Well, this plan is something that is utterly terrifying in a "nothing is scarier" sense as we have little to go on except for Dobrovolsky and Barkashov discussing stuff with Dugin and a "very horrifying reason" for them being pleased at Lebed and the FEK winning in Siberia. At least with the Jihadist plan, we at least know they have a nuke stolen from Anpilov's madhouse but we don't know what the three are planning (with me being terrified at possibility they are going to try and escalate the civil war even further).
The Death of Russia - TL
- Thread starter Sorairo
- Start date
Not gonna lie this is actually the first time I read an alternate history very serious and in depth where it's so horrifying and disturbing it manage to unease my brain in real life, especially the chapter where the Tatar girl was killed manage to disturb me. Good job for the storytelling damn
Yeah, that killing scene of that poor Tatar girl who just was wrong ethnicity and fought on wrong side was indeed disturbing but too experessed very well how bad these nashis are. I don't think that I have earlier read on this site such scenes. Often atrocities are just told but not really detailed such way.
But still greatly written.
I give you...
Education in Nazi Germany
A detailed history of the "Education in Nazi Germany" that includes images, quotations and the main events. GCSE Modern World History - Nazi Germany. A-level - Life in Nazi Germany, 1933–1945. Last updated: 9th May 2022
spartacus-educational.com
That nuke goes off anywhere, and it be trace back to Anpilov, the USA and NATO will carpet bomb the Russian Soviet Republic into oblivion on top of the Dagestan turning into the Fall of Carthage.
Thing is that nuke just need to explode somewhere in Russia and I suspect the two Russian sides will blame the other and let loose their nukes, which might escalate if targeting has not been changed on some of them...
Bin does not need to nuke the Western Allies to see the whole world go up in fire.
Bin does not need to nuke the Western Allies to see the whole world go up in fire.
“People of the World!”
“People of the World!”
Extract from 'The Great White Void: Siberia 1993-1996' by Nikolai Chernenko
Extract from 'The Great White Void: Siberia 1993-1996' by Nikolai Chernenko
Remnants of the Buryat forces would find no peace that Winter. After the anger at foreign intervention, there was no attitude in either Vladivostok or Lebed’s new capital of Novosibirsk to let the Mongolians have anything more than Tuva. To that end, the FEK and Siberians spent their time crushing remaining forces along the Mongolian border, re-establishing the old border by Valentine’s Day 1996. In so doing, especially in Askyuchits’s jurisdiction, the Buryats were effectively forced over the border as part of ‘ethnic exchanges’ with the last few ethnic Slavs who existed in Tuva and Mongolia. Buryats were made to take humiliating loyalty oaths, denounce their ways of life and cut themself off from all of Mongolian society, or simply cross the border. Faced with the cruel ultimatum, thousands of Buryats fled their indigenous land into Mongolia to become second class citizens to an angry population of Mongolians who felt the Buryats had embarrassed them due to their performance in the fight. The FEK’s portion of Buryat was repopulated with Russian refugees, which received ringing endorsement from Petrograd to the West’s embarrassment. Siberia would be more forgiving on the poltiical side but Executive Outcomes’s mercenaries still took great joy in levelling almost any infrastructure that could sustain independent Buryat communities. Seeing no future under a figure like Lebed, the Buryats in Siberia likewise mostly, though certainly not to the same degree, fled into Mongolia to find for themselves how hollow the call of Mongolian nationalism had been. Mongolia shrugged and claimed victory in seizing Tuva, though this was a poor prize to even the most deluded.
On January 15th, in New Delhi, the first official meeting between Lebed, Askyuchits and most shockingly of all Nemtsov would take place. The West had been eager to get all three working together to try and combine their attentions against Petrograd and Stalingrad. It was a momentous occasion for all parties, as they had to determine how to work together in the years to come, and indeed months to come with the war in Western Russia, as well as with the Tengrists. Simple deals of refugees and train lines reopening from the Urals to the Pacific were made in hours but the question of what to do in West Russia was different. Nemtsov still refused to give either Siberia or the FEK acknowledgements of independence. Lebed made his intentions clear that he did not intend to stop his conquest with his eastern march, but to turn west and swallow everything up to Finland, Ukraine and Chechnya. He did not regard Nemtsov as a relevant player in the discussion and simply demanded that he be recognised as the new official Russian government. Aksyuchits refused integration into either Lebed or Nemtsov’s government, insisting that the FEK’s independence had been a God-ordained event and that to surrender its independence would be blasphame. Aksyuchits was not sure whether he distrusted Nemstov or Lebed more, but he quickly got his answer on January 18th, when Lebed stunned the meeting by announcing that he had incorporated Sakha into his Siberian government.
General Rokhlin had once again put his life on the line to deliver the goods and received it in abundance. While the FEK had been preparing to launch a full invasion to crush the Tengrists, Rokhlin had messaged his intention to negotiate with the Tengrists about a possible sharing of power over Sakha. Despite ‘Lord of the Flies’ visions of madness among the countryside, the actual powerbase of Yakutia remained remarkably clear headed. They had hoped that the initial attack would scare off the FEK, only to hear over radios that the FEK were simply preparing a larger attack. They were quite strange but knew there was no way they could win a conventional war with the FEK given their Western backers. To that end, with no one but two aides to accompany him, Rokhlin travelled into Sakha, later recalling “I was more afraid before a shot had been fired in Yakutia than being in the middle of battle. The very silence seemed to be in conspiracy against you.” Despite being jumpy at the thought of an ambush, he was surprised and relieved that Ukhkhan himself came to greet him. Rokhlin was quite astonished by how levelheaded the ethnic Ukrainian was, almost expecting a Slavic Pagan to be unable to continue a ten second conversation without dropping to all fours and howling like a wolf. Ukhkhan explained that the Tengrists had generally simply wanted to scare off interlopers from trying to reimpose ‘Western nonsense’ on Yakutia. This was somewhat humorous because the ‘Western’ of Ukhkhan’s statement was Russia, imposing the Christian religion and European ways of civilisation on the Yakuts. Ukhkhan said that he had misjudged the FEK and realised that they represented a fundamental threat to Tengrism, fearing that if the FEK swallowed Yakutia that it would be outlawed. To that end, he offered reincorporation into Siberia in return for certain assurances that would be hashed out in the days to come. Inside a yurt in the middle of a rural Siberian snowstorm, Ukhkhan and Rokhlin discussed the fate of one of the largest landmasses on Earth.
It would effectively make Siberia a federation like the Russian Federation, albeit one with significantly more internal authority. Tengrism would be the ‘state’ religion, with a moratorium on the construction of ‘non-traditional’ places of worship - any churches that survived the initial destruction would be maintained. Christians would be allowed to exist in the region, but would be unable to prosthelytize in public. If the FEK attacked Yakutia, it would be considered an attack on the Siberian government. At the same time, Yakutia would permanently surrender its right to seceede from Siberia, it’s guerilla forces would be disbanded and incorporated into the Siberian army over time, once it was clear Lebed was holding up his end of the bargain. Military bases would be constructed in Yakutia, albeit far away from the rural population centres. While Yakutia’s natural resources were a sticking point when it came to the land - Executive Outcomes desperately wanting a cut of anything on offer - the Arctic and Tunda was handed over to Lebed with little issue. The abandoned cities would be filled with military personnel and charity organisations to try and relieve the regional famine and maintain order. The Tengrists would keep their flock in the rural areas, as the fear of nuclear attack had not gone away. Ukhkhan warned that the decision to let Lebed’s forces in would be seized upon by Black Shamans to make a move for power and turn the country into what the outside world initially thought the region had become. Amnesty would be declared for those who attacked the FEK convoy, including journalists. Yakutia’s incorporation into Siberia was sealed on January 17th, removing the final non-Russian actor from the region. In the coming months, under heavy protection, charity groups set up shop in the abandoned cities to try and relieve the suffering the region pretended it didn’t have.
As one of Nemtsov’s aides by the name of Dmitri Medvedev would recall, “Aksyuchits, as the Americans say, ‘lost his religion’ somewhat in the subsequent meetings.” The amnesty was particularly unforgivable to Aksyuchits, who never recovered his working relationship with Lebed. The FEK reneged on any decision to send troops to support Lebed’s attempts to move over the Urals, much to the consternation of the Western officials present. On January 20th, Aksyuchits left the meeting early to return to Vladivostok. The move would be popular in the FEK, especially among those who could no longer return to their homes, but given that Aksyuchits was considered a religious figure, it begs the question as to whether Aksyuchits could have gotten support for almost anything. This left Lebed and Nemtsov to try and fill in the blanks. Lebed had maintained positive contact with both Komi and the Urallic Alliance, with both expressing interest in using their territory to transfer his troops. The Urallic Alliance refused any deal that reneged on their goals of independence, but the Komi Republic was interested in reintegrating into a Russian state, especially one under Lebed or Nemtsov. Finally, on January 22nd, an official deal was reached between Nemtsov and Lebed where both claims were recognised as ‘legitimite’, with a promise of ‘integration’ between the two parties in the case of Lebed capturing Western Russia. Of course, this was essentially a pipe dream, given there were two viscous nuclear armies tearing a continent-sized hole on the planet on the other side of the Urals. The Urallic Alliance, and certainly not their Caucasian allies, had any appetite to return to Russia, even one under Lebed and Nemtsov. Privately, both had agreed with the West that they would refuse to use violence to deal with the FEK, effectively officially confirming the independence of the eastern state. Aksyuchits would announce the FEK would not prosecute any further military conflict and would protect itself with its captured nuclear weapons. The Defence Minister of the FEK was perhaps the most important person in human history himself, Stanislav Petrov, a native of Vladivostok who had participated in the street-to-street fighting of the North Korean attack. Petrov’s decision in 1983 to, against orders, report what his equipment stated was an incoming American nuclear attack as an erroneous mistake is creditted with avoiding a thermonuclear exchange between east and west. Aksyuchits believed the event had been ordained by God to save the world, and so granted the formerly ‘disgraced’ Petrov a critical role in his cabinet as a ‘soldier for the light’.
Ukhkhan’s deal was controversial in Yakutia, even given his religious standing. He was ultimately assassinated by stabbing in February by a black shaman cult worshipper. Ironically, in swapping out for the ethnically Yakut Téris as the new leader, the Tengrists’ decision to incorporate themselves into Siberia became a much more accepted decision. In the months to come, mercenaries from Executive Outcomes would hunt down rogue shamans in the woods of Yakutia. It proved rewarding work to kill some of the worst offenders, including some who had AIDS who told desperate worshippers to have sex with him to revive their dead parents and children. No form of insanity was too intense for these modern witch doctors, who treated their flocks as things to abuse and extract. But the Mongols had mostly been pushed back, North Korea had failed, China had wounded herself and the warlords were a thing of the past. The only remaining legend was Mikhael Popkov, a serial killer from Irkutsk who used the anarchy of the war to release his full fury in a world where none could stop him. By himself, with no help, he estimated that he killed at least one woman a day for roughly a year in the chaos of the war, before returning to his more cautious methods as Lebed’s men arrived. He was eventually arrested in 2011, and is by far the bloodiest serial killer in history, with an estimated five hundred victims, overwhelmingly girls. He would not express regret for his actions but would express regret that the actions of Barkashov would ensure he would never go down as the most evil Russian in history, as he wanted to be.
Extract from 'One Soldier’s War in Russia' by Arkady Babchenko
[1]
God, I wished I was that maggot in the floorboard. What did he have to worry about? He probably didn’t have eyes to sea or ears to hear, but I was cursed with both. Sitting in a huddle, shuddering in my layers in a useless fight against the cold, I was a vastly more pathetic sight than him. Me and all the other bastards they had here, dirt-encrusted, heads down, spirits extinguished. We looked like mediaeval peasants in our cannabilised and recycled clothes, and we certainly had no higher ideas of ourselves. Everything pulled you to insanity, whether it was the cold, the maggots, or most importantly for us, the propaganda we were being subjected to. Maps of the present day, truncated Germany and imploded Africa, with Russia having the borders of 1913 - with Alaska on top of that. While I was relieved that I never had to see that son of a bitch Anpilov’s face except in my nightmares, something was even more unnerving about there being no figure for the Fascists. Not Nevzorov, Barkashov, no one. The only picture of someone was a single oil painting of Christ on top of the wall ahead. I didn’t know if I was seeing things from hallucinating, but even Jesus’s face, seemingly twisted with anger and hate. Eyes bulging, gnashing teeth, veins in his neck. Was I seeing things? Was I alive? Had I been in Hell all this time? Maybe I was just the mad one after all. Maybe I was back at home right now, and I’d wake up any minute.
Any minute.
…
Any minute.
…
“YOU!”
My delusions had betrayed me again, the ‘teacher’ storms up to me, his knee crashing into my temple as I’m reminded of reality by the intensity of pain.
“UP, NOW!”
Why did he ask me to get up if he just knocked me even further down? As my vision returned to normal after I was seeing double from the impact of the knee, I stumbled to my feet to see that everyone was already standing. I made sure my gas mask was adjusted correctly. We were all wearing gas masks, the prisoners. We could not take them off, even when we slept. Only the Nashis didn’t have gas masks, a way to humanise themselves to us and dehumanise ourselves to each other. For ‘graduation’ we would be allowed to take the masks off, once it was determined that our conversion was genuine. Those who took their gas masks off and were caught were beaten severely by the guards. There goal was to dehumanise us, and it worked better than they could have imagined. I sometimes could almost see the visors of the masks filled with tears.
The teacher returned to the chalkboard at the end of the room. We continued to stand, for we had nowhere to sit but the floor, no pen or pencil to write with, no paper to write on.
“Slava Rossiya!” the teacher belows.
“Slava Rossiya,” we drearily reply, wondering where on earth the glory is in this country, and who’s hoarding it from us.
“Today, we will teach you the history of the Soviet Union,” the teacher explained, prowling the front of the room. “You will learn about the Mongrel Lenin, the Jew Trotsky and his golem in the Georgian Stalin, and the Ukrainian subversives Khrushchev and Gorbachev. You will be deprogramed from the propaganda you were forced to recite from birth. It will take time, but you will become the footsoldiers of the Republic of Russians, footsoldiers not just in war but in peace, to continue the sacred mission of the Russian people to conquer the world and defeat the Western Antichrist.
“You!” he suddenly said, pointing to me.
I reluctantly trudge to the front, waiting to be berated.
“I see your name is Babchenko!” he said, pointing to the ID on my chest we were all forced to have. “You’re a Ukrainian?!”
“No sir,” I reply, “I was born in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, but I am a Russian.” If I hadn’t recognised the trap my brains would give the maggots great sustenance. If they found out my maternal grandmother was Jewish then they would have done the same thing regardless of my answer.
“Have you been infected by Banderism?!”
“No sir.”
“Have you been infected by Communism?!”
“Yes sir, I need to be re-educated.”
“Correct! Do you wish to know about the sordid history of your home republic?”
“Yes sir.”
With that, he pointed to the only member of the crowd not wearing a gas mask.
“Vladimir!” he said to his most loyal student. “Step up here.”
The former commissar obeyed emotionlessly, the teacher now leaving me stranded at the front while he walked over to his student.
“Who invented the Ukraine?” asked the teacher.
“Vladimir Lenin,” said the student.
“Why did Vladimir Lenin invent the Ukraine?”
“To undermine Russian identity to further the Communist agenda.”
“What is the Ukraine?”
“A state invented by Lenin comprising a fictitious nation invented by the Hapsburgs and Poles. It is a mental virus created to divide the Russian people, who were forged at the Baptism of Saint Vladimir in 988. It was a mental virus exploited by the Nazis with their Banderist allies to enslave Russia. The virus has now been utilised by the English to find a battering ram with which to contain the Russian people and a desperate attempt to halt their historic destiny. But it is a doomed attempt, because once Russia reconstitues itself under real leadership and pushes against this mirage, the Ukraine will crumble to dust like South Vietnam.”
“Magnificent answer!” replied the teacher. “Babchenko! Sit beside Vladimir, you will learn many worthwhile things from him.”
We walked back to where Vladimir was sitting, as i turned to sit alongside him.
“I thought you were a commissar,” I whispered. “Why are you suddenly supporting the Nashis all of a sudden?”
“Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t a Communist?” he replied. “I serve Russia. Tsars change. Sometimes they are the Imperial White or the Socialist Red, but Russia is eternal.”
“Did you serve Yeltsin or Gaidar?”
“That wasn’t Russia.”
“Why not?”
“Russia is many things, but a supporting character she is not.”
I sighed in exhaustion from bashing my head against the sociopathic fortitude of Vladimir, before I started to hear a sound in the distance.
My eyes, glazed from the humiliation and tiredness of the last few weeks, were once again opened with animalistic terror.
“Oh no, oh God no.”
Vladimir pretended he heard neither me nor the music. It was a song that perhaps he was too old for but I was not. It was Crocodile Gena’s Birthday Song from the animated cartoon film series in the sixties and seventies. It was the song the character sang to himself on his birthday in the film and every child in Russia knew it, most of the adults too. It was coming from the ‘Women and Children Holding Camp’ just adjacent to our re-education camp. They would play it to reassure the children whenever something horrible was going on and to drown out the atrocities being committed, especially to this song. All the other songs too. Cheburashka, Blue Railway Wagon, all drowning out what was happening. I had been unlucky enough to overhear the other day just what was going to happen: the camp commanders were disturbed by reports of homosexual assault on the prepubescent boys, so they took the obvious step from this and decided to liquidate the entire male child population of the camp. Everyone from the thirteen year olds down to the few week-old babies - there was no one older.
Despite the song eventually playing so loud as to drown out the teacher who refused to acknowledge it, we could still hear the gunfire and screams of the boys’ mothers and sisters as they were murdered. Sometimes we could hear the mothers scream out their boys’ names. Who was ‘Sasha’ or ‘Andrei’? I don’t know, but it sounded as if their mothers loved them. Sometimes you could hear the boys weeping or pleading to God to save them. Sometimes you could hear the guards say to the children, “It’s your fault! You started this!”
Finally, after about ten minutes of children songs, the murder of the children appeared completed. Now the daily rape of the mothers and girls could continute as usual. Going mad from the madness around me, I threw up inside my mask, letting it open slightly to let the vomit slop to the floor.
“BABCHENKO!” screamed the teacher, as if my vomiting had been the only unusual thing that had just happened. He marched towards me before grabbing me by my hair and flinging my face to the ground, breaking my nose in the process.
“Did I give you permission to take your gas mask off?”
“No sir, you did not.”
“I didn’t, did I?! Well, I can understand why you’d want to take it off, so I’ll give you a pass. As your punishment, you will only have to lick up and swallow that vomit on the floor or I’ll shoot you for wasting the food resources we’ve given you! Vladimir, make sure he does his side of the deal.”
“Yes sir,” Vladimir replied, taking the back of my head like I had never shared a room with him in his life as he pushed my head into the splintered ground, as I licked up my vomit, infused with the blood from my nose and the maggots from the floorboard. And yet I felt grateful, knowing that somehow, somehow, some fucking way how, that there was a worse fate than this. And I could hear it in the weeping of mothers, and the silence of what were once little boys.
Extract from ‘The Unstoppable Tragedy: The Second Russian Civil War’ by Peter Hodges
Sergei Lavrov was a normal bureaucrat in Soviet Russia. He was a normal bureaucrat in the Russian Federation. He was a troubled bureaucrat in NSF Russia, as his Armenian ancestry put a target on his back from the Right Bloc, albeit not an unacceptable one given the shared Orthodoxy. When the Civil War began, he worked in Anpilov’s Russia. He was constantly promoted as his successors were constantly purged. Finally, on the morning of January 27th 1996, he entered Anpilov’s bunker office and was made Foreign Minister of the Russian Soviet Republic. He accepted the role and went to the Foreign Ministry in Stalingrad (whose work had moved underground due to constant chemical weapon attacks). That evening, the KGB stormed the ministry, arresting Lavrov for being a Fascist spy in his role as Foreign Minister. As he was dragged out of the compound, he was simply thrown against the wall and riddled with machine gun fire until his lifeless corpse sank into the snow. If anything illustrated how ludicrous the purges had gotten, that someone could be appointed minister in the morning and be executed for betrayal in the evening brought home how insane working under the Anpilov regime had become. A verifiable kakistocracy was the inevitable result of the vicious churning of leaders. The Winter had been the harshest yet, with the resulting famine further thinning out the already decimated population. “There are no children, there are no old,” told one diary in Stalingrad found deep in the rubble after the war, “it’s like Leningrad without even the siege – when the siege starts, there won’t be anything for the Fascists left to find.”
Ironically the Fascists too were rapidly expending their last resources – their economic bonanza from human trafficking had dried up, meaning that by February 1996 life in Petrograd was almost as bad as life in Stalingrad. Shafarevich calculated that if the war against the Soviet Republic was not won by the end of Summer then there would be no victor at any stage from the war as both regimes would have collapsed into anarchy from the collapse in civil order due to mass starvation. This led to the Fascist regime to announce the ‘Final Offensive’ that they promised would conclude the war and bring relative peace – the showdown with the ethnic minority countries increasingly pushed back. Nevzorov had grown tired of the war and had aged considerably – while he had once thought of himself proudly as a gentleman warrior returning Russia to its Imperial tradition minus the Romanov degeneracy, he had grown increasingly sick of the war. He had grown open to the possibility of allowing the ethnic republics to go independent in return for population exchanges, and resumption of aid to the Republic of Russians. Dobrovolsky had taken an increasingly prominent position in the council meetings in Petrograd with Dugin giving affirmative support. This passed an increasing amount of the decision making into the hands of the most radical elements of the Petrograd government, leading to the debate on the day of February 10th 1996.
On that day, Dobrovolsky would announce that Barkashov had presented a suggestion for the Republic of Russia’s military. It was called the ‘Zass Plan’, after Imperial General Grigory Zass, one of the architects of the Circassian Genocide. Dobrovolsky supported the plan and wanted to vote on it – Dugin likewise supported the plan. Nevzorov read the plan and was mortified. If it had been presented to him in 1993 he might have been fine with it, but with the taste of ashes in his mouth from the war having finally broken him, he turned it down. To his horror, the remainder of the cabinet (bar Shafarevich) agreed with it, as Dugin had already spent the intervening weeks winning over their support. With that, Nevzorov had lost his place as the decision-maker in the Petrograd Council, with Shafarevich now reduced to a calculator for deranged serial killers. Plan Zass became the new law of Petrograd’s army and paramilitaries, while the West and Anpilov remained unaware. They were still worried, of course, by the prospect of imminent Fascist victory west of the Urals. Indeed, millions of people had grown worried, as the burning question at the back of everyone’s mind about how a conventional war between two psychopathic nuclear states would end became increasingly relevant. How could either side truly win such a struggle? What if they couldn’t? What if one was pushed back to the wall? Pretty soon, they would find out.
On February 20th, the Fascist armies of Petrograd began their final offensive, cutting down European Russia with the last of their vehicles, chemical weapons, and energy. Their goal, simply enough, was to capture Stalingrad, decapitate the Soviet Administration and pray the rest of Soviet Russia would crumble from losing its dictator. The Nashi paramilitaries, RNU paramilitaries, Tiger shock troops and regular Petrograd army regiments were put under the joint command of General Kvachkov, an ideologically compliant general who told the Council that he would ‘end the Jewish-Bolshevik influence over Russia forever’. Ironically, war crimes actually lessened during this time, as there was no time to mess around; they needed to get to Stalingrad and seize it, quick, before they ran out of supplies and risked implosion. The Fascists advanced with astonishing speed, racing down the Volga, where the bulk of their force was located. It was estimated that they would reach Stalingrad by the end of March. It was a truly last ditch effort, and Anpilov knew it too in spite of burying himself in false information. To this end he knew that the best thing to do would be to buy time by making Petrograd reluctant to advance on Stalingrad. While both sides had constantly made vague nuclear threats, now was the time to be direct.
On March 3rd, Anpilov would give an impromptu address to ‘the people of the world’. He warned that he would be forced to use nuclear weapons if facing total defeat, and that there was no scenario where Stalingrad would fall without nuclear weapons being used, and that ‘We will make sure the West that has created this split in the Salvation Front shall not escape such an exchange unharmed’. The directness of the threat was unprecedented, and the Western public believed that Anpilov was serious given his well known sadism. While Anpilov was estimated at having a low number of nukes relative to the Soviet Union at its height, the effect of generations of images of total nuclear apocalypse simply paralysed all Western decision making. Panic buying began in the stores, petrol stations were overloaded, peace protestors fought with the police in every major Western city. It is unknown whether Anpilov was bluffing with this statement, and the governments of the West were not sure either. Emergency meetings were held by telephone between Washington, London, Brussels, and all the Western Alliance. A horrifying thought was on everyone’s mind: what if Judgement Day was here?
Extract from 'Question Time, March 14th 1996'
David Dimbleby: “Our first question from the lady in the red blouse. Please.”
Lady (nervous and pale): “Th-Thank you, what can the government do to stop the Communists in Russia from l-launching a nuclear bomb at us, or-or-or for that matter the Nashis?”
Slowly sits down – three unbroken seconds of silence
Dimbleby: “Thank you. Mr. Howard, in your role as the Home Secretary, how would this country be able to stop or prevent a nuclear strike from either the Petrograd or Stalingrad governments?”
Howard: “The best way to prevent a nuclear strike in both Britain and indeed in Russia is to do what this government has been doing since the start of this conflict in conjunction with the broader West. That is to continue our policy of deterrence, to let the Anpilov government know that if it strikes any part of NATO, with nuclear weapons, then it is guaranteed to be met with nuclear retaliation of which it cannot possibly respond to. While we believe that Anpilov is a vicious, evil dictator, we do not believe he is mad enough to abandon what fifty successive years of Russian leaders have done and decide to launch a nuclear bomb. Every Russian leader since Stalin has been held back with deterrence and this Russian leader will be no different. While we take the threat seriously, this government does not believe that Chariman Anpilov will go through with his word. That does not mean we shouldn’t prepare for worst contingencies, but it is important not to panic and let reason prevail.”
Dimbleby: “Jack Straw, of the Labour Party, what do you think of the statement by the Home Secretary?”
Straw: “Well, like most people in this country, I’m concerned not simply in my role as a member of the opposition, but simply as someone with a wife and child about what sort of a world is going to exist in a year if this madman decides to unleash the nuclear genie from its lamp. We’re looking for straight, direct answers, but what we’re getting from this government is a tangled web of mixed signals and messages. On the one hand, we hear that nothing is going to happen but at the same time it’s just been announced that ‘Protect and Survive’ is being mass produced in bulk in preparation for being mailed out. It is clear to me that deterrence alone simply is not enough with a character like Anpilov – his government is essentially a fawning legion of yes-men built to follow his every word. Back in the sixties and seventies, even the eighties, the Politburo was a significant power that could block the General Secretary from making rash decisions – they no longer exist, and we are left with something we have never seen since Stalin and indeed I would argue Anpilov is a significantly more unstable figure than Stalin. We’ve only barely strengthened civil defence and planning after it was gutted following the collapse of the Warsaw pact, and we’ve recently learned that it’s barely been improved since 1994, certainly not to the extent we were led to believe.”
Dimbleby: “And what would the Labour Party do?”
Straw: “The Labour Party has suggested to do the same thing we did at the beginning of World War 2, and save our children at the very least by fascilitating the mass transfer of our most precious resource to safe areas for the remainder of this crisis in rural areas. Secondly we suggest the rapid construction of bomb shelters around the major cities. Lastly we need a war fund for the NHS to ensure that if there is a nuclear strike on this country that we can bear the cost. We can’t be sure how many nukes Anpilov has, but it is generally believed by experts that the sort of MAD scenarios of the eighties are now a thing of the past thank goodness. But we are still easily in a scenario where the Soviet Russian arsenal could drop a dozen nukes on this country. We are in a situation extremely close in seriousness to the Cuban Missile Crisis, but also one that is far less predictable because we cannot get into the mindset of these two regimes in Russia that could easily decide to take us down with them.”
Tony Benn: “Mister Straw, while I confess my being deselected may bias my opinion, what you are suggesting is simply fantastical and almost as bad as the war-mongering rhetoric I hear from the Conservative government.”
Scattered Boos
Benn: “This talk about bomb shelters and evacuations is little better than the ludicrous ‘duck and cover’ routines of the fifties. A nuclear war cannot be won – even a minor exchange between the two parties in Russia could lead to a gigantic wave of ash and smoke into the atmosphere and opening the very real possibility of nuclear winter. This is of the utmost seriousness. The main issue is not how we are going to minimise the impact in the UK, but how we’re going to stop these two governments from blasting each other to pieces. And while I know it’s increasingly a forbidden topic to even contemplate, the necessity remains: we have to get both of them around the negotiating table and come to some sort of mutual understanding. And if there is indeed no way to stop the two parties from destroying each other, the only solution is simple: Britain must declare her neutrality in the conflict, and not using the weapons that would only compound the environmental catastrophe.”
Booing
Straw: “And this is why - and this is why you are no longer in the Labour Party. Not just for your eulogy to Castro, not just for your apologism for the Anpilov regime -”
Benn: “I have never been an apologist for the Anpilov -”
Straw: “- But for your astonishing willingness to blame a conflict between two evil empires as the result of an unfair West. The West is not at fault for the rape camps of Petrograd, nor is it at fault for the firing squads of Stalingrad, it is only at fault for not having stood by Yeltsin back in 1993 when it could have prevented this. This sort of rhetoric will not be tolerated in the Labour Party.”
Benn: “It won’t be tolerated because at the rate we’re going there won’t be a Britain, let alone a bloody Labour Party by next month!”
Shouting match begins, Dimbleby lowers head in discomfort, lady in red blouse begins to cry
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Welp the world's horrified as Russia seems to descend into a nuclear wasteland (something prob going to happen, with NATO moving in to sweep up the ashes) while the bin Laden plans to explode nukes in America. This tl is so cursed I love it.
Also would Hong Kong try to get garuntees from the US/Britain that if the 50 year transition thing is broken they'll intervene?
Also would Hong Kong try to get garuntees from the US/Britain that if the 50 year transition thing is broken they'll intervene?
I can imagine that right now in Congress if it hasn't passed already, there's going to be an extremely popular push to fund restart the Strategic Defense Initiative, I imagine if not from the Republican-majority Senate then from a screaming cry for the American people to provide some sort of defense against nuclear war aside from just hitting the enemy with more nukes. If nukes do fly then Reagan is going to be extremely vindicated for Star Wars and people like Ted Kennedy will be seen as naive morons. Even if Clinton is against it, it's likely going to pass with a 2/3rd's majority. Although, it's too late to make a difference, at the very least having SDI will remove the threat entirely in the future if more rogue nuclear actors pop up.
Seems like Labour is going to definitively win the next elections and secure an even bigger majority than OTL. Depending upon if who the leaders are I could definitely see Labour dominance stretching all the way til the 2010's, and after years of economic depression and European unity through the panic, Brexit is likely to not become a thing. Interesting times for the UK.
Along with the Tories downfall, it seems like Clinton is doomed to be defeated in a landslide unless he pulls some Tom Clancy shit and has American spec ops take down both the Nashis and Communists and singlehandidly avert a nuclear war. I highly doubt Bob Dole is going to get the nomination cause he's not the guy that inspires comfort and strength in a time of apocalyptic stakes. I'm really hoping that Colin Powell gets nominated and wins the Presidency. America needs a Washington/Lincoln figure to rally the country, and Colin as a decorated veteran and previous leader of the armed forces has all the qualities, experience and personal character to lead the United States moving forward in further dealing with Russia or rebuilding. Plus the election of the first Black President is a big and uplifting W that America needs in this shitty decade. While this is going to result in a likely Republican victory, I can easily see Ross Perot getting some EVs thanks to Clinton drain and lots of voters blaming both parties for the state of the world.
One criticism that I do have to give about the recent series of updates is Babchenko's frequent sections. At this point anytime he comes up my suspension of disbelief is immediately killed and I sort of gloss over it as a diet Beserk. Babchenko's sections just confuse me greatly as he's somehow a Schrodinger's Russian where he's so completely dead and inhuman on the inside that he goes through all of this terrible shit and nothing phases him any more, and yet licking vomit and listening to children being shot makes him be sad, depressed and feel humanity. He's both lost his humanity and still experiences personal depression and guilt, and he just doesn't feel like a real person because I don't think it'd be possible for him to be more than a shell of flesh. Yes people have gone through such horrors before and still kept their humanity, but you keep on hammering in that Babchenko has lost all emotions and the ability to give a crap about the world around him, and then he repeatedly gets new sensations out of nowhere. He just doesn't feel real.
Seems like Labour is going to definitively win the next elections and secure an even bigger majority than OTL. Depending upon if who the leaders are I could definitely see Labour dominance stretching all the way til the 2010's, and after years of economic depression and European unity through the panic, Brexit is likely to not become a thing. Interesting times for the UK.
Along with the Tories downfall, it seems like Clinton is doomed to be defeated in a landslide unless he pulls some Tom Clancy shit and has American spec ops take down both the Nashis and Communists and singlehandidly avert a nuclear war. I highly doubt Bob Dole is going to get the nomination cause he's not the guy that inspires comfort and strength in a time of apocalyptic stakes. I'm really hoping that Colin Powell gets nominated and wins the Presidency. America needs a Washington/Lincoln figure to rally the country, and Colin as a decorated veteran and previous leader of the armed forces has all the qualities, experience and personal character to lead the United States moving forward in further dealing with Russia or rebuilding. Plus the election of the first Black President is a big and uplifting W that America needs in this shitty decade. While this is going to result in a likely Republican victory, I can easily see Ross Perot getting some EVs thanks to Clinton drain and lots of voters blaming both parties for the state of the world.
One criticism that I do have to give about the recent series of updates is Babchenko's frequent sections. At this point anytime he comes up my suspension of disbelief is immediately killed and I sort of gloss over it as a diet Beserk. Babchenko's sections just confuse me greatly as he's somehow a Schrodinger's Russian where he's so completely dead and inhuman on the inside that he goes through all of this terrible shit and nothing phases him any more, and yet licking vomit and listening to children being shot makes him be sad, depressed and feel humanity. He's both lost his humanity and still experiences personal depression and guilt, and he just doesn't feel like a real person because I don't think it'd be possible for him to be more than a shell of flesh. Yes people have gone through such horrors before and still kept their humanity, but you keep on hammering in that Babchenko has lost all emotions and the ability to give a crap about the world around him, and then he repeatedly gets new sensations out of nowhere. He just doesn't feel real.
It is rather interesting here how old the youngest of the ministers was. Stalin brought this figure to 30-35 years (IDK the exact figures). On the other hand, these young ministers were competent in their place.
Thank you, I appreciate the criticism.
Ultimately Babchenko's account is based on his own book from his time in Chechnya, which was a significant influence for this TL, since I could barely believe his descriptions of what life at a Russian base was like. Ultimately, since the brutality of a Second Civil War would dwarf Chechnya, I felt it important to scale up the level of evil on display (and Chechnya was truly evil on display all by itself). I felt it necessary to have a human component to the TL to visually relay the atrocities of the war rather than coldly relay them via textbook in order to increase the impact of the TL. Preferably said component would be in the form of a running character whom the audience could identify, plus it helped answer the question about what 'you know who' was doing in this TL. There will be one final extract from Arkady, with one final horror to face.
Ultimately, the reason why he cared more about the Tatar girl was because I implied he had a crush on her and the latest update was about hitting a new low that he didn't even know existed because it's the first time he's heard that many children getting killed while mixing it with his own childhood memories of Gena the Crocodile and the other Soviet cartoon characters. These two events are simply more personal to him and he responds more viscerally - furthermore, I worried that if he didn't react to them sufficiently that it would cause the reader to think he's an asshole. Honestly, I think to be realistic is to be somewhat unpredictable in how we assess tragedy, as I've taken tragedies both far worse and better than expected in my own life. I think the two instances where he becomes more emotional in my writing had some form of justification, but I appreciate it is left to personal taste.
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I am not sure that purging your left-wing just before an election is going to give you more momentum. It rather seems the opposite would be the case.
The 1997 election might be the big break for the Libs, with Ashdown being neither the government nor the guy who shared a party tent with Tony Benn and the likes. Also, the May 1997 election is 14 months away from March 1996, where the story is now, and boy is a lot going to happen in the meantime. If the UK doesn't get hit, Major might launch an earlier snap election on a "don't elect the doomsayers"-campaign, and he might even win it.
Agreed. I began thinking that the saving grace could be that the nuclear weapons of Petro- and Stalingrad were so ill-maintained that many don't fire, but then I looked up the number of nuclear weapons that the Soviet Union had in 1990. It was 37.000. Even, if we say that majority of those weapons were in Siberia, then Petro- and Stalingrad should have some 5.000 nuclear weapons each. In fact, it seems odd that bin Laden was only able to get a single nuclear weapon. OTL, Russia had some 100 weapons unaccounted for...
It wouldn't surprise me if even the unions purge their hard left ITTL - the far left are going to be incredibly toxic. The GMB General Secretary recently announced that there was no room in his union for Putin apologists or supporters; imagine this on a grand scale.
I see Vladimir is a survivor and the west is finally realizing that besides direct intervention. They can't physically stop both sides from unleashing judgement day on each other. Also they know about the rape camp....the backlash to the purging of the male kids and the reason why it is not going to be pretty.
The Public going to be mad beyond believe or be so stun it be scary. I feel bad for the kids who able to escape, they were forever know they are the lucky ones and it likely hang heavy over them.
The Public going to be mad beyond believe or be so stun it be scary. I feel bad for the kids who able to escape, they were forever know they are the lucky ones and it likely hang heavy over them.
How does a government even function in an environment like that? Also, other than the security agency killing everyone suspected of being an enemy, is there any other part of the Stalingrad government that actually works as intended?