Considering how many times China broke and reformed throughout history, I don't think you need alternate history to imagine it!
The Death of Russia - TL
- Thread starter Sorairo
- Start date
I split China in a Alt Marvel world: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...el-universe-version-5251.458105/post-18573690
Mongolian Hong Kong? Really?I split China in a Alt Marvel world: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...el-universe-version-5251.458105/post-18573690
Also, how can a non-communist Mongolia survive when it’s surrounded by communist, and therefore hostile states?
Tbf there could be like multiple southern maritime cities with Shanghai using Wu and Xichuan using their own language and canton using Cantonese.I split China in a Alt Marvel world: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...el-universe-version-5251.458105/post-18573690
According to https://datatowel.in.ua/pop-composition/languages-census-1897 (a site in Ukraine), there are a few places that are a little fuzzy In the Odessa District of the Kherson Province, Great Russians (Russians) were 37.4, Jews were 22.0 and Little Russians (Ukrainians) were 21.9% . Sevastapol city was 62.8% Russian, Kerch-Enikal city was 55.8%. The Ust-Medvedytsky district which includes a bit of Ukraine north of Luhansk was 87% Russian.
As for the entire Crimean Peninsula, I'm not sure that *any* of the Great Russians, Little Russians, Jews, or Tartars reached 35% over the entire Peninsula and Finland wasn't part of the 1897 Census.
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Please read the full post I linked to, it explains stuff- also world with Superhumans in.
“Who is God and Who is Satan?”
I am so, so sorry to the map people.
“Who is God and Who is Satan?”
Extract from ‘The Unstoppable Tragedy: The Second Russian Civil War’ by Peter Hodges
Viktor Vladimirovich Aksyuchits had been an eternal black sheep inside the NSF. Though he participated in the defence of the Parliament, his Christian Democrat Movement Party was treated derisively by even the Right Bloc of the NSF. Aksyuchits was a deeply religious Christian and a great admirer of Solzhenitsyn, who was widely reviled among the NSF as being responsible for the creation of the abomination of the Yeltsin era, especially among Communist members. More Fascistic members of the NSF would challenge him to 'offer his other cheek' after deliberately bumping into him in halls. Not unlike the Russian army itself, it was a form of hazing to make Aksyuchits leave his seat and have a more pliable Fascist or Communist take it instead. Sealing his fate, Aksyuchits would complain behind closed doors about the treatment of dissidents in Russia at considerable personal risk, including of Latvians within Latgale. On April 22nd, tired of Aksyuchits presence, Makashov expelled Aksyuchits to the Primorsky region in the Far East on the Pacific to serve as the regional governor to replace former Yeltsin loyalists. While technically a promotion, it was obviously a way to see Aksyuchits sent as far away from Moscow as possible.
On the train ride to Vladivostok, conscious of the atrocities being committed by the NSF that he blamed himself for putting in power, he would fall into deep depression and refuse to leave his carriage. Then, according to statements Aksyuchits made to staffers later, he would have a visitation from Christ, generally interpreted as a hallucination brought on by nervous stress or perhaps even a complete falsehood used to justify his power. The Christ of the supposed vision said that ‘Like Joseph in Egypt, I have brought you to this land to save you. Do not despair, for this is the land I have entrusted to you. The final days of this country are at hand. You must build an Ark to save my people from slavery, and to save my Church from destruction. You will know when to begin.” Disembarking in Vladivostok, he was bewildered and quiet for the entirety of his early rule as the head of Primorsky. After the invasion of Chechnya and subsequent atrocities, he claimed that he began to regard the NSF as a Satanic entity. When the collapse of Russia began in earnest in October 1994, he realised to his quiet horror that perhaps ‘the time’ had finally come. But still, he was not sure.
With Bashkortostan and Tatarstan having successfully cut off the routes connecting Siberia with European Russia, Siberia had effectively become a gigantic island floating in the middle of nowhere. This was not helped when, in response to Bashkortostan’s cutting Russia in two, the remainder of the Uralic republics decided to make their moves. On November 2nd, Chuvashia, Mari El both declared their independence from the Russian republic, the former mostly peacefully while the latter immediately descended into street battles between ethnic Russians and Mari. Similar attempts for independence were launched from Udmurtia and Mordovia in attempted coups, but the former likewise descended into bedlam (though further cutting off any route through the Urals) while the latter’s attempted coup to reach such a result was cancelled with brutal repression of the indigenous population coming immediately after. This set of countries became known as the ‘Free Nation Alliance’, an alliance of convenience between the Uralic states (and increasingly the Caucasian) to cooperate and take the supplies provided by Kazakhstan to survive the winter and coming years, as well as avoid what many saw as inevitable genocide in the same way as Chechnya if they were to allow Moscow to have their way. Bashkortostan had initially seized Orsk due to the shortness of distance to the Kazakh border in return for promises that the town’s residents would get food too, which they generally did. But in order to truly comfortably supply the Uralic nations they would need more rail and road links. To that end, they sought to expand their toehold to the outside world by moving on Orenburg. This helped create a Civil War that existed in almost two entirely separate realities: the chaotic, warlordism-style collapse east of the Urals and the relatively comprehensible moving conflict between generally defined states to its west.
For Siberia, the first independence movement to arise beyond the Urals was from an unlikely source. From an impoverished background and facing discrimination from his half Tuvan heritage before becoming a high-ranking minister in the new Yeltsin government and ultimately being cast aside due to his ethnicity and sent in exile to Tuva, Sergei Shoigu should have been an inspiring figure. But unfortunately for this view of history, his corruption was of astronomical levels, even for the Yeltsin administration. Though it was for the wrong reasons, his firing was deserved. Licking his wounds, he took to bitterly drinking in Tuva as the news from Chechnya grew increasingly detached from reality. Tuva was also denied a planned referendum on the precedence of Tuvan law over Russian by the new NSF government, further fueling resentment. Ethnic tensions between Russians and Tuvans were beyond boiling point, unemployment was the highest in the country. Crime in Tuva was so astronomical that if it was an independent state it would have the highest murder rate of any state in the world. Even to Russians, the Tuvans were stereotyped as overly alcoholic and aggressive. Given these conditions, it’s no surprise that Shoigu would be tempted by mysterious Asian gentlemen at his door, offering astronomical sums of money in return for cooperation for ‘their dream’ - a newly independent Tuva. Tuva had been independent as recently as World War 2 so this made sense. But the Asian gentlemen were not telling the full truth: it was not a case of of them wanting Tuva to be out of Russia’s pocket, but that in their pocket instead. Shoigu, wise to the art of negotiation, let it slip that they were not the first Asian gentlemen that came to him, although they were from a slightly different country. This forced the Mongolian agents to attempt to outbid the Chinese that came before them. As terror began to sweep a whole continent’s worth of land in early November, armed gunmen broke into the Tuvan Parliament and killed almost the entirety of the imposed NSF caretakers. Shoigu, who was not even let in on the planning session by the Pro-Mongolian paramilitaries given that he had no experience outside bribery and was seen as an imposition by the Mongolian government, walked to the vacant podium on November 10th 1994 to declare the secession of Tuva from the Russian Federation, if it could even be said to exist any more.
The restoration of Tuva set off a wave of attempted uprisings that November. In the Altai Republic, an attempted uprising to gain independence was crushed by local officials, with most of the indigenous Altai and Kazakhs fleeing across the border into Kazakhstan, committing cross-border attacks for the remainder of the war. Similar attempts were quickly stamped out in Khakassia. But it was Buryatia that would prove the largest conflagration. The ethnic Russians made up nearly 70% of the region, but 100% of Mongolia wanted Buryatia. It was a historical region of Mongolia that had its population replaced with ethnic Russians during the eastward push of Slavdom. To that end, while Tuva was a nice to have, Buryatia was a once in forever opportunity for Mongolia to emerge from the Communist era as a new and vibrant state and reclaim ancient glory. This worried China given Mongolia’s own claims on its territory despite those claims being officially rescinded earlier in 1994, but it had its eyes pointed at the Amur River and paid little heed. Initially Mongolian volunteers were forbidden from crossing the border to join the fight due to fear of nuclear strikes from European Russia, but with a precedent of funding being proven okay the Mongolians felt confident enough simply providing the Buryats with weapons. Though the Mongols were hardly Israel or Singapore, their arms depots were actually in a better state than many Russian depots. By the end of 1994, the entire Mongolian border with Buryatia was in the hands of the Mongolian Unionists under Vyacheslav Markhayev, a riot police officer who had refused to persecute buddhists during the Soviet days.
Looking at such uprisings tearing his country asunder from the far end of Siberia on the Pacific, Aksyuchits again wondered what the sign would be that the time had come to save the Church of Christ. He stayed in his office and would pray for guidance for hours. On November 10th, he prayed for answer for one hour straight. On November 11th, he prayed for an answer for two hours straight. On November 12th he prayed for three entire hours straight, again by himself. By November 13th his staff were beginning to complain about his habit given the issues arising from the draft situation and the collapse of supplies from the west after Bashkortostan and Tatarstan had cut the railways. Realising this was fair, Aksyuchits did not pray that day. Then on November 14th, as the day was coming to a close, an ashen aide came into his office and said, “Governor Aksyuchits? I regret inform you that Chairman Makashov is dead.”
The fall of Orsk to the soon-to-be Free Nations Alliance was the final straw for the union between the NSF’s warring factions. Both had concluded that until the other bloc was removed then Russia could not resolve the problem of its national minorities, concluding that wiping up the remaining secessionists would be a breeze like in 1920. Most of the Fascist Bloc had set up their base of operations in St. Petersburg, (renamed ‘Petrograd’ on November 1st). The Communist set up their safehouse base of operations in Volgograd, (renamed ‘Stalingrad’ on November 3rd). Both groups knew with certainty that the other was planning to backstab them, so they stayed in their main support bases, the Fascists in the north and the Communists in the south. In the middle was Moscow, a flaming powder keg with the police long gone and paramilitaries the only men who could walk the street without fear. No one knew when the other would make their move, but others were adamant that move be made, particularly Baburin and Astafyev on the Right and Makashov and Konstantinov on the Left. Russia was literally collapsing before their eyes, and the worst possible thing to do was suddenly start fighting each other. It seemed strange that they could unite over Yeltsin but now be torn apart when the country was literally imploding. President Rutskoy, the reluctant prisoner to this madness, desperately sought everything in his power to keep his jailors happy before they destroyed his country in the midst of their tiff.
In order to come to some sort of understanding, Baburin, Astafyev, Makashov and Konstantinov arranged to meet in Tula on November 14th 1994 with Rutskoy as mediator. The meeting was supposed to discuss a more fundamental division of Russia into a northern section controlled by the Fascists and the south controlled by the Communists in a new federal system. Makashov, Konstantinov and Rutskoy got on their plane in Moscow and flew into the sky. Two minutes into flight, an onboard bomb exploded, causing the plane to crash to the ground as a flaming wreck. Chairman Makashov, Chief Administrator Konstantinov and President Rutskoy were all dead.
Both Petrograd and Stalingrad were in shock and demanded to know who had killed the Chairman. Baburin and Astayev were arrested and sent to Stalingrad as prisoners. Both blocs had been decapitated and were in a state of pandemonium, but others made the most of the situation. In Moscow, the RNU paramilitaries were quicker on the draw than their Communist counterparts, securing the main government buildings in the city centre despite being shelled from the south on the other side of the Moskva River. With the help of surrounding army units who suspected the Fascists were behind the killing, attempted crossings of the Moskva River by the RNU were repulsed, splitting Moscow in two between the south bank controlled by the Stalingrad government and the north controlled by the Petrograd government. For those unlucky enough to be Caucasian or Central Asian in the north side of Moscow at the time, the RNU took the surprising step of organising a ceasefire on November 19th so Moscow could ‘Cleanse itself’. With that, for two days, a ceasefire was held in Moscow so that the Non-Slavic population would leave. Barkashov, who was leading the fighting in Moscow on the ground, would record that it “Was an uplifting sight, like the mucus flowing out from a zit - the knowledge that a poison was visibly leaving the body.” On the other side, the Communists were similarly unmoored from reality. While most of the refugees from the north wanted away from the carnage, almost the entire male population of the refugees were stopped, given a rifle with often less than five bullets and told they would be staying in Moscow to defend the city from the Fascists. There wasn’t much of a choice in the matter. Some families stayed to help their imprisoned husbands and fathers while others were loudly told by those same husbands and fathers to get out of the country while they still could. Moscow, spared destruction in both World Wars, now faced the greatest destruction and carnage it had faced in its entire history. To eliminate the propaganda victory of the Fascists seizing both St. Basil’s and the Kremlin, precious artillery was wasted, flattening the great wonders of civilisation. By early December, both only existed in memory beneath a pile of smouldering rubble along the Moskva river. A city of ten million people now prepared to destroy itself.
While the Battle of Moscow had begun, the new lines of the major conflict of the Second Russian Civil War would slowly work themselves out. They began along the Dnieper, with battle raging in Smolensk. The next natural line of division was the Moskva River, but the Volga Federal District was entirely in the hands of the Reds and secessionists all the way up to the Northwestern District, which should have been entirely in the hands of the Fascists. That was until the Komi Republic threw a spanner in the works and announced that they too would be seceding on November 20th, declaring neutrality in the conflict between the NSF’s factions and promising to defend their homeland against an invasion from either party. What both the Fascists and Communists had failed to realise was that Komi had been the location where multitudes of Stalinist-era prisoners had been sent. Consequently, the republic had raised one of the most anti-dictatorship populations in the whole of Russia. While the indigenous Komi were a small minority, the ethnically Russian population likewise wanted nothing to do with either the Fascists or Communists. With Siberia completely cut off, both parties essentially stopped caring about its existence, knowing the real war was going to be in European Russia.
This left a considerably larger population in the region controlled by Stalingrad compared to Petrograd, but they were caught facing an attack from all sides. They had to defend their east and south from the Free Nations Alliance. Initially both Petrograd and Stalingrad would rule by committee, but Stalingrad’s descent into pure one-man rule was made when Gennady Zyuganov was dragged from his bed by members of the security force on November 26th in Stalingrad and thrown into the same rat-infested cell as Baburin and Astafyev, who were consequently forced to eat the rats due to hunger. In early December, all three were put on show trials by Ilyukhin in a display of judicial injustice only seen since the Stalin era, which was entirely the point. On December 21st, all were declared guilty and were executed by hanging on December 24th. The reason that Zyuganov had joined the dead was because of his long-term rivalry with fellow Communist Viktor Anpilov. Anpilov managed to win over both Alksnis and Ilyukhin to his side to become the new Chairman of ‘Soviet Russia’, as the Stalingrad government called itself. The new government declared itself to be the second coming of the Soviet Union, where all races in Russia would be united under Communist rule. No more ethnic republics would be necessary or allowed, as Chairman Anpilov would already have their best interest in mind.
In the north, the Petrograd government was slightly more functional and did not need Anpilov-style purges to resolve infighting. Barkashov had risen up the ranks to be perhaps the main battlefield commander with ‘Black Colonel’ Alksnis being his main opponent in the military field, duking it out in Moscow while also giving orders affecting the rest of the line. Back in Petrograd itself, the Fascists let their ‘new’ slogan hang from every building: “Russia for the Russians!” The security forces had been split but Limonov himself had decided to stay with the Petrograd government as he felt the permanent victory of the Slavic race was more important than the temporary loss of socialism as the economic structure of the Russian state. Nevzorov became something of a face for the Petrograd government, but he was increasingly listening to the apocalyptic rhetoric coming from Dugin, who had taken a near Rasputin-like role in the new government. The nitty gritty of trying to work out how the state would actually function was given to Shafarevich, who calculated that the famine in the Fascist controlled regions of ‘Nationalist Russia’ would be ‘beyond the 1930s’ unless immediate action was taken. Like in the Communist regions, attempting to leave Russia was punishable by being shot, since no sane person wanted to stay in what had become of what was only ten years ago a dull but livable place. Very quickly, Nevzorov hatched a plan.
On December 3rd in the Karelian Republic, Nashist paramilitaries went door to door, grabbing any ethnic Karelians and Finns that they could, initially in the name of crushing an attempted rebellion. After they were herded into hastily constructed concentration camps, they shocked the world by taking pictures of the deed themselves and sending them to Finland. The Karelians were being abused, beaten and raped, but purposefully not killed. The Fascists made an offer to the Finnish government, and any government, that they would hand over the imprisoned Karelians and Finns in return for large quantities of food and medicine. They would even allow observers to show all the food would not leave the civilian regions. No guns, no money, just food and medicine so that ‘Russian children, our one priority, do not starve’. It had been a smart calculation that played into Western sensibilities, especially given fears that the Fascists would immediately begin shooting all non-Russians given their slogan. The carrot of lives being saved in terms of both the Karelians and Russian children, along with the stick implication of what would happen to the Karelians if they didn’t, was enough to move the Finns into action. On December 20th, the first large shipments of basic food were driven to Vyborg and in St. Petersburg within the day. True to Nevzorov’s words, the food did not leave Petrograd and was primarily given to vulnerable groups. Also true to their word, the Karelians were funelled across the border into Finland, given a warm home and protection while the luckiest Russian refugees could expect a crammed boat ride into a Kaliningrad even more crammed than the boat.
Then on December 22nd, the world began to realise what the game was. On that date, Nashi paramilitaries began rounding up the entirety of the ethnically Latvian population in Latgale, including those loyal to the regime, as well as the few Estonians left in Narva and Petrograd. They were likewise put in concentration camps and prisons, subject to beatings, rape and torture, though NSF supporters (generally Communists) would typically be the only ones killed and overwhelmingly by fellow prisoners. The same deal was offered - by now, Petrograd had gotten cocky enough to start putting individual prices on their prisoners’ heads. In general, women were sold for a higher price than men while children were sold for a higher price than adults. Their price was dictated in kilos of bread, litres of morphine, and various other forms of food and medicine with a meticulous exchange system calculated personally by Shafarevich to ensure they could squeeze the West for all they were worth. Through gritted teeth, the West again agreed, sending the necessary food over the Latvian border on January 10th with Latvians and Estonians being escorted over the border with rifles to their backs. In a separate deal with the Americans, they were able to hand over Gorbachev in return for another gigantic payday of food and medicine, with the former Soviet leader and his wife unceremoniously pushed over from Narva into the West on January 30th, heartbroken but alive.
Nevzorov had found his hostage exchanges a sly but effective way to relieve the famine. Sly in that it indirectly helped the war effort by food not needing to be shipped back to home and effective because Petrograd soon became a vastly more livable city than Stalingrad, whose answer to every question was to imagine what the demon on Stalin’s shoulder would tell him to do. At the same time, he was extremely cautious of pulling something similar with his small but still present Jewish minority. Of the Jews who had lived in Russia in October 1993, 80% of them had already fled by the time that Makashov’s plane hit the dirt. There were just under 500,000 Jews in Russia under Yeltsin and now only 80,000 were estimated to be left in Russia. Only 20,000 were estimated to be left in Nevorov’s territory, but that was still 20,000 Jews too many to Israel. Recognising the danger that mistreating Jews could lead to comparisons to the Nazis and intervention, Nevzorov announced on December 26th that all Jews were free to leave his territory to locations Petrograd was not at war with. The last few Jews in northern Russia took the final buses from Petrograd to Narva, relieved to finally be safe before being taken on plane to Israel. Among them was not notorious NSF acolyte Vladimir Zhrinovsky, found stabbed to death in a crumbling apartment block in Moscow in what most historians agree was a hit by Barkashov due to Zhrinovsky's Jewish heritage that he refused to acknowledge. But while Jewish refugees took the plane to Israel, coming from Israel were other planes that were landing in quiet fields in northern Russia. They were planes loaded with fuel, rubber, and a host of other resources necessary for warfare with the Communists in the south. While Israel held firm on not handing over weapons to Petrograd, they compromised by giving materials that were not necessarily for conflict. America too was in the know about this but did not want to deal with the outcry of ‘Second Holocaust’ or of funding Petrograd indirectly, and supported Israel’s decision to be a covert cat’s paw. The details of the deal were not published until 2008, with Rabin coming under severe criticism for his role in supporting the Petrograd government, even if for the right reasons.
Unfortunately, Nevzorov was not interested in dealing with the Caucasians in the same way.
The coolest head in all the Caucasus as Russia collapsed was Dudayev. Others rejoiced at the thought of Russia in agony, while others trembled in fear of nuclear exchange. On November 14th, Dudayev was told moments before a phone call with the new government of ‘The Confederation of Dagestan’ that Makashov’s plane had crashed. Dudayev proceeded to have the meeting with Dagestan representatives as if nothing happened, insisting to his Dagestani colleagues to discuss business immediately rather than later. Dudayev had an increasing sense of personal and historical destiny at work and was ready to do all he could to remove Russian influence from the Caucasus. With the Russians distracted elsewhere, Dudayev launched his final attack on December 11th, attacking the few remaining Russians in the northern part of Chechnya. On December 21st, the last ever Russian boot on Chechen soil stepped back over the border, giving Ichkeria her independence day. While most Chechens celebrated, Dudayev spent the day placing the first brick at the memorial site at Vedeno, his mind transfixed not on Chechnya’s independence but the elimination of Russia itself. Only a Pole, or maybe a Latvian, could comprehend the levels of Dudayev’s feelings towards his neighbour.
The next domino to fall was ironically not in Russia, but Georgia. On November 20th, taking advantage of Russia’s implosion, Georgia restarted their war in South Ossetia, the breakaway republic located along the border. With only 50,000 people in the whole statelet, it barely stood a chance. Lyudvig Chibirov, the head of South Ossetia, dejectedly escaped across the border on the morning of December 22nd as the country he had helped build (with Russia) came tumbling down. But bizarrely, the moment he crossed the border, he found himself confronted by a group of ‘exceptionally attractive’ Ossetian women, who claimed to be from the North Ossetian government. The car then proceeded to take him to Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, where he was astonished to find a ticker-tape parade arranged for him and crowds cheering his name. When he saw the banner ‘Welcome, President of Ossetia’, he finally realised what had happened. North Ossetia, knowing their southern chance of independence was doomed, had seceded from Russia and wanted to be an independent state, with the people wanting a proven Ossetian fighter to represent them. Chibirov had the peculiar experience of having lost and gained a country in a single day. In particular black humour, he was brought to a podium to give a speech to accept a role he had no idea he had until minutes before. An awkward speech began, but not wanting to disappoint given the circumstance, he reluctantly accepted the offer. That evening he was given a surprisingly cordial call by Dudayev in the city hall. Dudayev explained that he would need all of the Caucasus to rise up to finish off Russian influence for good, and that he was ‘happy to have someone on our side who had also served with the Russians, like me’. His work with ethnic Russians also helped convince local ethnic Russians of their safety, with Ossetia emerging as one of the only Post-War Caucasus nations with a substantial Russian population. His appointment did, however, create an extremely awkward relationship with Georgia. South Ossetia also suffered the indignity of being the only one of the Georgian breakaways to implode. Much to Abkhazia’s relief, Georgia was too wary of trying to retake the republic by force, eventually negotiating a deal where Abkhazia swore off independence de jure so that it could be independent de facto in April 1995. There would be no war in Georgia after the fall of South Ossetia, but the largest of the Caucasian conflicts was only beginning.
On Christmas Day 1994, the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria was already dealing with an exodus of Russians trying to escape over the border and those fleeing north. The Kabardin people now made up a majority of the small republic, and with the Balkars their demographic alliance hardened. Christmas meant nothing to most Muslims, but to the Muslims and atheists of the Kabardin tribe, this Christmas would be the most important Christmas of their lives. An armed mob of Caucasian nationalists, inspired by Dudayev, stormed the parliament building in Nalchik. It was there that they raised a new flag, or perhaps an old flag. It was green, had twelve stars and three arrows. It was actually the flag of the Republic of Adygea, but that wasn’t what they meant. Among the women at the base of the Parliament, many wept in joy. Other Caucasians at the scene roared in joy like their deliverance had come. What few foreign observers were there knew they were a part of history. But it was one Israeli reporter at the scene who had the most visceral reaction. “I saw visions of my own country, crawling out from the dirt and the rock amidst fire and carnage to defy the world, defy the odds, and to pull a nation from its grave. I was witnessing a resurrection before my eyes, of a people long thought vanquished, returned to defeat their captors. Circassia had risen again.” After one of the most infamous genocides in history as Russia marched down the Caucasus, the Circassians had been relegated to a historical curiosity like the Picts, surviving only in a eunuch format in Russia and vague memory in the diaspora. Now Provisional Circassian President Valery Kokov announced that ‘Circassia has returned from the grave to seek vengeance on those who killed it’. All symbols of Russian power, including Orthodox churches, were burned to the ground.
Only two days later, the neighbouring Karachay-Cherkessia Republic was likewise brought down by protests in the capital, and the flag of Circassia rose once again over the capital. Here however the Russian minority was much larger, and so pitched street battles began again. Other indigenous Caucasians were happy to go along with the new movement, seeing the Circassian movement as one primarily aimed at hurting the Russians and not any supremacy of Circassians over fellow Caucasians - the Russians were certainly spooked when they saw the Green and White bow flying overhead. At the same time, the stranded Adygea Republic saw the beginning of its own agitation. In response, Anpilov ordered the Adygea Republic abolished and any Circassians expressing nationalism to be ‘exterminated’. Circassians gathered their families and began ‘The Mountain March’, where tens of thousands of Circassians with guns on their hands and kids on their backs fought through hostile territory to provisional Circassia. Some 10% of the convoy would die by the time they arrived in safe territory on January 15th. But they weren’t the only Circassians pouring into the country. From Georgia, and Turkey, and Israel, and Syria, and Jordan, and all throughout the world, Circassians had begun to descend on the provisional Circassian government. They had left everything behind for this once in a century opportunity to restore the land where their ancestors’ dust lay. Nor were the Circassians the only ones. Among the volunteers were Latgale refugees, Ukrainian nationalists, Estonian mercenaries and thousands from across East Europe who all had a bone to pick with Russia and saw the Caucasian conflict as the perfect avenue to help out. If they could help create a Circassian state to humiliate Russia, even better.
Viktor Vladimirovich Aksyuchits never thought he would be faced with this decision in his life, but as Siberia became an inhospitable island, he suddenly found himself in just the sort of position he had dreamed and feared of being in. Of being able to create something, or perhaps lose everything. But even if he lost everything, there was one thing he knew he would still have, and that was his faith. Thus, in response to the carnage to the west of the Urals, Aksyuchits would give a speech on November 30th, proclaiming the restoration of the Far Eastern Republic. He announced that this Republic would be based on the Slavic Christian tradition, going as far as to declare the Gonfalon flag of Christ’s face to be the new Republic’s flag. Despite his later reputation, his initial speech was received by locals with laughter. They were not a particularly religious bunch and knew that they were probably the luckiest people in Siberia as Vladivostok was the only port Siberia had and so it was at least somewhat open to the outside world. The flag was particularly mocked as creepy, and foreigners still mock it today, though the locals are naturally far prouder of it now. Aksyuchits was considered quite out of his depth when the announcement was made, and many considered him a traitor for abandoning his ‘One Russia’ beliefs. Though he claimed the historical lands controlled by the Far Eastern Republic, he only held Primorsky. The only reason many believe he wasn’t immediately taken out was because people in Vladivostok genuinely did hold antipathy for Moscow, so far and distant. Many had Ukrainian blood from the deportations gulags and had a hint of rebellion in their genes too, but hardly considered Aksyuchits to be the best way to go about it. Little did they know that in only a few months time, Aksyuchits’s name would be praised from every tongue in the city. But for now, Aksyuchits found himself cut completely adrift amidst a Russia full of players out to take whatever they could get, and an international community that refused to recognise anyone but Gaidar. Aksyuchits would go on to doubt the wisdom of his decision in the coming days before moving in and out of paranoia about people, saying to one associate that it was hard trying to find out from among the masses, 'Who is God and who is Satan?'
But Aksyuchits was not the only one seeing religious visions. In neighbouring Sakha/Yakutai, the morbidly unpopular imposed administration of the NSF was decapitated in a coup on December 13th by the Aiyy Yeurekhé movement, a Neo-pagan movement led by ethnically Ukrainian Ivan Ukhkhan and a Yakut philologist named Téris. The NSF had attempted to prosecute them as Un-Russian in 1994, but this only led to a broader backlash in Sakha that resulted in the Tengrist religion becoming more and more prominent, including among Slavs. As society began to collapse in 1994, the newly apocalyptic visions of Téris and Ukhkhan’s pronouncement, as well as the promise that Sakha would be saved if they would return to the true faith of the land, led to thousands of secular, ethnically Russian men and women dressing in tribal clothes and engaging in dancing and chanting in the middle of the woods to the rhythm of Shamans. Many Russians thought the whole society was going mad and fled as quickly as their legs or cars would carry them, often perishing in the desperate search for safety. Rumours of Black Shamans performing sacrifices in the woods began to swirl (mainly invented for propaganda purposes by rivals), with White Shamans ‘baptising’ crowds in the Yakutian wilderness by performing rituals to the Sun God. Desperation, fear of death, and starvation had seemingly driven Sakha completely mad.
But that was quite similar to what was happening to Siberia in general. Naturally, there was no back up plan for what to do if the NSF went to war and everything west of the Urals was cut off. Instead, the various regions simply collapsed into anarchy as the food vanished. The only places close to order were the regions of Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, Tyumen, and Omsk. They nominally declared for Anpilov, but in reality they were run by a joint committee of Fascist and Communist members terrified of what had just happened and seeing the absolute worst of the collapse all around them. Outside these areas, law and order (in terms of NSF control) did not exist in the whole of Siberia. Not only that, no one even knew what was going on in, say, Magadan, or even Krasnoyarsk. Telephone lines weren’t working, no one had enough fuel to drive between cities, trains and buses had completely broken down, banks had no money, some cities blacked out, and millions felt the pangs of hunger. No one knew how many exactly, but even where there was order there were emaciated bodies on the street - one could only imagine the hell beyond in Siberia. Then, into Chelyabinsk on a cold December 31st from Kazakhstan with thousands of well-fed men behind him, came the one man in all Siberia with a smile on his face. On December 3rd he had negotiated the surrender of Transnistria in return for the lives and freedom of his men to return to Russia and save it from collapse. Though he left the Transnistrian separatists' dreams of an independent state to die, he did manage to extract an amnesty for the entire Transnistrian population with American guarantees that Moldova would be forced to treat the Transnistrians with some degree of internal autonomy. While 14th Guards Company was without any weapons but the ones provided by friendlies along the border, they were not afraid of being attacked, either Lebed or his men. Despite the setback, his men remained loyal. Based on the tear-stained reactions of Siberians as they saw him, they were loyal to Lebed too. It was strange coming into Chelyabinsk on a horse of all things, but to Alexander Lebed, it made him look even more like Alexander the Great, whose memory he would call on to begin what he saw was his destiny: to conquer the lands of Siberia and save Russia in the coming year of our Lord 1995.
If only there weren’t so many others with their eyes on Siberia, including one nefarious dwarf in Pyongyang.
“Who is God and Who is Satan?”
Extract from ‘The Unstoppable Tragedy: The Second Russian Civil War’ by Peter Hodges
Viktor Vladimirovich Aksyuchits had been an eternal black sheep inside the NSF. Though he participated in the defence of the Parliament, his Christian Democrat Movement Party was treated derisively by even the Right Bloc of the NSF. Aksyuchits was a deeply religious Christian and a great admirer of Solzhenitsyn, who was widely reviled among the NSF as being responsible for the creation of the abomination of the Yeltsin era, especially among Communist members. More Fascistic members of the NSF would challenge him to 'offer his other cheek' after deliberately bumping into him in halls. Not unlike the Russian army itself, it was a form of hazing to make Aksyuchits leave his seat and have a more pliable Fascist or Communist take it instead. Sealing his fate, Aksyuchits would complain behind closed doors about the treatment of dissidents in Russia at considerable personal risk, including of Latvians within Latgale. On April 22nd, tired of Aksyuchits presence, Makashov expelled Aksyuchits to the Primorsky region in the Far East on the Pacific to serve as the regional governor to replace former Yeltsin loyalists. While technically a promotion, it was obviously a way to see Aksyuchits sent as far away from Moscow as possible.
On the train ride to Vladivostok, conscious of the atrocities being committed by the NSF that he blamed himself for putting in power, he would fall into deep depression and refuse to leave his carriage. Then, according to statements Aksyuchits made to staffers later, he would have a visitation from Christ, generally interpreted as a hallucination brought on by nervous stress or perhaps even a complete falsehood used to justify his power. The Christ of the supposed vision said that ‘Like Joseph in Egypt, I have brought you to this land to save you. Do not despair, for this is the land I have entrusted to you. The final days of this country are at hand. You must build an Ark to save my people from slavery, and to save my Church from destruction. You will know when to begin.” Disembarking in Vladivostok, he was bewildered and quiet for the entirety of his early rule as the head of Primorsky. After the invasion of Chechnya and subsequent atrocities, he claimed that he began to regard the NSF as a Satanic entity. When the collapse of Russia began in earnest in October 1994, he realised to his quiet horror that perhaps ‘the time’ had finally come. But still, he was not sure.
With Bashkortostan and Tatarstan having successfully cut off the routes connecting Siberia with European Russia, Siberia had effectively become a gigantic island floating in the middle of nowhere. This was not helped when, in response to Bashkortostan’s cutting Russia in two, the remainder of the Uralic republics decided to make their moves. On November 2nd, Chuvashia, Mari El both declared their independence from the Russian republic, the former mostly peacefully while the latter immediately descended into street battles between ethnic Russians and Mari. Similar attempts for independence were launched from Udmurtia and Mordovia in attempted coups, but the former likewise descended into bedlam (though further cutting off any route through the Urals) while the latter’s attempted coup to reach such a result was cancelled with brutal repression of the indigenous population coming immediately after. This set of countries became known as the ‘Free Nation Alliance’, an alliance of convenience between the Uralic states (and increasingly the Caucasian) to cooperate and take the supplies provided by Kazakhstan to survive the winter and coming years, as well as avoid what many saw as inevitable genocide in the same way as Chechnya if they were to allow Moscow to have their way. Bashkortostan had initially seized Orsk due to the shortness of distance to the Kazakh border in return for promises that the town’s residents would get food too, which they generally did. But in order to truly comfortably supply the Uralic nations they would need more rail and road links. To that end, they sought to expand their toehold to the outside world by moving on Orenburg. This helped create a Civil War that existed in almost two entirely separate realities: the chaotic, warlordism-style collapse east of the Urals and the relatively comprehensible moving conflict between generally defined states to its west.
For Siberia, the first independence movement to arise beyond the Urals was from an unlikely source. From an impoverished background and facing discrimination from his half Tuvan heritage before becoming a high-ranking minister in the new Yeltsin government and ultimately being cast aside due to his ethnicity and sent in exile to Tuva, Sergei Shoigu should have been an inspiring figure. But unfortunately for this view of history, his corruption was of astronomical levels, even for the Yeltsin administration. Though it was for the wrong reasons, his firing was deserved. Licking his wounds, he took to bitterly drinking in Tuva as the news from Chechnya grew increasingly detached from reality. Tuva was also denied a planned referendum on the precedence of Tuvan law over Russian by the new NSF government, further fueling resentment. Ethnic tensions between Russians and Tuvans were beyond boiling point, unemployment was the highest in the country. Crime in Tuva was so astronomical that if it was an independent state it would have the highest murder rate of any state in the world. Even to Russians, the Tuvans were stereotyped as overly alcoholic and aggressive. Given these conditions, it’s no surprise that Shoigu would be tempted by mysterious Asian gentlemen at his door, offering astronomical sums of money in return for cooperation for ‘their dream’ - a newly independent Tuva. Tuva had been independent as recently as World War 2 so this made sense. But the Asian gentlemen were not telling the full truth: it was not a case of of them wanting Tuva to be out of Russia’s pocket, but that in their pocket instead. Shoigu, wise to the art of negotiation, let it slip that they were not the first Asian gentlemen that came to him, although they were from a slightly different country. This forced the Mongolian agents to attempt to outbid the Chinese that came before them. As terror began to sweep a whole continent’s worth of land in early November, armed gunmen broke into the Tuvan Parliament and killed almost the entirety of the imposed NSF caretakers. Shoigu, who was not even let in on the planning session by the Pro-Mongolian paramilitaries given that he had no experience outside bribery and was seen as an imposition by the Mongolian government, walked to the vacant podium on November 10th 1994 to declare the secession of Tuva from the Russian Federation, if it could even be said to exist any more.
The restoration of Tuva set off a wave of attempted uprisings that November. In the Altai Republic, an attempted uprising to gain independence was crushed by local officials, with most of the indigenous Altai and Kazakhs fleeing across the border into Kazakhstan, committing cross-border attacks for the remainder of the war. Similar attempts were quickly stamped out in Khakassia. But it was Buryatia that would prove the largest conflagration. The ethnic Russians made up nearly 70% of the region, but 100% of Mongolia wanted Buryatia. It was a historical region of Mongolia that had its population replaced with ethnic Russians during the eastward push of Slavdom. To that end, while Tuva was a nice to have, Buryatia was a once in forever opportunity for Mongolia to emerge from the Communist era as a new and vibrant state and reclaim ancient glory. This worried China given Mongolia’s own claims on its territory despite those claims being officially rescinded earlier in 1994, but it had its eyes pointed at the Amur River and paid little heed. Initially Mongolian volunteers were forbidden from crossing the border to join the fight due to fear of nuclear strikes from European Russia, but with a precedent of funding being proven okay the Mongolians felt confident enough simply providing the Buryats with weapons. Though the Mongols were hardly Israel or Singapore, their arms depots were actually in a better state than many Russian depots. By the end of 1994, the entire Mongolian border with Buryatia was in the hands of the Mongolian Unionists under Vyacheslav Markhayev, a riot police officer who had refused to persecute buddhists during the Soviet days.
Looking at such uprisings tearing his country asunder from the far end of Siberia on the Pacific, Aksyuchits again wondered what the sign would be that the time had come to save the Church of Christ. He stayed in his office and would pray for guidance for hours. On November 10th, he prayed for answer for one hour straight. On November 11th, he prayed for an answer for two hours straight. On November 12th he prayed for three entire hours straight, again by himself. By November 13th his staff were beginning to complain about his habit given the issues arising from the draft situation and the collapse of supplies from the west after Bashkortostan and Tatarstan had cut the railways. Realising this was fair, Aksyuchits did not pray that day. Then on November 14th, as the day was coming to a close, an ashen aide came into his office and said, “Governor Aksyuchits? I regret inform you that Chairman Makashov is dead.”
Extract from 'Second As Farce: Petrograd Vs Stalingrad' by Jessica Matthews
The fall of Orsk to the soon-to-be Free Nations Alliance was the final straw for the union between the NSF’s warring factions. Both had concluded that until the other bloc was removed then Russia could not resolve the problem of its national minorities, concluding that wiping up the remaining secessionists would be a breeze like in 1920. Most of the Fascist Bloc had set up their base of operations in St. Petersburg, (renamed ‘Petrograd’ on November 1st). The Communist set up their safehouse base of operations in Volgograd, (renamed ‘Stalingrad’ on November 3rd). Both groups knew with certainty that the other was planning to backstab them, so they stayed in their main support bases, the Fascists in the north and the Communists in the south. In the middle was Moscow, a flaming powder keg with the police long gone and paramilitaries the only men who could walk the street without fear. No one knew when the other would make their move, but others were adamant that move be made, particularly Baburin and Astafyev on the Right and Makashov and Konstantinov on the Left. Russia was literally collapsing before their eyes, and the worst possible thing to do was suddenly start fighting each other. It seemed strange that they could unite over Yeltsin but now be torn apart when the country was literally imploding. President Rutskoy, the reluctant prisoner to this madness, desperately sought everything in his power to keep his jailors happy before they destroyed his country in the midst of their tiff.
In order to come to some sort of understanding, Baburin, Astafyev, Makashov and Konstantinov arranged to meet in Tula on November 14th 1994 with Rutskoy as mediator. The meeting was supposed to discuss a more fundamental division of Russia into a northern section controlled by the Fascists and the south controlled by the Communists in a new federal system. Makashov, Konstantinov and Rutskoy got on their plane in Moscow and flew into the sky. Two minutes into flight, an onboard bomb exploded, causing the plane to crash to the ground as a flaming wreck. Chairman Makashov, Chief Administrator Konstantinov and President Rutskoy were all dead.
Both Petrograd and Stalingrad were in shock and demanded to know who had killed the Chairman. Baburin and Astayev were arrested and sent to Stalingrad as prisoners. Both blocs had been decapitated and were in a state of pandemonium, but others made the most of the situation. In Moscow, the RNU paramilitaries were quicker on the draw than their Communist counterparts, securing the main government buildings in the city centre despite being shelled from the south on the other side of the Moskva River. With the help of surrounding army units who suspected the Fascists were behind the killing, attempted crossings of the Moskva River by the RNU were repulsed, splitting Moscow in two between the south bank controlled by the Stalingrad government and the north controlled by the Petrograd government. For those unlucky enough to be Caucasian or Central Asian in the north side of Moscow at the time, the RNU took the surprising step of organising a ceasefire on November 19th so Moscow could ‘Cleanse itself’. With that, for two days, a ceasefire was held in Moscow so that the Non-Slavic population would leave. Barkashov, who was leading the fighting in Moscow on the ground, would record that it “Was an uplifting sight, like the mucus flowing out from a zit - the knowledge that a poison was visibly leaving the body.” On the other side, the Communists were similarly unmoored from reality. While most of the refugees from the north wanted away from the carnage, almost the entire male population of the refugees were stopped, given a rifle with often less than five bullets and told they would be staying in Moscow to defend the city from the Fascists. There wasn’t much of a choice in the matter. Some families stayed to help their imprisoned husbands and fathers while others were loudly told by those same husbands and fathers to get out of the country while they still could. Moscow, spared destruction in both World Wars, now faced the greatest destruction and carnage it had faced in its entire history. To eliminate the propaganda victory of the Fascists seizing both St. Basil’s and the Kremlin, precious artillery was wasted, flattening the great wonders of civilisation. By early December, both only existed in memory beneath a pile of smouldering rubble along the Moskva river. A city of ten million people now prepared to destroy itself.
While the Battle of Moscow had begun, the new lines of the major conflict of the Second Russian Civil War would slowly work themselves out. They began along the Dnieper, with battle raging in Smolensk. The next natural line of division was the Moskva River, but the Volga Federal District was entirely in the hands of the Reds and secessionists all the way up to the Northwestern District, which should have been entirely in the hands of the Fascists. That was until the Komi Republic threw a spanner in the works and announced that they too would be seceding on November 20th, declaring neutrality in the conflict between the NSF’s factions and promising to defend their homeland against an invasion from either party. What both the Fascists and Communists had failed to realise was that Komi had been the location where multitudes of Stalinist-era prisoners had been sent. Consequently, the republic had raised one of the most anti-dictatorship populations in the whole of Russia. While the indigenous Komi were a small minority, the ethnically Russian population likewise wanted nothing to do with either the Fascists or Communists. With Siberia completely cut off, both parties essentially stopped caring about its existence, knowing the real war was going to be in European Russia.
This left a considerably larger population in the region controlled by Stalingrad compared to Petrograd, but they were caught facing an attack from all sides. They had to defend their east and south from the Free Nations Alliance. Initially both Petrograd and Stalingrad would rule by committee, but Stalingrad’s descent into pure one-man rule was made when Gennady Zyuganov was dragged from his bed by members of the security force on November 26th in Stalingrad and thrown into the same rat-infested cell as Baburin and Astafyev, who were consequently forced to eat the rats due to hunger. In early December, all three were put on show trials by Ilyukhin in a display of judicial injustice only seen since the Stalin era, which was entirely the point. On December 21st, all were declared guilty and were executed by hanging on December 24th. The reason that Zyuganov had joined the dead was because of his long-term rivalry with fellow Communist Viktor Anpilov. Anpilov managed to win over both Alksnis and Ilyukhin to his side to become the new Chairman of ‘Soviet Russia’, as the Stalingrad government called itself. The new government declared itself to be the second coming of the Soviet Union, where all races in Russia would be united under Communist rule. No more ethnic republics would be necessary or allowed, as Chairman Anpilov would already have their best interest in mind.
In the north, the Petrograd government was slightly more functional and did not need Anpilov-style purges to resolve infighting. Barkashov had risen up the ranks to be perhaps the main battlefield commander with ‘Black Colonel’ Alksnis being his main opponent in the military field, duking it out in Moscow while also giving orders affecting the rest of the line. Back in Petrograd itself, the Fascists let their ‘new’ slogan hang from every building: “Russia for the Russians!” The security forces had been split but Limonov himself had decided to stay with the Petrograd government as he felt the permanent victory of the Slavic race was more important than the temporary loss of socialism as the economic structure of the Russian state. Nevzorov became something of a face for the Petrograd government, but he was increasingly listening to the apocalyptic rhetoric coming from Dugin, who had taken a near Rasputin-like role in the new government. The nitty gritty of trying to work out how the state would actually function was given to Shafarevich, who calculated that the famine in the Fascist controlled regions of ‘Nationalist Russia’ would be ‘beyond the 1930s’ unless immediate action was taken. Like in the Communist regions, attempting to leave Russia was punishable by being shot, since no sane person wanted to stay in what had become of what was only ten years ago a dull but livable place. Very quickly, Nevzorov hatched a plan.
On December 3rd in the Karelian Republic, Nashist paramilitaries went door to door, grabbing any ethnic Karelians and Finns that they could, initially in the name of crushing an attempted rebellion. After they were herded into hastily constructed concentration camps, they shocked the world by taking pictures of the deed themselves and sending them to Finland. The Karelians were being abused, beaten and raped, but purposefully not killed. The Fascists made an offer to the Finnish government, and any government, that they would hand over the imprisoned Karelians and Finns in return for large quantities of food and medicine. They would even allow observers to show all the food would not leave the civilian regions. No guns, no money, just food and medicine so that ‘Russian children, our one priority, do not starve’. It had been a smart calculation that played into Western sensibilities, especially given fears that the Fascists would immediately begin shooting all non-Russians given their slogan. The carrot of lives being saved in terms of both the Karelians and Russian children, along with the stick implication of what would happen to the Karelians if they didn’t, was enough to move the Finns into action. On December 20th, the first large shipments of basic food were driven to Vyborg and in St. Petersburg within the day. True to Nevzorov’s words, the food did not leave Petrograd and was primarily given to vulnerable groups. Also true to their word, the Karelians were funelled across the border into Finland, given a warm home and protection while the luckiest Russian refugees could expect a crammed boat ride into a Kaliningrad even more crammed than the boat.
Then on December 22nd, the world began to realise what the game was. On that date, Nashi paramilitaries began rounding up the entirety of the ethnically Latvian population in Latgale, including those loyal to the regime, as well as the few Estonians left in Narva and Petrograd. They were likewise put in concentration camps and prisons, subject to beatings, rape and torture, though NSF supporters (generally Communists) would typically be the only ones killed and overwhelmingly by fellow prisoners. The same deal was offered - by now, Petrograd had gotten cocky enough to start putting individual prices on their prisoners’ heads. In general, women were sold for a higher price than men while children were sold for a higher price than adults. Their price was dictated in kilos of bread, litres of morphine, and various other forms of food and medicine with a meticulous exchange system calculated personally by Shafarevich to ensure they could squeeze the West for all they were worth. Through gritted teeth, the West again agreed, sending the necessary food over the Latvian border on January 10th with Latvians and Estonians being escorted over the border with rifles to their backs. In a separate deal with the Americans, they were able to hand over Gorbachev in return for another gigantic payday of food and medicine, with the former Soviet leader and his wife unceremoniously pushed over from Narva into the West on January 30th, heartbroken but alive.
Nevzorov had found his hostage exchanges a sly but effective way to relieve the famine. Sly in that it indirectly helped the war effort by food not needing to be shipped back to home and effective because Petrograd soon became a vastly more livable city than Stalingrad, whose answer to every question was to imagine what the demon on Stalin’s shoulder would tell him to do. At the same time, he was extremely cautious of pulling something similar with his small but still present Jewish minority. Of the Jews who had lived in Russia in October 1993, 80% of them had already fled by the time that Makashov’s plane hit the dirt. There were just under 500,000 Jews in Russia under Yeltsin and now only 80,000 were estimated to be left in Russia. Only 20,000 were estimated to be left in Nevorov’s territory, but that was still 20,000 Jews too many to Israel. Recognising the danger that mistreating Jews could lead to comparisons to the Nazis and intervention, Nevzorov announced on December 26th that all Jews were free to leave his territory to locations Petrograd was not at war with. The last few Jews in northern Russia took the final buses from Petrograd to Narva, relieved to finally be safe before being taken on plane to Israel. Among them was not notorious NSF acolyte Vladimir Zhrinovsky, found stabbed to death in a crumbling apartment block in Moscow in what most historians agree was a hit by Barkashov due to Zhrinovsky's Jewish heritage that he refused to acknowledge. But while Jewish refugees took the plane to Israel, coming from Israel were other planes that were landing in quiet fields in northern Russia. They were planes loaded with fuel, rubber, and a host of other resources necessary for warfare with the Communists in the south. While Israel held firm on not handing over weapons to Petrograd, they compromised by giving materials that were not necessarily for conflict. America too was in the know about this but did not want to deal with the outcry of ‘Second Holocaust’ or of funding Petrograd indirectly, and supported Israel’s decision to be a covert cat’s paw. The details of the deal were not published until 2008, with Rabin coming under severe criticism for his role in supporting the Petrograd government, even if for the right reasons.
Unfortunately, Nevzorov was not interested in dealing with the Caucasians in the same way.
Extract from 'The Reconquista of the Caucasus' by Levan Galogre
The coolest head in all the Caucasus as Russia collapsed was Dudayev. Others rejoiced at the thought of Russia in agony, while others trembled in fear of nuclear exchange. On November 14th, Dudayev was told moments before a phone call with the new government of ‘The Confederation of Dagestan’ that Makashov’s plane had crashed. Dudayev proceeded to have the meeting with Dagestan representatives as if nothing happened, insisting to his Dagestani colleagues to discuss business immediately rather than later. Dudayev had an increasing sense of personal and historical destiny at work and was ready to do all he could to remove Russian influence from the Caucasus. With the Russians distracted elsewhere, Dudayev launched his final attack on December 11th, attacking the few remaining Russians in the northern part of Chechnya. On December 21st, the last ever Russian boot on Chechen soil stepped back over the border, giving Ichkeria her independence day. While most Chechens celebrated, Dudayev spent the day placing the first brick at the memorial site at Vedeno, his mind transfixed not on Chechnya’s independence but the elimination of Russia itself. Only a Pole, or maybe a Latvian, could comprehend the levels of Dudayev’s feelings towards his neighbour.
The next domino to fall was ironically not in Russia, but Georgia. On November 20th, taking advantage of Russia’s implosion, Georgia restarted their war in South Ossetia, the breakaway republic located along the border. With only 50,000 people in the whole statelet, it barely stood a chance. Lyudvig Chibirov, the head of South Ossetia, dejectedly escaped across the border on the morning of December 22nd as the country he had helped build (with Russia) came tumbling down. But bizarrely, the moment he crossed the border, he found himself confronted by a group of ‘exceptionally attractive’ Ossetian women, who claimed to be from the North Ossetian government. The car then proceeded to take him to Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, where he was astonished to find a ticker-tape parade arranged for him and crowds cheering his name. When he saw the banner ‘Welcome, President of Ossetia’, he finally realised what had happened. North Ossetia, knowing their southern chance of independence was doomed, had seceded from Russia and wanted to be an independent state, with the people wanting a proven Ossetian fighter to represent them. Chibirov had the peculiar experience of having lost and gained a country in a single day. In particular black humour, he was brought to a podium to give a speech to accept a role he had no idea he had until minutes before. An awkward speech began, but not wanting to disappoint given the circumstance, he reluctantly accepted the offer. That evening he was given a surprisingly cordial call by Dudayev in the city hall. Dudayev explained that he would need all of the Caucasus to rise up to finish off Russian influence for good, and that he was ‘happy to have someone on our side who had also served with the Russians, like me’. His work with ethnic Russians also helped convince local ethnic Russians of their safety, with Ossetia emerging as one of the only Post-War Caucasus nations with a substantial Russian population. His appointment did, however, create an extremely awkward relationship with Georgia. South Ossetia also suffered the indignity of being the only one of the Georgian breakaways to implode. Much to Abkhazia’s relief, Georgia was too wary of trying to retake the republic by force, eventually negotiating a deal where Abkhazia swore off independence de jure so that it could be independent de facto in April 1995. There would be no war in Georgia after the fall of South Ossetia, but the largest of the Caucasian conflicts was only beginning.
On Christmas Day 1994, the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria was already dealing with an exodus of Russians trying to escape over the border and those fleeing north. The Kabardin people now made up a majority of the small republic, and with the Balkars their demographic alliance hardened. Christmas meant nothing to most Muslims, but to the Muslims and atheists of the Kabardin tribe, this Christmas would be the most important Christmas of their lives. An armed mob of Caucasian nationalists, inspired by Dudayev, stormed the parliament building in Nalchik. It was there that they raised a new flag, or perhaps an old flag. It was green, had twelve stars and three arrows. It was actually the flag of the Republic of Adygea, but that wasn’t what they meant. Among the women at the base of the Parliament, many wept in joy. Other Caucasians at the scene roared in joy like their deliverance had come. What few foreign observers were there knew they were a part of history. But it was one Israeli reporter at the scene who had the most visceral reaction. “I saw visions of my own country, crawling out from the dirt and the rock amidst fire and carnage to defy the world, defy the odds, and to pull a nation from its grave. I was witnessing a resurrection before my eyes, of a people long thought vanquished, returned to defeat their captors. Circassia had risen again.” After one of the most infamous genocides in history as Russia marched down the Caucasus, the Circassians had been relegated to a historical curiosity like the Picts, surviving only in a eunuch format in Russia and vague memory in the diaspora. Now Provisional Circassian President Valery Kokov announced that ‘Circassia has returned from the grave to seek vengeance on those who killed it’. All symbols of Russian power, including Orthodox churches, were burned to the ground.
Only two days later, the neighbouring Karachay-Cherkessia Republic was likewise brought down by protests in the capital, and the flag of Circassia rose once again over the capital. Here however the Russian minority was much larger, and so pitched street battles began again. Other indigenous Caucasians were happy to go along with the new movement, seeing the Circassian movement as one primarily aimed at hurting the Russians and not any supremacy of Circassians over fellow Caucasians - the Russians were certainly spooked when they saw the Green and White bow flying overhead. At the same time, the stranded Adygea Republic saw the beginning of its own agitation. In response, Anpilov ordered the Adygea Republic abolished and any Circassians expressing nationalism to be ‘exterminated’. Circassians gathered their families and began ‘The Mountain March’, where tens of thousands of Circassians with guns on their hands and kids on their backs fought through hostile territory to provisional Circassia. Some 10% of the convoy would die by the time they arrived in safe territory on January 15th. But they weren’t the only Circassians pouring into the country. From Georgia, and Turkey, and Israel, and Syria, and Jordan, and all throughout the world, Circassians had begun to descend on the provisional Circassian government. They had left everything behind for this once in a century opportunity to restore the land where their ancestors’ dust lay. Nor were the Circassians the only ones. Among the volunteers were Latgale refugees, Ukrainian nationalists, Estonian mercenaries and thousands from across East Europe who all had a bone to pick with Russia and saw the Caucasian conflict as the perfect avenue to help out. If they could help create a Circassian state to humiliate Russia, even better.
Extract from 'The Great White Void: Siberia 1993-1996' by Nikolai Chernenko
Viktor Vladimirovich Aksyuchits never thought he would be faced with this decision in his life, but as Siberia became an inhospitable island, he suddenly found himself in just the sort of position he had dreamed and feared of being in. Of being able to create something, or perhaps lose everything. But even if he lost everything, there was one thing he knew he would still have, and that was his faith. Thus, in response to the carnage to the west of the Urals, Aksyuchits would give a speech on November 30th, proclaiming the restoration of the Far Eastern Republic. He announced that this Republic would be based on the Slavic Christian tradition, going as far as to declare the Gonfalon flag of Christ’s face to be the new Republic’s flag. Despite his later reputation, his initial speech was received by locals with laughter. They were not a particularly religious bunch and knew that they were probably the luckiest people in Siberia as Vladivostok was the only port Siberia had and so it was at least somewhat open to the outside world. The flag was particularly mocked as creepy, and foreigners still mock it today, though the locals are naturally far prouder of it now. Aksyuchits was considered quite out of his depth when the announcement was made, and many considered him a traitor for abandoning his ‘One Russia’ beliefs. Though he claimed the historical lands controlled by the Far Eastern Republic, he only held Primorsky. The only reason many believe he wasn’t immediately taken out was because people in Vladivostok genuinely did hold antipathy for Moscow, so far and distant. Many had Ukrainian blood from the deportations gulags and had a hint of rebellion in their genes too, but hardly considered Aksyuchits to be the best way to go about it. Little did they know that in only a few months time, Aksyuchits’s name would be praised from every tongue in the city. But for now, Aksyuchits found himself cut completely adrift amidst a Russia full of players out to take whatever they could get, and an international community that refused to recognise anyone but Gaidar. Aksyuchits would go on to doubt the wisdom of his decision in the coming days before moving in and out of paranoia about people, saying to one associate that it was hard trying to find out from among the masses, 'Who is God and who is Satan?'
But Aksyuchits was not the only one seeing religious visions. In neighbouring Sakha/Yakutai, the morbidly unpopular imposed administration of the NSF was decapitated in a coup on December 13th by the Aiyy Yeurekhé movement, a Neo-pagan movement led by ethnically Ukrainian Ivan Ukhkhan and a Yakut philologist named Téris. The NSF had attempted to prosecute them as Un-Russian in 1994, but this only led to a broader backlash in Sakha that resulted in the Tengrist religion becoming more and more prominent, including among Slavs. As society began to collapse in 1994, the newly apocalyptic visions of Téris and Ukhkhan’s pronouncement, as well as the promise that Sakha would be saved if they would return to the true faith of the land, led to thousands of secular, ethnically Russian men and women dressing in tribal clothes and engaging in dancing and chanting in the middle of the woods to the rhythm of Shamans. Many Russians thought the whole society was going mad and fled as quickly as their legs or cars would carry them, often perishing in the desperate search for safety. Rumours of Black Shamans performing sacrifices in the woods began to swirl (mainly invented for propaganda purposes by rivals), with White Shamans ‘baptising’ crowds in the Yakutian wilderness by performing rituals to the Sun God. Desperation, fear of death, and starvation had seemingly driven Sakha completely mad.
But that was quite similar to what was happening to Siberia in general. Naturally, there was no back up plan for what to do if the NSF went to war and everything west of the Urals was cut off. Instead, the various regions simply collapsed into anarchy as the food vanished. The only places close to order were the regions of Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, Tyumen, and Omsk. They nominally declared for Anpilov, but in reality they were run by a joint committee of Fascist and Communist members terrified of what had just happened and seeing the absolute worst of the collapse all around them. Outside these areas, law and order (in terms of NSF control) did not exist in the whole of Siberia. Not only that, no one even knew what was going on in, say, Magadan, or even Krasnoyarsk. Telephone lines weren’t working, no one had enough fuel to drive between cities, trains and buses had completely broken down, banks had no money, some cities blacked out, and millions felt the pangs of hunger. No one knew how many exactly, but even where there was order there were emaciated bodies on the street - one could only imagine the hell beyond in Siberia. Then, into Chelyabinsk on a cold December 31st from Kazakhstan with thousands of well-fed men behind him, came the one man in all Siberia with a smile on his face. On December 3rd he had negotiated the surrender of Transnistria in return for the lives and freedom of his men to return to Russia and save it from collapse. Though he left the Transnistrian separatists' dreams of an independent state to die, he did manage to extract an amnesty for the entire Transnistrian population with American guarantees that Moldova would be forced to treat the Transnistrians with some degree of internal autonomy. While 14th Guards Company was without any weapons but the ones provided by friendlies along the border, they were not afraid of being attacked, either Lebed or his men. Despite the setback, his men remained loyal. Based on the tear-stained reactions of Siberians as they saw him, they were loyal to Lebed too. It was strange coming into Chelyabinsk on a horse of all things, but to Alexander Lebed, it made him look even more like Alexander the Great, whose memory he would call on to begin what he saw was his destiny: to conquer the lands of Siberia and save Russia in the coming year of our Lord 1995.
If only there weren’t so many others with their eyes on Siberia, including one nefarious dwarf in Pyongyang.
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LukasTheSeven
Banned
Okay, looks like someone played too much in TNO.
Seriously, the story adout Natalia Poklonskaya, who believing that Nicholas II is alive, and "purge" Russia with radiation, as well as Medvedev / Yazov with his Iron Trial, look a little more realistic that what i see here.
Seriously, the story adout Natalia Poklonskaya, who believing that Nicholas II is alive, and "purge" Russia with radiation, as well as Medvedev / Yazov with his Iron Trial, look a little more realistic that what i see here.
I mean dunno about realism but if you look at the title and dont think it'll be a Soviet TNO I dont know what to tell you
It was made pretty clear from the start how much of a russian screw this would be, also want that Natalia TL! Gimme gimme!
And even so, name one other TL that has Russia collapse this totally, like a Yugoslavia spanning a continent? Usually it's just the SSRs and a few of the ASSRs that people know about (Chechnya and maybe Tuva) breaking off in other works, but here it's a full on Second Smuta in the making if its not already there.
EDIT: I should probably say that every idea has been done before at least once somewhere. What matters to me IMO is how you present it and pull it off and by God is it off to a good start.
EDIT: I should probably say that every idea has been done before at least once somewhere. What matters to me IMO is how you present it and pull it off and by God is it off to a good start.
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I mean most Hearts Of Iron timelines have that happen with TNO being the most popular but far from the only one. This also assumes you do not count the ones where they are being exterminated by the Nazis or being removed/replaced by the Chinese or the Poles, Ukrainians, Fins, whoever.
Edit: Also some do have similar events, its just that they are in the background or a small piece of the larger story.
As for the Yugoslavia bit, this is worse than Yugoslavia as at least the Yugoslavian Wars end and some amount of prosperity returns, I do not see this conflict ending for decades with a significant larger amount of genocide and ethnic conflict all around.
Edit: Also some do have similar events, its just that they are in the background or a small piece of the larger story.
As for the Yugoslavia bit, this is worse than Yugoslavia as at least the Yugoslavian Wars end and some amount of prosperity returns, I do not see this conflict ending for decades with a significant larger amount of genocide and ethnic conflict all around.
I find the Circassian Israel thing a little far-fetched what would motivate them to leave stable and tolerant nations to set up shop in the biggest warzone since ww2?
What would happen to nuclear warheads? Would the U.S. and U.K. will try to initiate secret operation to protect nukes from falling into the hands of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups?
So looks like no matter whichever Fascist or Stalinist win, Caucasus and everything east of Ural is lost to them. Of course, they have to avoid blowing each other out with nukes first.
They are literally conducting modern day slave-trading.
This here is perhaps the darkest and most vicious thing I have read on this site.
They are literally conducting modern day slave-trading.
Didn't NK have major famine during mid-90s? Also would Beijing allow Kim to do a little advanture in Siberia?
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I think that you're a little bit off the mark here by assuming that order will completely collapse inside Siberia like this.
The lack of supplies from the West will cause issues and hunger but not famine, at least not in southern Siberia and in major cities like Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk and many more.
Nowadays Siberia produces 16% of Russia's wheat crop. Large tracts of the Altai, Ob, Irtuysh and Yenisei valleys are suitable for agriculture at least in the south. A majority of Russia's oil is extracted in Siberia too. The area is also self-sufficient in coal and in electricity production. In fact a major challenge during the Soviet Union was how to efficiently send Siberian energy resources Westwards. This led to the creation of vast high-voltage lines coupled to large power stations near coal mines to send "coal by wire" westwards. There are huge dams in Krasnoyarks and Irkutsk so neither city nor vast tracts of Siberia will be "blacked out". Most of the TransSib was electrified so trains will continue to run. Refining oil won't be a problem, an oil pipeline existed along the route of the TransSib and oil refineries are located in Omsk, Achinsk and Krasonyarsk.
A very interesting thing about Soviet cities located in the Arctic is that they had some infrastructure to enable self-sufficiency in food. Some cities had greenhouses, indoors pens for livestock to produce things like vegetables, milk and eggs in some quantities. We're still in 1994/95 so these peices of Soviet infrastructure won't have decayed to the levels they did OTL. This will save some lives in the far-north.
The resources fields in the far north, the gas in Urengoy, the nickel in Norilsk are also too important to be left to decay alone. Local authorities will try to do something, anything to keep things running. I am talking about Western corporations moving in, buying the infrastructure and running things as de facto treaty-ports and enclaves for example.
Is famine completely unavoidable in Siberia? Not quite, isolated settlements like Igarka, Dikson or Kolpashevo could die off or become completely abandonned by people fleeing, moving or being transfered southwards where there are more supplies. The TransSib and the BAM may become lifelines in the truest sense of the term. If a settlement is on or near the railways, it has a chance of surviving. If it isn't then things could become very difficult. Yakutia as alluded to is in for a world of hurt. Magadan Oblast is almost guaranteed to starve.
Deaths for hunger could reach 1M or so which is already a tragedy.
Now of course, contactsbetween the outside World will be very limited but not non-existent. The Soviet airline infrastructure and planes are still there and even in a decayed state it could be used to maintain some connectivity. It also seems that our friend Aksyuchits is keen to build a new Russia in Siberia too.