This is my alternate history that I have worked on for quite some time now. It is over 2,000 words long and will be in the Finished TL/AH section soon enough. The POD is what if D-Day failed, resulting in a more far reaching USSR and a much different Cold War and modern times. Enjoy and discuss!
The Final Revolt
A Revolutionary Alternate History
Prologue
The 1930’s were both good times and bad times for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Following the untimely death of Lenin due to a stroke in 1924, Stalin gradually rose to power in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). By the late 1920’s Stalin had become the next supreme leader of the Soviet state. Immediately scrapping the highly unpopular New Economic Policy (NEP), Stalin would go on to create a series of controversial yet effective five-year plans which would come to be part of his legacy.
The first five-year plan of 1928 would set in motion a slew of policies inside the USSR that would forever shape it’s destiny. Heavy industrialization and communization of peasant farmland would characterize the first plan, and although it would sow the seeds for a future economy rivaling that of the United States, the Soviet people would suffer greatly.
However, the greatest event that would change the country forever would be the German invasion of Russia on July 22, 1941. On this day Adolf Hitler would unleash the German war machine en masse on the Motherland. The Nazis came dangerously close to capturing Moscow in the same year, but fortunately were repulsed by a determined Red Army counter attack. Future brave counter attacks by the Red Army, supported by the powerful Red Air Force, would turn back the Nazi victories, which at first had allowed them to travel as far south as Stalingrad and as far north as Leningrad.
But it was the failure of D-Day that allowed for the Soviet Union to finally become the powerful nation we know today. D-Day was the codename for the attempted Allied invasion of northern France, spearheaded by a combined American, British, and Canadian offensive on the beaches of Normandy. The fierce assault would be drowned in the blood of thousands of soldiers, who gave their lives in a noble attempt to liberate France from Nazi tyranny.
Although Stalin was the one who had originally convinced the western Allies to go through with the invasion following the surrender of Italy, and had fretted at first once he heard of it’s tragic failure, D-Day would soon turn out to be a double edged sword for the Soviets. With their forces freed up from France and elsewhere in Europe as a result of the failure of D-Day, the Germans were able to reverse many of their defeats that came about with the retreat from Stalingrad. Even though the Germans lost the entire Third Army during the retreat, the extra troops pouring in from France allowed them to reinforce the buffer zone in and around Eastern Europe, which if it faltered would spell doom for the Third Reich.
The Germans were also able to field such technological marvels as the Messerschmitt Me 262
Schwalbe, the world's first fighter jet aircraft. But the superior technology of the Germans would be no match for the Soviet's numerical superiority. Pushing aside the Nazi armies, the Soviets would be in Berlin by late 1947. With the fall of eastern Europe and the Third Reich, the USSR would be in control of over half of Europe. Following the end of the war the USSR would, after briefly occupying France following the fall of the Third Reich, allow for General Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle to return to Paris to continue the exiled French Third Republic as to avoid a costly war with the west. The next several decades would be instrumental for the USSR in it's struggle against the enemies of Socialism.
Part One: The post-war European order and the USSR's early struggles against the United States
The victory over the Third Reich at the hands of the Soviets would forever shape the history of Europe as we knew it. One of the first order of businesses that the USSR attained to was planning on how to deal with a defeated Germany. The initial stage was easy. The USSR would dissolve the Third Reich as an effective government, while making Austria independent from Germany. The country for some time would be put under full Soviet Red Army control, until one year later when the country would be made semi-independent with the creation of the Democratic Republic of Germany.
Like her east European counterparts, Germany would be subjected to harsh communization efforts by the new ruling Communist government propped up by the Soviets. These efforts would be met by massive resistance from the German people, who did not take kindly to having their farmland seized by the state. Protests would break out from time to time, but tended to be disorganized and easily suppressed by the new ruling Communist authorities. However, the protests and general all around unpopularity of the communization efforts caused, by the mid to late 1950's, a serious lack of economic transformation in all Soviet occupied European countries.
Besides Germany to worry about, there was also Greece. Finding itself embroiled in a bitter civil war between the KKE(Greek Communist Party) and the Greek government recognized by the UK and the USA shortly after the end of WWII, the civil war could not have been far from Joseph Stalin's mind.
Supported by the USSR and other pro-Soviet Balkan nations, the armed wing of the KKE, the Democratic army of Greece, numbered in the 50,00's at the beginning of the civil war in 1948. Despite this numerical advantage, the Greek government, formally in exile following the defeat of Greece by the Axis powers, would prove to stand well on its own as well as with support from foreign allies.
Stalin knew that if the Greek government survived and the KKE was defeated, then the western powers would receive in return a base of operations in the Balkans with which they could use to project a considerable amount of power over the Mediterranean. So for the next several years as the civil war intensified, Stalin would ramp up his support of the Democratic army of Greece.
By 1950-51 these tactics had begun to bear fruit, especially when combined with a number of major defeats for the Greek government military forces across the country. By 1952 the KKE was in control of most of the country, and by July of the same year launched one final assault on Athens. The Greek government would once again go into exile, fleeing the capital to Crete, where it would be propped up and supported by Britain and the United States throughout the Cold War in the event that they would be able to return to Greece.
With the “fall of Greece to Communism,” the USSR could now exercise it's power over the warm waters of the Mediterranean sea, giving Stalin an edge over the west that his country would enjoy until the very end of the Cold War.
In the meantime the Soviet Union would detonate it's first atomic bomb on August 29th, 1949, known as
First Lightening. The atomic bomb test scared the Americans, who would start work soon on a new type of bomb, the hydrogen bomb, to counter the USSR's atomic bomb.
For the most part, the period following the end of WWII was a peaceful period. Yet, a new type of war was brewing up amid this era of peace. The proxy war. As a result of Stalin's ideological divide Cold War strategy, Korea found itself divided into a Socialist north and Capitalist south Korea. Never before had the tiny Korean peninsula found itself in such a pitiful position.
When war broke out on the peninsula between the two countries, Stalin was quick to send fighter pilots over to the north to aid the war in the air, as a counter to the superior air power of the south. The Americans also sent in forces from Japan, in the form of a NATO peacekeeping force, which arrived to Busan at the last minute to save the war weary south Korean force that had been pushed back all the way to the southern most portion of the country. In a series of counter-attacks, the South Korean-NATO force pushed the north Korean army all the way back to Pyongyang.
Eager to finally “liberate” the north from the clutches of Communism, the South Koreans were prepared to do anything to take over the rest of the north. China was not pleased. China would intervene on behalf of north Korea if the south did not withdraw its forces. Knowing all to well that it was never a good idea to get involved in a land war with China, the south Koreans obeyed reluctantly, and eventually a white peace treaty was signed between the two halves of the peninsulas. However, up until this day the two sides are still technically at war.
This was a major blow to the USSR. Stalin had hoped to spread Socialism to the rest of the peninsula, which would have threatened Japan and kept the Americans constantly on their guard. But, at least the north Korean regime had been preserved. A worst case scenario would be for the whole of Korea to be annexed to the south, threatening both the PRC(People's Republic of China) and the USSR.
Still, the Cold War must go on.
Part Two: Beria takes charge
On March 5th, 1953 Stalin would be dead. Killed by a stroke. Beria, the chief of the Russian secret police(NKVD), would succeed him. His first act was to first and foremost continue Stalin's legacy. He would rapidly speed up communization, which by 1953 had been slow to be developed in the iron curtain. To do so all dissent had to be crushed across Europe. The secret police of every Soviet occupied European nation would intensify their efforts to crush dissent, while the army of each respective nation would quell any peaceful or violent act against the government. These totalitarian acts would characterize Beria's rule until his death at the age of 94, thirty years after coming to power.
Khrushchev and others in the party deemed disloyal to the Motherland would be rounded up and receive each a bullet between the eyes for their long servitude to the party. Such were the politics of Stalin's right hand man. Under Beria's rule, the USSR would not only send the first man into space, but would also by the late 1960's land the first man on the moon as well. The Americans would frantically try to keep up in the space race, attempting to one up the USSR at every turn. The intensification of the space race in the 1970's is often cited by historians as a reason for why the United States lost the Cold War. It simply could not compete with a totalitarian nation hellbent on winning the Cold War at the expense of its population. Democracy would prove to be the USA's undoing.
From across Soviet-Europe, revolt after revolt against Beria's totalitarian police state was violently crushed. The final revolt would occur in Berlin, and end when the tanks came rolling down the streets, killing indiscriminately. The Soviet Union would be preserved indefinitely, but at a great cost in human life.
Part Three: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Today
The Soviet Union still survives as of this time of writing despite a massive debt problem and spiraling inflation. Living standards are kept artificially low to save money, while any sort of public gathering is outlawed outright in Beria's constitution. Much like before under Joseph Stalin's rule, party indoctrination is commonplace among people of all ages. And while the USSR still adheres to orthodox Marxism-Leninism as its official ideology, the USSR is a far cry from the democratic, Communist values it was founded on way back in 1922.
Despite a normalization of relations between east and west in the 1990's, the United States and the Soviet Union still hold somewhat of a grudge against each other. The space race has long since ended with a victory for the USSR, but the arms race has for the most part still been raging on, although to a much lesser extent then during the Cold War. A series of treaties signed in the early 2000's reduced significantly the number of warheads both sides posses, but nonetheless they both still have enough to eradicate all life on the planet.
In terms of foreign relations, the USSR enjoys significant influence among the tyrants of the world, socialist or not. Still toting the anti-imperialist line, the USSR has good relations with Gaddafi's Libya, which has made preparations for quite some time to unify all of Africa in a European Union styled network of alliances.
Cuba enjoys plenty of support from the USSR, as well as immense popularity from idealist Marxists the world over, while South America's FARC continues to win a string of victories against the weakening Colombian government. The Shining Path of Peru has slowly made a resurgence, and there are reports of clashes with a new, young breed of Shining Path rebels in the jungles of Peru, who are eager to create a “Marxist state” in their country to serve as a beacon to the international Proletarian movement.
The USSR's relationship with India is intense. Already notorious for clandestinely aiding the Nepal Maoists, who overthrew the monarchy and formed their long awaited Socialist, new Nepal, secret documents by the whistle blower website Wikileaks revealed Soviet involvement in Naxalite owned regions of India. Although the Soviets denied all involvement, it was clear from the documents that the USSR was and is still committed to spreading revolution worldwide, or at least that is what the US and Indian leadership both assert.
Is this the best Communism has to offer? The far Left is divided on how to collectively assess the USSR. Some cling to the idealistic notion that the USSR is still a proletarian state dedicated to world revolution, with Beria being not only a hero of the USSR but a fighter against revisionism, which some have claimed has cropped up inside the CPSU recently.
Others assert that the USSR's commitment to world Socialism had died shortly after Lenin's death, and that the country is but a shell of its former self. Those critical of the USSR note its rampant levels of poverty and even mass starvation, totalitarian government, and tendency to imperialistically get involved in other countries affairs.
And an even smaller faction of the far left claim that the only way forward is to through mass action to overthrow the rotten Soviet regime and usher in true worker control of industry around the world. Critics point out the unrealistic goals set forth by these Marxists, saying that the Soviet Union will likely never fall.
One thing is for certain, and that is that the Soviet Union will continue for a long time.
October 25th, 2018