Is it possible for the Russian Empire to remain standing by the end of the Great War or whatever analogue for it came about ITTL, while much of Central Europe ends up falling to a wave of Communism?
I'm thinking Germany, Austria, Hungary Czechoslovakia, etc, all under a sort of Communist Union, though that might be a bit of a wank initially. Basically, a state that is strong enough to scare the trousers off of the Entente Powers and make them look towards Russia to offer a counterbalance.
This is actually the basis for a TL I've been pondering for a long time. My PoD is somewhat more successful socialist infiltration of the German army during the Great War, which leads to large numbers of former soldiers, plus the SDP (who realize which side their bread is buttered on) to defect to the Spartacist side during a Communist revolution in Germany in 1919. This, combined with an attempted copycat socialist uprising in France and a more evenly balanced Russian Civil War which the Entente Powers have already intervened in, leads to a weak Imperial Russia and a German Socialist Republic, allied with a Communist state in Hungary. A rump German Imperial state exists as a Taiwan-esque enclave in East Prussia, supported by Russia.
Over the next two decades, Germany negotiates with Britain to return the Kiel Canal zone (occupied by an Anglo-Danish alliance) as a demilitarized territory and supports leftist revolutions in Yugoslavia, Austria and Poland, It forms an economic union and alliance with the Central European states (including a Finlandized Czechoslovakia), plus a western Ukrainian state and Turkey (which under Ataturk has taken a leftist turn). By 1939, this rising German-led bloc is confronting France (under a mildly reformist military dictatorship following an attempted Communist revolution that takes Paris and burns Versailles to the ground) and the Russian Empire (now under former sergeant, Prime Minister and dictatorial leader of the Russian Social Nationalist People's Party, Vladimir Mikaehlovich), while Britain and a democratic Japanese Empire, disturbed at both powers, attempt to wake the slumbering, isolationist United States.