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WI Russia had been colonized or conquered by one of the other European powers in the 17th or 18th centuries? IMO you'd have to butterfly away Peter the Great to do this, but could the Russian Empire have been prevented before it ever got started? And what about the Soviet Union-would there still have been a Russian Revolution without the Romanovs in charge? (My answer-probably yes, but it might have been more of a nationalist than a political revolt-or maybe Russia gains independence after the First World War and has a civil war that leads to facism rather than communism...)
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