"Had the Whites won the war, Fascism would be a Russian word."
- quote attributed to Leon Trotsky
This is going to be a somewhat short timeline focused on something a lot of people really like to discuss both on AH.com and in other alternate history outlets - a Fascist, or, well "Fascist" Russia, how it might have come into being after World War I and what it might have looked like. It's a fairly common concept in alternate timelines on this site, usually taken as a quick alternative to the USSR for having a totalitarian Russian state, often with little thought put into it, and it is often discussed, usually in terms of how totalitarian it would be and what its war goals would look like. Often, it's seen as the natural result of a White victory in the Russian Civil War. However, there hasn't really been a timeline which explores "Fascist" Russia as its central concept, at least not one which is distinctively "Russian" (instead of being just Nazi Germany with a Russian paintjob).- quote attributed to Leon Trotsky
I've decided to try writing something in this field and see if it sticks.
The POD with which this scenario is acquired (the Brusilov Offensive being a complete success and knocking A-H, and soon the rest of the Central Powers) is not the focus of the timeline and I personally believe that the Brusilov Offensive wouldn't have been catastrophic to the Central Powers even if it was completely successful, but that doesn't really matter here.
I'm here to theorycraft a post-WWI fascist Russia, not take on WW1 military analysis, although you're welcome to comment on that if you're interested.
Pravoslavie, samoderzhavie, narodnost
(Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality)
a Fascist Russia timeline
On three in the morning on March 3rd, 1917, with the Armistice of Compiegne, the guns went silent. From the flat plains of Belgium to the endless depths of the Russian countryside, cheers could be heard amongst the millions of men in the trenches, for the Great War, the single bloodiest and most brutal conflict in everyone's lives, was over at last.(Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality)
a Fascist Russia timeline
For the Russian Empire, whose army was arguably one of the main culprits of the ultimate Entente victory in the conflict thanks to the genius mind of General Alexei Brusilov and the valiant actions of its soldiers in the so-called Brusilov and Evert Offensives, smashing the core of the Austro-Hungarian army in Galicia and putting significant enough pressure on the German positions in the East to cause their ultimate downfall alongside parallel Western offensives, this was was Pyrrhic victory. Just the military casualties alone speak for themselves - almost two million military deaths of all causes, three million wounded, millions more mentally scarred during the years of conflict. The German and Austro-Hungarian invasion of Russia's Western provinces resulted in a severe refugee crisis - hundreds of thousands, if not millions, had fled or were forcefully displaced to the East, their presence was causing significant ethnic and demographic pressure, and the logistics of returning them to their bombed, ravaged, destroyed homes fell all on the Empire's shoulders.
The Great War, initially sees by Tsar Nicholas II and his cabinet as a potential way to "distract" the Russian population from poverty and anti-Tsarist agitation by rallying them around a common enemy, had also resulted in significant changes in Russian society, many of which the Tsarist government would have probably found undesirable, or potentially didn't even anticipate. As the commander in chief of the Russian Imperial Army aside from his monarch duties since September of 1915, Tsar Nicholas II could claim fame from Russia's ultimate victory in the Great War - even if his duties were largely ceremonial and much of the day-to-day matters of the armed forces were handled by the Tsar's chief-of-staff, Mikhail Alexeyev - however, on the other hand, this also meant that the Tsar, and by extension the government of the Russian Empire as a whole, was directly associated with all of the failures and grievances which the people might have with the war and its results (although arguably, the Tsar being away at the front and unable to govern, leaving the day-to-day matters of the state to his wife Grand Duchess Alexandra and a conservative cabinet led by ever changing Prime Ministers). For many both in the front and back at home, the thought of this having been a conflict for Serbia or for pan-Slavic unity had long since been forgotted, and the one thing most people really knew was that it took away their husband's life, that it took away their home, or that it took away their arm or leg. On the other hand, a "faction" just as large as the "losers" of the war were those who believed that it did not go far enough. The Russian military, having swept into Galicia and passed the Carpathians after heavy resistance, stopped there instead of spewing itself forth into the Hungarian Plain, the commanders of the units stationed content with watching the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in slow motion. As for the matters north, because of bloody stalemate after bloody stalemate in the swamps of Belarus and beaches of the Daugava, the Imperial Russian Army did not even reach the prewar border before the German Empire capitulated at last. Those who were convinced that the Great War was a crusade against the Teutons, a repetition of the Battle of Grunwald or the Battle on the Ice, were disappointed to witness not a glorious victory and the white-blue-red flying on the Brandenburg Gates, but a whimper, a disappointment. This stance on the end of the Great War would turn a lot more relevant once the peace negotiations after the Armistice of Compiegne would begin.
Russia's internal socialist movement, having been fairly miniscule before the outbreak of the Great War as many of its main leaders and activists had been arrested nine years earlier, was no longer a mere toddler which the Tsarist government could safely ignore. While most political forces in the Russian Empire actively endorsed the Great War and rallied behind the Tsar and his cabinet from 1914 until the very end, socialists such as the two splinter factions of the far-left Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, as well as the left internationalist faction of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, had opposed the conflict from the very start, or at the very least spoke strongly against it as the conflict progressed and more and more blood was shed. This was fairly out of line line with the other socialist and social democratic parties in the other major participants of the war, many of which endorsed a "social chauvinist" stance, abandoning their previous pacifist principles to support the ongoing war. Throughout the war, all of these parties - but most notably the Bolsheviks, the most radical and active of the far-left movements within Russia, carried forward by the charisma of their leader Vladimir Ulyanov "Lenin", who had, in fact, been allowed to return to Russia from exile in Switzerland with the permission of the Germans - harnessed the dissatisfaction with the war weariness and the poverty and starvation which the mobilization of the Empire resulted in. Perhaps ironically, the actions of these "peace-callers" would soon start to turn violent, workers and peasants across the country trying to get their point across through strikes, protest actions and often bloody riots. The radicalization of the Army played an important role as well - many of the soldiers serving in the Imperial Russian Army had grown completely disillusioned both ways, and as revolutionary activity began to take place in the defeated German and Austro-Hungarian empires, they got to chance to witness it first hand and, once demobilized, return with a new outlook. Of course, this radicalization went both ways - plenty of Russian soldiers returned home believing themselves to be heroes and having their nationalism reinvigorated, which came into stark contrast with the poor situation back home.
As Russian soldiers marched into the formerly German occupied territories of the Empire, they saw that the situation here had changed just as radically as it did in Petrograd or Moscow. Though initially they carried no interest in cooperating with the peoples in the territories they occupied, as the Great War drew to a close, the desperate German government offered an olive branch to the Poles, Lithuanians and Latvians in occupied territory, promising postwar independence in exchange for loyalty and support. A provisional Polish state, a regency for the Kingdom of Poland under the leadership of Waclaw Niemojowski, had already been established in German-occupied Russian Poland, although it had little real power and was mostly just for show, whereas in Lithuania, though no statelike structure was established, the Vilnius Conference held in late 1916 and endorsed by the German occupation authorities called for the swift establishment of an independent Lithuanian state. The returning Russians arrived to territories which had their nationalism fully invigorated and populations which had been sick of requisitions, war and uncertainty, and the first thing on their mind were independent states led by one of their own, be it Pole, Lithuanian or Latvian. Though the reoccupation of Lithuania was mainly calm, as no large-scale local resistance units had formed by the time when the armistice was signed, the Polish units within the Central Powers armies, like the Polnische Wehrmacht or the Polish Auxiliary Corps, refused to stand down, demobilize or flee to Germany and instead stood their ground in Poland. Jozef Pilsudski, one of the chief leaders of the Polish Legions, released by the German authorities from imprisonment during the last weeks of the war to boost the morale of Polish units, now assumed control as the temporary Naczelnik of a forming Polish state. The subsequent Russian reoccupation of Poland is considered by some to have been a new Polish uprising and a Russo-Polish war by others, but the result of it was obvious from the beginning - within weeks, the Imperial Russian Army took control of the country's main cities and began reestablishing order in the countryside, the disparate Polish Legions were defeated one after the other, and Pilsudski himself arrested again. As it became increasingly clear, however, that not only Poland and the other Western regions will not be easily stabilized, but that Russia will be tasked with occupying new territory formerly held by the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, which would be even less happy with the Russian modus operandi, few believed that the current harsh integrationist position on the Western regions is the way to the future. Increased autonomy for the Poles had been promised by the Tsar's government at the very beginning of the war, to prevent the Poles from becoming a fifth column, with the formation of the Polish National Committee and endorsement of the so-called "Blue Army" under Jozef Haller in France. Something would have to be done about those promises, after all.
Tsar Nicholas II returns to Petrograd on March 5th, 1917
To say that the Tsar was reluctant would be an understatement - especially because the Great War, which was supposed to strengthen the institution of the Tsar and potentially allow the restoration of the autocracy of the past, was what would finally bring down the authority of the Tsar to that of a mere constitutional monarch. However, he was playing with a weak hand. As Rodzianko would inform in a telegram about the situation in the Capital, "there must no delay - any procrastination would be amount to death". The capital was nearing a state of anarchy, workers in Petrograd's largest industrial plant, the Putilov Factory, had gone on strike on this very same day, and while constitutionalism may be enough to appease some of the protesters, if the Tsar were to decline, they would move on to demanding a monarchy instead. With the choice of either maintaining the 300 year olf Romanov dynasty of watching it collapse in flames, the Tsar made the choice to remove Prince Golitsyn from his position and, in his place, appoint one of the main leaders of the Progressive Bloc, the historian Pavel Milyukov, belonging to the Constitutional Democratic Party, as the new Prime Minister. Milyukov and his party, the Kadets, were considered to be the premier liberal faction in imperial Russian politics, though the beginning of the war shifted them more to the right, openly advocating for the continuation of the conflict, using nationalist rhetoric to whip up support and calling for annexations in the following peace treaty (Milyukov himself had even ended up nicknamed "Milyukov of the Dardanelles" for his vocal support for the annexation of the Bosphorus Straits). Milyukov's appointment was endorsed by the rest of the Progressive Bloc, including the Kadets, Progressives and left Octobrists, while the Trudoviks and the rest of the Octobrist faction, as well as independent nationalist deputies, were ambivalent.
On the next day, March 6th, Tsar Nicholas II, with the elite loyalist Preobrazhensky Regiment activated and moved into the city both for the monarch's personal safety and to begin reestablishing order in Petrograd, made a public appearance outside of the Tauride Palace, for the first time since the end of the war. There, the monarch announced the end of the Great War for good, the appointment of Pavel Milyukov as the new Prime Minister, as well as announced several promises of reforms and actions which shall be taken in the immediate future, in what will later be etched into history as the "Armistice Promises". These included:
- the abolition of the Basic Laws of 1906 and the drafting of a new Constitution which would adhere to democratic and pluralistic principles;
- the swift demobilization of the Army and the extension of suffrage to soldiers and officers for their effort in the Great War;
- the implementation of freedom of unionize, work safety regulations, and a welfare system modelled after the Imperial German, or "Bismarckian" model;
- the abolition of restrictions and discriminatory policies for other nationalities and faiths of Russia, such as Poles and Jews;
- a "righteous and just peace" after the Great War, which will include significant territorial and reparatory concessions from the defeated Central Powers to pay for the Russian blood shed in the conflict.
The speech was promulgated through newspapers, posters and mounted news carriers across the entire country. The reactions to the Armistice Promises were mixed, but overall positive - though the far left and the far right were both dissatisfied, the former believing that anything but the abdication of "Nicholas the Bloody" is too little concessions, while the latter thinking that too many concessions had been given to the left in what should be a moment of glory for the Russian Empire. For the first time in two years, public authorities across Russia's cities and countryside recorded a semblance of stability, as many of the striking workers either returned to factories completely or at least took their protests less violently, while the end of the war finally got many to take an easier breath and consider the future with optimism.
This returning stability, alongside with units being freed from the front and now available for operations in the country, gave Nicholas II the confidence to consider a repeat of the response to the Revolution of 1905 - granting promises to the unruly nation and then sending in the army when their guard is down to eliminate the leadership of the revolutionary movement - except with even less of a delay between the protests and the elimination. The Imperial Duma did not even want to consider such an act, however, and even discussing such a possibility got a number of the deputies in the parliament to call treason and demand abdication, though such demands were quickly shut down by the silent majority. The truth is, however that even the fiercely anti-violence deputies knew that despite the Armistice Promises, the situation in the country was still far from stable, and even in this slightly calmer state, an armed overthrow of the Tsarist regime was not a distant possibility. With radical far-left leaders such as Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky continuing to run rampant across the country's cities, calling for the establishment of a "proletarian dictatorship" across Russia, there was little hope for a reconciliation and a military response would be necessary eventually. On the other hand, the Russian people were well aware of what happened in 1905 and had no desire to be betrayed like that ever again. The loyalty of the army units which would be used to sweep the country of socialist demagogues was up for debate as well. Still, however, Tsar Nicholas II was adamant, and as the Basic Laws had not been repealed yet, he opted to use his powers of releasing emergency decrees in times of crisis in use. On March 16th, in the Duma, Nicholas II began reading out an ukaze, declaring the implementation of martial law in all of Russia's major cities and ordering 30 divisions from the front to be moved to the Russian heartland to start eliminating threats to the Tsarist government and the stability of the state, but before he could even finish reading out the declaration, he was met with mass shouting from the parliamentarians and a verbal declaration by Prime Minister Milyukov that he and his government will all resign if this decree sees the light of day. Only a few dozen extreme right deputies, led by Alexei Khvostov, didn't disagree with the decree, most of them merely ambivalent, and intimidated by such resistance, the Tsar withdrew his order.
This is where the persona of General Lavr Kornilov, a Russian military commander of Siberian Cossack origin and the commander the Petrograd Military District, comes into play. Seeing the inability of the Tsarist government to take immediate action against the ongoing unrest in Petrograd and knowing of the failed ukaze which would have allowed him to start rounding up the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in the city one by one, Kornilov opted to take matters into his own hands, and, the divisions under his command bolstered by soldiers returning from the front as well as the reaffirmed loyalty of the Imperial Guards and Tsar's Escort Cossacks stationed in the military region, the general ordered a move on the capital to begin a mass offensive against the ongoing strikes, riots and protests in the city. Within a week, known as the "Red Days of March", over three thousand suspects were arrested, almost a hundred shot during skirmishes within the city and many more injured or forced to disperse to the underground. Among the people arrested was much of the higher leadership of the Bolshevik faction of the fallen RSDLP, including Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, Joseph Stalin and Lev Kamenev, while many others successfully escaped the city to the east. The Tsar, who had returned to his residence at Tsarskoye Selo after the debacle in the Duma, intrepreted the events in the capital as a coup at first and had already begun reaching out to his Chief of Staff, General Mikhail Alekseyev, to begin organizing resistance against "an ongoing republican coup in Petrograd". Alekseyev, however, opted to take a careful approach to the events in Petrograd and did not immediately send troops, both out of fear of rebellion among his soldiers and also because he hardly considered Kornilov to be a republican revolutionary. The Duma in the Tauride Palace, on the other hand, was surrounded by Kornilov's soldiers, and several of the deputies who were in session at the time recount a moment when several Cossack soldiers led by one of Kornilov's proteges, Mikhail Levitov, burst into the main chamber and ordered the Duma to disperse, the deputies only being saved from such a fate by a messenger suddenly reaching the colonel that "the time is not there yet".
Indeed, it is believed that Kornilov, though declaring himself to be merely acting on the behalf of the civilian government and restoring order in Petrograd, had the intention of, to put it more bluntly, "remaining there permanently". The General was already not much of a fan of the Duma, and the proposed future constitutional reforms of the Empire would have satisfied him even less - meanwhile, the possibility of a more iron fisted leadership, with or without the Tsar as the head of state, would have been a lot more preferable to him. As March drew to a close and Petrograd turned quiet at last, only with the occasional corpse being carried away from the littered streets, the country entered a crisis of leadership. Nobody - neither the foreign states watching nor the Russians themselves - knew who was in charge of Russia anymore. Kornilov still believed that he was just a garrison commander doing his duty, and attempted to contact the Tsar through telegram, but to no avail. The Tsar remained in Tsarskoye Selo, fearing that returning to Petrograd would be a death sentence. The Imperial Duma was practically waiting for the commander to declare himself the supreme dictator. The STAVKA was operating under barebones knowledge of what's happening in Petrograd. In this situation, the decisive factor was Alexei Brusilov, one of the most famous and prestigious commanders in the Imperial Russian Army, whose former deputy Kornilov once was, who, independently of the STAVKA and the Tsar's orders, contacted the garrison commander through telegram, requesting to stand down and hand the reins of power back to the civilian government. Kornilov acquitted, a response which Brusilov forwarded to his superior Alexeyev. From there, everything went a lot more simply - a few divisions were sent to Petrograd, the Tsar returned from Tsarskoye Selo and immediately ordered Kornilov's arrest for acting without orders and planning a coup d'etat.
This is where problems arose. The "Kornilov Affair" led to a clash between the military and the civilian government. Alexeyev and Brusilov were both in favor of Kornilov's removal and arrest, but many junior officers, NCOs and soldiers weren't - they saw him not as a traitor, but as a hero, who prevented a Bolshevik overthrow of the Tsar and eliminated these enemies of the state. Kornilov professed the same thing, stating that overthrowing the government was never one of his wishes. The Duma wanted Kornilov to be locked behind bars or even executed for treason, having been firmly scared for life by the entire Kornilov Affair. And as this process was taking place, radical socialists across the entire Empire began to take up arms and cry betrayal, declaring that the Kornilov Affair was completely staged by the Tsarist government to acquit themselves of any responsibility for the Red Days of March, and trying to pull a repeat of 1905. Tsar Nicholas II, hacing been personally scorned by what he initially believed to have been a coup d'etat against his already fragile rule, and yet not trying to appear like he is on the side of the socialists, took the option of compromise - stripping General Kornilov of his command and titles and putting him under house arrest in Rostov, under close supervision. It was a compromise which satisfied completely no one - socialists and the Duma were enraged by what they perceived to be a mere slap on the wrist for the butcher of Petrograd, while the far-right elements within the Army and the greater society saw this as a betrayal of a man who, in their eyes, saved the Russian Empire from a Bolshevik takeover.
Regardless, with the initial instability slowly put under control, the government of Pavel Milyukov could finally begin normal operation, swiftly establishing itself as one of the most productive, if short lived, governments since 1905. In a short time period, pressed by the concerns of alleviating mass unrest and regaining full control over the country, the Milyukov cabinet pushed through several decrees and law projects through the Duma and the cooperative, if reluctant Tsar Nicholas II. One of the first acts of the cabinet was the lifting of alcohol prohibition, implemented by the Tsar during the Great War as an attempt to boost morale and production effciency, but ending up laughably backfiring as the revenue of the government sharply fell due to loss of alcohol tax. The restrictions on the press and the freedom of speech during and before the Great War, once the Bolshevik insurgency calmed down and the threat of the action backfiring became less likely, were lifted, although with some reservations in specific, "anti-government" instances. The implementation of demobilization took place, over two million soldiers returning from the front and from occupation zones in Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire to their families and jobs, and in accordance to the Armistice Promises, an amendment to the Basic Laws of the Russian Empire was passed allowing military personnel to participate and vote in national and local elections. The proposed ban on capital punishment, however, was more controversial. Tsar Nicholas II opposed it vehemently, vetoing any attempts by the Duma to implement such a policy, while far-right politicians within the Duma whipped up internal opposition within the Progressive Bloc, especially from the Octobrist faction of the alliance. A possibility of the Progressive Bloc dissolving completely was discussed, but the Progressives and Kadets, knowing that the only coalition alternative would be a loose right-wing coalition led by the Octobrists, opted to instead cut their losses and drop the motion for good, making up for it with basic labor code reforms to appease the still unruly working classes of the Russian Empire. Prime Minister Milyukov also contacted the Polish National Committee and offered Roman Dmowski of the National Democrats which had fled to Russia during the Great War to form a provisional "autonomous" Polish government for a future debate of a Finland-style status within the Russian Empire.
The signing of the Treaty of Versailles, December 1917
How well did it go to achieve these, admittedly, ambitious goals in the Conference? Some passed through, some did not, others were not even discussed. In many cases, Russia stood on a similar camp as France, the two countries having suffered the brunt of the costs of the war and thus wishing to see a harsh treaty imposed on the Germans. This was in direct opposition to the United Kingdom and the United States, the latter of which had joined the war at its last inch on January of 1917, after the Germans took on the last-ditch attempt to turn the tide in their favor by implementing unrestricted submarine warfare. Both of them did not want to see Germany turned to dust, considering them to be a prospective trading partner and, just in case, a potential check on Franco-Russian power. The war guilt clause and reparations both passed, as did the ban on unifying Germany with Austria, while most of the Russian claims in Eastern Europe were accepted with little discussion - after all, all of those territories were already practically in Russia's hands, there was little which Russia could do about them regardless. The rest was where problems started to pop up, however. The Western Allies fervently opposed granting Russia a "blank cheque" on all of the Balkans, fearing overwhelming Russian influence in Eastern Europe. This was the moment when Greece, fearing future Russian domination, began cozying up ever closer with the British, while even Serbia began taking worrying glances towards apparent Russian imperialism in the region. Despite all which the Russians claimed on the necessity for them to control the Bosphorus, the British and French delegations were having none of it, instead demanding and eventually forcing through an international demilitarized zone for the straits. Not that it mattered, anyway, as none of the Entente had the ability to project power there on any short notice, and the nationalist government in Turkey led by Mustafa Kemal and his clique were quick to disregard any demands which the Entente might have had on the former Ottoman Empire...
The Russian delegation returned to their homeland on the beginning the next year, bringing an unsatisfactory treaty which did not address all of their concerns and a request for Russia to apply as one of the founding members of the League of Nations, a supranational organization with the declared clause of promoting peace and diplomatic cooperation across the planet. Debates on whether the treaties of the Paris Peace Conference - Versailles, Trianon, Sevres - made up for the millions of Russians lost in the Great War began to take place immediately - and quickly enough, the public opinion began to slowly steer towards "no, they were not". In the end, all which Milyukov and Struve brought was the annexation of several unruly border regions - so unruly that, for example, the Russian occupation authorities in the West already had to fight off mass Freikorps uprisings in East Prussia and Danzig - and a promise of reparations to cover the costs of the war. Reparations which might not even come like the Russians wanted them to, as the German government suddenly began to hyperinflate its currency to pay for those reparations with worthless Reichsmarks... This was when the far right of the Russian political spectrum activated, most notably the Black Hundreds, fanatical supporters of the Tsarist regime, nationalism and autocracy led by a shrewd and charismatic, though restless and poorly regarded extremist politician, Vladimir Purishkevich. The Black Hundreds, which had almost died out by 1914, but gained a second lease at life in the final stages of the Great War, celebrating the glorious victory against the Teutons and fighting the Bolshevik traitors through their own tactics, this being riots and mob assaults - and under Purishkevich's leadership, they whipped up a storm, denouncing the peace as nothing more than a "temporary armistice", demanding Kornilov to be restored to his position and war against Germany removed to march as far as the Rhine so Russia can take all which it needs.
The resentment against what was often perceived to be a "peace without victory", escalating violence in Russian-occupied East Prussia, an inability to receive the reparations needed to start rejuvenating the Russian industry, and the failure of Milyukov's own desire to see the Bosphorus in Russian hands, the Prime Minister opted to resign for good, filing in his departure on March 11th, 1918. Tsar Nicholas II chose an another member of the Kadet party, the criminologist, journalist, and progressive legislator Vladimir Nabokov, who had served as Milyukov's Minister of Justice during his one-year tenure. Nabokov was seen as acceptable to the left wing of Russian politics, having cooperated with them in the past for pushing through progressive reforms and having served as the Milyukov cabinet's mouthpiece to the Socialist Revolutionaries and RSDLP, and thus his appointment was approved by the majority of the Duma.
Though Nabokov was far from the head of government Purishkevich would have wanted to see replace Milyukov, his cabinet's fall could and was considered a victory of his - he did not get to enjoy it for long, however, as he soon departed from politics himself. Not through retirement, no, but through the power of the bullet. During a routine Black Hundredist rally in the streets of Moscow, Purishkevich suddenly saw himself felled by several bullets fired by Fanny Kaplan, a member of the radical wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries, severely injuring the politician, and leaving him dead in a hospital bed a few days later. The shots of the assassination rang across the entire nation, prompting mass violent backlash by far right elements across Russia, attacking and assaulting suspected radical socialists, until these actions finally found a stop at the hands of the police - however, with the loss of one of their main leaders, the Black Hundreds found it unable to maintain their momentum despite the initial surge during the Paris Peace Conference, haemorrhaging most of its membership and the majority of its members dispersing within a few months.
In that way, it could be said that Purishkevich's death set back the Russian far-right movement - however, it would be a mistake. Because nature does not tolerate a vacuum, and the fall of the Black Hundreds would soon only pave a way to a different, a much more refined and revolutionary movement, which, unlike the Hundredists, was more than just a mob of angry right-wing thugs.
And it would fly to take Russia by storm.
