MarshalBraginsky
Banned
I can safely guess that revolutionary fervor might get a big boost if Russia lost the 1878 war, and Alex II might end up kicking the bucket a lot sooner.
Alex III can get pretty nervous inheriting the mess that his father has left him with. It can turn into a nasty feedback loop between worse social unrest, more repressive crackdown and greater backlash.This has a lot of possibilities, including shorter reign of Alex III.
Yeah, that sounds bad. But frankly I do aim for a radical big bad Russia in a different form.
Theocratic Russia, "Ba'ath"-esque Russia, Fascist Russia, I could list of many different, but still terrifying Russias though.
This is one of the possibilities that I'm personally partial to. The stranger one would be something of a straight-to-the-point populist military junta, based on an ideology that emphasizes the role of military as guardian of revolution and vanguard of social reform, yadda yadda. It'll be interesting to throw in commitment for agro-communalism, at least initially and then theoritically.
Can I see your Red Baron TL ?
I can see that Franco-Russian Entente will still happen, since both will have common concern in Germany. Really though, it's because of Wilhelm. Frederick's Germany would perhaps lessen the chance of Entente, depending on his diplomacy with France. Of course, there's also Bismarck himself who did everything he could to prevent Russian antagonism and even pursued revival of Dreikaiserbund, which while I think won't hold(there was a problem of German protectionism besides the Balkan dispute), there's a chance of long term cordiality or even future alliance between two empires (without the Balkan question) that can prevent Franco-Russian entente as long as someone like Willie won't come in and ruin everything.
Kinda too rightist and conservative for my preference. I imagine something slightly to the right of Salah Jadid's socialism under a system of outright government by the military.
Triple Russo-Austro-German alliance can mean either no Great War or bad news for OE, on the equal scale to Anglo-Franco-Russian alliance against her(in addition to being a bad news for everyone, really). Frederick's survival can mean Anglo-German alliance against Franco-Russian entente, but I'm not sure if I want it just yet.
Yeah, but I kinda prefer something leftier, in social stance as well as economic ones, with pretty much Soviet view on ethnic nationalism. Closer to Salah Jadid rather then Saddam or the Assads. With Indonesian dwifungsi militarism on steroids(Military is not only to intervene into governmental process, it should be the one that runs it!).
That's the reason I've been asking about military and socio-political consequences in this thread. The former is clear enough. The later needs more data.