The Death of Russia - TL

[xie323]

Maybe have the Lannisters be more explicitly Andal-supremacist in their rhetoric and actions, viewing the Northmen as "barbarians" who need to be "civilized" and all that?

Pretty much

 

[CASSICTOR2]

Anyways I think Mitridates(who'll have a field day here when he logs on again only to see we talking about Pierce) is right that most people will think the idea that the Nashists who got this close to unleashing a nuclear apocalypse from Russia were somehow inspired by this one obscure far right american author is ridiculous and wont buy it at all
Not that that will stop Pierce from getting lynched but ya know

Yeah honestly the only reason we know Pierce & his Party even existed was the OKC bombing and even that didn't give them much publicly.

Also the book is rather very obscure if you want to find it with some weird reason and with Russian going to full war in the 90s... How would Barkashov actually got a book from America when everything around him is collapsing?

I'm not saying I don't like it but talking how Mitirdates explain it plus just adding his point

 

[Whiteshore]

Also the book is rather very obscure if you want to find it with some weird reason and with Russian going to full war in the 90s... How would Barkashov actually got a book from America when everything around him is collapsing?

IIRC, Barkashov got the book in the short period between the takeover of the NSF and the country collapsing into a thousand pieces.

 

[Kingfish Chris]

IIRC, Barkashov got the book in the short period between the takeover of the NSF and the country collapsing into a thousand pieces.

Plus the book was published in 1978, so he also would've had time to find out about the book through his connections with the Neo-Nazi World around the early 90s.

 

[Simeon]

Wonder how A Song of Ice and Fire and the Game of Thrones adaptation do in this TL speaking of grimdark.

The interest in scholarship about Russian "Tsarist backwardness" can inspire some of his writing choices.

Yeah honestly the only reason we know Pierce & his Party even existed was the OKC bombing and even that didn't give them much publicly.

Also the book is rather very obscure if you want to find it with some weird reason and with Russian going to full war in the 90s... How would Barkashov actually got a book from America when everything around him is collapsing?

I'm not saying I don't like it but talking how Mitirdates explain it plus just adding his point

Alt!Reddit and social media will help publicise the relationship and inflate the niche interested in researching the topic as a hobby.

Well, it will still be too late compared to the schmuck's natural death in 2002... or after his lynching, for that matter.

 

[TickTock The Witch's Dead]

The interest in scholarship about Russian "Tsarist backwardness" can inspire some of his writing choices.

Aerys II Targaryen might be a whole different kind of mad in that story.

 

[theflyingmongoose]

I feel like even if they don't immediately find out, Pierce will state how the Nashists should have succeeded. That should be enough to draw unwanted attention, with people connecting Pierce's book to the events in Russia, queue Pierce becoming the most hated man in America, and Pierce being forced to wear a bulletproof vest and hide a pistol on his person in public.

Everyone:

 

[Kotka]

The World in 2022

 

[Asdfthemovie]

Then, on March 17th, another nuclear bomb exploded in Tehran, Iran while the government was in session. Al-Qaeda likewise took credit, saying it was punishment for Iran’s Shiite heresy. The Ayatollah and most of the regime’s leadership was killed in the blast that slayed 65,000 people. Iran, already economically devastated and under sanction, would descend into madness. The banner of the Islamists would be taken by Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani, with the leader of the MEK, Massoud Rajavi, returning to his homeland to rally democratic forces to try and overthrow the Islamist remnants. While the Islamists were initially successful, pushing the MEK forces to a mere toehold on the south around Bandar Abbas, it was inevitable that the US was not going to pass an opportunity to send the Ayatollah’s regime into the same rung of hell the late leader was on. America for the most part surrendered its administration of post-nuclear Russia to find the material available to defeat their most determined enemy. Utterly severed from foreign support, with an already shattered economy, the US (with significant support from the Sunni Arab nations even as they tried not to descend into their own civil wars) deployed the vast might of their air power to flatten the Iranian armies after they had still not recovered from the Iran-Iraq war. At the same time, Kurdish and Arab separatists began their own uprisings in an attempt to break away from Tehran while in a reluctant alliance with the MEK. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard was declared a terrorist network worldwide, with even China throwing the Islamists to the wolves to try and get good deals when the fighting stopped. On the first anniversary of Tehran’s nuclear strike, MEK forces rolled into the ruins to the joyous reception of the city’s inhabitants, especially the women, burning their hijabs publicly in provisional bonfires. In January 1999, the Iranian Civil War was declared over following the final surrender of Qud forces near Azerbaijan. Solemani had been killed in September 1998 in a covert US military operation, so there was not much left to mop up. Despite the vanquishing of the Islamists, a ruined Iran now had to face the new problems in the relationship between its various ethnicities which threatened the beginning of a second civil war. Mercifully, the blast in Tehran was the last nuclear explosion that has happened on Earth, test or atrocity.


[2] Central Asia is China’s property, effectively, with North Korea more digitally open but still a prison due to East Berlin-tier emigration. Mongolia has been totally subverted, and out of necessity the Chinese have gone to great lengths to ensure friendliness with the Indians as both resent the Western hyper-dominance after the fall of Russia, with Turkey and frequently the Arab world likewise supporting China for the same reason and Latin America pledging neutrality, leading many to call the new conflict one between the Third and First world after the initial First and Second World Cold War conflict. OTL’s intense persecution of the Uyghurs never happens to make the alliance with the Turkic states work, including getting Yakutia to veto any Anti-Chinese movements in Novosibirsk.

1. The MEK is a terrible choice for the democratic vanguard of Iran. Namely because they are not democratic and incredibly unpopular in Iran due to fighting on the Iraqi side in the Iran-Iraq war. Organized groups that could be an Iranian democratic vanguard are few, but the most plausible to me would be a formerly-secret cabal of monarchist Artesh officers. The Artesh is distrusted by the Iranian government and its generals heavily monitored, but a nuke in Tehran would disrupt things enough that the Artesh could assert itself. Naturally this is a problematic outcome for Iran, but Artesh monarchists would be much better-received by the Iranian people, especially if they made promises of a constitutional monarchy.

2. What exactly has happened in Mongolia? Is it still a democracy?

 

[Lalli]

@Sorairo, I have some questions:

Did Puerto Rico become state ITTL?

Were any other monarchies restored beside Romanovs ITTL?

How is Tunisia there? In OTL it was birthplace of OTL Arab Spring but did such things ever occur in Tunisia ITTL?

 

[Kotka]

Those ethnic Russians would go on to immigrate to either Siberia or the FEK. As of 2020, Siberia boasts a population of roughly forty million, while about twenty million live along the similarly vast expanses of the FEK. Only roughly nine million live in Kazakhstan, leaving the country still gripped by economic devastation.

I just made a calculation. Without Siberia, the FEK, the war and the refugees that probably didn't want to return to the devastates ruins of their country, russia should have around 37-38 million people, it would be like Europe's equivalent of Canada: A gigantic country barely populated and with huge areas of nature (in this case abandoned cities like Moscow to be reclaimed by nature).

 

[Whiteshore]

I just made a calculation. Without Siberia, the FEK, the war and the refugees that probably didn't want to return to the devastates ruins of their country, russia should have around 37-38 million people, it would be like Europe's equivalent of Canada: A gigantic country barely populated and with huge areas of nature (in this case abandoned cities like Moscow to be reclaimed by nature).

European Russia is said to be more sparsely populated than the FEK, which had 20 million inhabitants, so it would be closer to a European version of Mongolia as opposed to anything else, complete with being shadows of past empires.

 

[Sorairo]

1. The MEK is a terrible choice for the democratic vanguard of Iran. Namely because they are not democratic and incredibly unpopular in Iran due to fighting on the Iraqi side in the Iran-Iraq war. Organized groups that could be an Iranian democratic vanguard are few, but the most plausible to me would be a formerly-secret cabal of monarchist Artesh officers. The Artesh is distrusted by the Iranian government and its generals heavily monitored, but a nuke in Tehran would disrupt things enough that the Artesh could assert itself. Naturally this is a problematic outcome for Iran, but Artesh monarchists would be much better-received by the Iranian people, especially if they made promises of a constitutional monarchy.

2. What exactly has happened in Mongolia? Is it still a democracy?

I changed the Iran section to demote the importance of the MEK. Mongolia is a democracy like modern Russia is a democracy, albeit the real power is not in Mongolia but Beijing.

Forgot to ask, does Tuva has the status of an autonomous region of Mongolia or is it treated like any other province?

Initially autonomy, but as Mongolia is now a Chinese puppet state due to subversion and bribery, the autonomy doesn't matter as both are agents of the Politburo.

I do have some questions about the final chapter:

1. I have serious doubts in the Palestinians are ever going to accept a solution like what was proposed. There's still going to be a huge demand for Palestinians to return to their homeland as a whole. And plus while Arab and Muslim governments have to cut off support for Israel due to fear from the West, their subjects will still be pro-Palestinian. Even in OTL with some Arab governments normalizing relations with Israel the vast majority of their subjects are for Palestine.
2. How does Pakistan implode? Wouldn't the entire disaster of the Second Russian Civil War make sure Pakistan doesn't do that?
3. Any serious economic crises in the future to be concerned of? 2008?
4. I have serious doubts if the US invasion of Iran will go that smoothly. A lot of Iraqis hated Saddam and the US invasion still led to catastrophe. I can't imagine an invasion of Iran being any smoother.
5. I wonder how domestic issues in the US will go. Can't see issues like LGBT rights, racism, economic inequality, etc going anyway. The alt-PATRIOT Act might even make domestic tensions even worse due to the whole repression thing.
6. Why would China invade Hong Kong like that? Do they even need to?

1) The peace deal resulted in a civil war between Fatah and Hamas, with Arafat playing a double game of telling Western observers that was it while telling Palestinians that it would be the 'freedom to achieve freedom'. Fatah would win but not after a devastating civil war that deeply divides Palestinian society up to TTL 2020 much like Post Civil War Ireland.
2) Pakistan's humiliation after the American bombings leads to Balochi independence activists getting confident (and getting Indian weapons since what are they going to do? Nuke them?) and the central government overreacting to try and quash the situation at once. The war shatters Pakistan's already shattered economy, with its army now crippled too, leading to a domino effect of the remaining regions.
3) Nothing compared to the Second Great Depression - a few minor recessions.
4) America didn't invade Iran - they mostly trained the dissidents and gave weapons but 90% of their work was air power like in the Libyan Intervention in 2011.
5) Significantly more healthy public space as part of the new post-war consensus - demagoguery or McCarthyism of any sort is highly frowned upon so the salience of social issues just doesn't rate as high in people's minds over economics. Gay marriage still pretty much happened as OTL due to SCOTUS. TTL's social environment in 2020 is much more 2008.
6) They didn't need to do it OTL but they did.

@Sorairo, I have some questions:

Did Puerto Rico become state ITTL?

Were any other monarchies restored beside Romanovs ITTL?

How is Tunisia there? In OTL it was birthplace of OTL Arab Spring but did such things ever occur in Tunisia ITTL?

Puerto Rico never became a state for the same reasons from OTL. A serious movement exists in Iran to restore a Shah, but no restorations outside the Romanovss thus far. Tunisia received cosmetic reforms since no one wanted to go hell for leather out of fear of ending up like Algeria.

 

[Whiteshore]

A serious movement exists in Iran to restore a Shah, but no restorations outside the Romanovss thus far.

I take it the Iranian Monarchists not being successful is as much to do with them being unable to agree on who the new Shah should be with some championing a Pahlavi restoration while others want the Qajars back or something like that as it is with how the Shah's authoritarianism is still within living memory of many Iranians?

 

[Sorairo]

I take it the Iranian Monarchists not being successful is as much to do with them being unable to agree on who the new Shah should be with some championing a Pahlavi restoration while others want the Qajars back or something like that as it is with how the Shah's authoritarianism is still within living memory of many Iranians?

Both, but the general success of the Romanov restoration in Russia has made the idea more plausible than it was before.

 

[Whiteshore]

Both, but the general success of the Romanov restoration in Russia has made the idea more plausible than it was before.

Aside from Iran after the fall of the Islamic Republic, any countries which saw a revival of interest in monarchism ITTL owing to the Romanov Restoration? Maybe Romania, Bulgaria (even IOTL, Simeon became PM for a time in the 2000s), and/or Georgia?

 

[Sorairo]

Aside from Iran after the fall of the Islamic Republic, any countries which saw a revival of interest in monarchism ITTL owing to the Romanov Restoration? Maybe Romania, Bulgaria (even IOTL, Simeon became PM for a time in the 2000s), and/or Georgia?

No party that would support a restoration would get more than 10% of the vote in any of those countries.

 

[AK47Productions]

Let's pretend for a moment that Barkashov died sometime before the civil war began or even during it for whatever reason. Was him creating the Zass Plan the key thing preventing the Uralic states, Komi and potentially more ethnic states breaking away from European Russia or would the seemingly inevitable Petrograd-Stalingrad exchange have ended them?

It just kinda sucks they got so close to getting independence only for it to be snatched away from them. I know it's all par for the course for TTL's 2RCW but still. And I doubt they'll be reconstituted in the future ITTL either even with the radiation cleared up, not without massive funds to rebuild the former republics from the ground up.

 

[Whiteshore]

Let's pretend for a moment that Barkashov died sometime before the civil war began or even during it for whatever reason.

Maybe a lucky Red sniper snipes him while he's inspecting RNU troops at the start of the Civil War, for a good POD for that?

 

[Whiteshore]

Shouldn’t Montenegro be independent by now?

IIRC, Montenegro remained an autonomous part of Serbia ITTL.