my timeline on this site as well). The wait will only make it more exciting when an update does drop.
Thanks. This is actually proving useful in a sense, because it's forcing me to change what I'm doing. I think I've rather forgotten that this TL is about Germany and Italy cooperating, not a division-level military history of the alt-Russian Civil War. Once I get my SATs over and done with and generally adapt to the new requirements... we'll be back. Some things- like mapmaking and vexilology- use very different parts of the brain than writing so they tend to get priority for "decompressing"...
Oh, the Russian Civil War updates have been thrilling, even if Russia is likely to be a disaster no matter who wins (Tsarists, Republicans or Commies).
In soooooviet Russia, everyone loses even if they win! But seriously, Russia is fucked no matter what.