I'm surprised we haven't gotten a chapter on that yet, though we likely will once the Ural War is over, and this TL will likely have an earlier moon landing if this is anything to take hints out of.
The Iron Eagle - The History of the Cold War
- Thread starter Kaiser of Brazil
- Start date
There will be more focus on them on a future cold war chapter.
Well Wernher von Braun's ambitious for Mars might become a reality in the future chapters of the TL.
XXVII - VSTAVÁY ROSSYIA
THE IRON EAGLE
VSTAVÁY ROSSYIA
VSTAVÁY ROSSYIA
A Monarchist, a Bolshevik, a Militarist and a Peasant walk into a bar, they immediately begin to make the place tense, they draw their weapons, and all of them shoot at the same time at the Bartender who said "Guten Tag". That was a running joke which could accurately describe the spirit of Russia in the 1950s, yes the Government was a Monarchy, but many members of it were also Bolsheviks, from technicians to commanders, and Reactionaries shared uniforms with Red Army Generals. In any other situation that would be an explosive mix, indeed it was, for the better part of a decade, from the Volga to Vladivostok, the land was covered by death, war destroyed and created, the monster devoured all from crops to souls, and one side emerged triumphant. Tsar Andrey could have chosen to just line the Bolsheviks to a wall and execute them as they did to the last Tsar, certainly his ministers urged him to do so, but he convinced the Warlord Vladimir Kislitsin to show clemency. He knew that this was a nation who would need every single soul who survived these years of war for what was to come, because just by the Volga there was an enemy which united all men, women, children and elder in Russia, the one who brought more suffering to the Russian people than any other.
When Adolf Hitler died, the celebrations across Europe were contained, the Wehrmacht and the SS made sure to show their grip on the continent when that happened. But across the Volga, there was not enough Vodka in Russia for what happened. The people celebrated, even if they still could see the tanks of the Heer, the Luftwaffe scout planes above, and even the Kriegsmarine engaging in a pseudo-war against even fishing ships in the Arctic for sport, for one day they could see a victory coming. If Adolf Hitler could die, any German could die, and one day they would be ready to do just that. Some impatient ones just grabbed their rifles and went to the nearest station of recruitment for the newly formed "Military Secretary of Western Affairs", a subsection of the Ministry of War responsible for the very much illegal actions of sponsoring terrorism in the west, although the term more often used by the American press was "Slavic Freedom Fighters". Hitler had originally designed that concept to continue existing, he wanted the East to purposefully have an element of instability to make sure the German settlers were always the very best of the Aryan Volk, people who lived ready to fight with the daily life being a continuous struggle against the Untermenschen. The Russian government did not mind to be playing into Hitler's delusions, the attacks of partisans against German settlements, although being weakened in the 1950s but a slightly more pragmatic Security force which actually desired to bring a permanent peace in the East, always made sure to keep the pressure on the Reich, and a faint hope to the European peoples.
It was once a fear of many in Europe that one day Russia, the danger of the Eastern Steppe Horde, would invade the continent. Napoleon in some ways used that fear to unite the continent against Tsar Alexander in his expedition, Britain, France, Germany and Austria all had those fears in the 19th century. And, more famously, Hitler did unite the Continent during Operation Barbarossa, by force, to launch campaign against the "Eastern Slavic Judeo-Bolshevik". Ironically, now that was the great hope of Europeans who still dared to oppose the Swastika, as the Isolationism of the United States saw many movements from France to Yugoslavia being crushed due to what they saw as inanition, many saw in the East their hope. Millions had left to Russia, sometimes by design of the Germans who desired to send away the "excessive" population of the Eastern Territories and purposefully deported them. Although the hunger of the German Industry and Agriculture for laborers and the depleting of manpower by the Generalplan Ost had made the government in Germania cut down on the deportations, many still dared to cross the most militarized border on Earth to reach a land still recovering from war because the alternative were the horrors many still could not believe due to how outrageously monstrous they sounded. But every Russian, Pole, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Azeri or Armenian who crossed into Russia was another pair of hands which could hold a gun. These groups would be organized into what some called the "Liberation Battalions", others named it in a more accurate way: The Revenge Battalions.
Of course, before that day came, there was still a long way to go, between 1948 and 1958, Russia underwent its reconstruction Era. The war, the bombings, the complete collapse of the previous economic and social order across the nation left the path open to rebuild it into something new. The war fatigue was seen as the main factor as to why many Bolsheviks had to accept a return to a Capitalist, or pseudo-capitalist, state, besides of course the constant threat of the Germans of striking at the first signal of weakness from Russia. Between 1948 and 1951, Russia went through a reconstruction mostly led by the Military under Vladimir Kislitsin's Iron grip, and then one from 1951 until 1958 which was led by the Tsar himself following the death of the General. The Government was formed by an All-Russian assembly, the Zemsky Sobor, which was called as a continuation of the Provisional assembly set up in Vladivostok, although the assembly in general did not possess much influence over the process, despite the Tsar's attempts to reform the system, the realities of the Russian situation, only made worse by the victory of Mao in China which essentially surrounded the Tsar to hostile States, kept the Iron Fist leading the hands of the State.
First came the treatment of the former Soviets, with White Army leaders ranging from rehabilitation to shooting them with a bullet on the back of the head. Many fled before the decision was made, there was no small number of Bolshevik theorists and party members who left Russia towards Northern China, first going through Mongolia and then to Beijing where their help was most valuable to the victory of the Maoists. Military officers generally were given clemency for sake of pragmatism, indeed many did desert the Red Army and the MGB to receive an amnesty of the Tsar in 1947, and the presence of American advisors did advocate for a rehabilitation of many capable generals of the Soviet Armed Forces, most being sent into "House Arrest", essentially being left free under occasional watch by the Okhrana. The same luck did not come to higher ranks of the Party, the wrath of the vengeful whites falling upon them. From Editors of the Pravda to the Commissar of Railways and Industry Lazar Kaganovich, few were able to escape the wrath of the Whites, Kislitsin declaring in a speech to the Sobor that "The hangmen shall be hanged, the executioners will be executed, and in one last act of brutality we shall cleanse Holy Russia of the Red Terror". The Tsar, tormented by his young memories of the Revolution, did little to avoid the retaliatory vengeance of the Imperial forces against High-ranking figures of the Communist Party. Although it was ironized that "Stalin already did the work for us" when it came to executing the ones responsible for the October Revolution and even many of those responsible for the Great Purge.
Next came the matter of the economy, and the news were actually positive because it could not go any way but up. The war had destroyed the Soviet Economy, electricity was a rare thing in Siberia already and the war had destroyed many of the electrification efforts of the Soviets. But the infrastructure was still there, the war economy of the factions forcing them to explore Siberian resources to a large extent, discovering enormous reserves of gas, oil and minerals under the ground east of the Urals, reserves which began to be explored in a limited way to feed the war machine and now could be fully opened up for business. Capitalism was returning, with the collective farms (Kolkhoz) being abolished and private propriety restored, the task at hand was to reverse the brutal collectivization campaign enacted by Stalin against the peasants, especially the Kulaks, members of the middle class in rural Russia which were "Liquidated" by all means, from starvation to deportations and executions. Ironically, Stalin's decisions to send many of his enemies to Siberia played a key role around 1946 in destabilizing his dominions and gave a reliable force of loyalists to the advancing White Army, if only for sake of vengeance.
What came between the Civil War and the Ural War was a push for industrialization unseen before in Human History, a militarization that could only be compared to the Third Reich itself, the concept of a Nation-at-Arms would be redefined through the effort of the Empire to prepare itself against an inevitable rematch against the Iron Eagle. The United States, at first hesitant, would begin to change it's rhetoric and actions after the 1952 elections. Huey Long saw the decline in the Isolationist policies proposed by Secretary of State Burton K. Wheeler and his administration, under some influence of Vice-President Patton, decided to show strength through Russia, an unprecedented flow of capital and investments which was many times compared to the Pre-WWI Industrialization effort by the Tsar in collaboration with the Entente, preparing the infrastructure of the Nation towards war. Not everything was necessarily directed towards a break-necking speed growth of a Military-Industrial complex however, as Railroads began to cut through Siberia, connecting ports such as Vladivostok and Magadan to the rest of Siberia and reducing the overreliance on the Siberian railway. To support such growth, the Kuznetsk Basin, one of the largest coal deposits in the world, would become one of the new Industrial heartlands of Russia. While Stalin's plan for evacuating the West Russian industry to the east was considered by many as unrealistic, it did achieve some level of success, not enough to replace the losses caused by the Wehrmacht, but later it became the foundation for massive Metalworks in places such as Magnitogorsk. The average growth of the Russian GDP between 1953 and 1956 was of 20%, a miracle by all accounts, and much of it was achieved not only through the booming introduction of capital once barred by the Stalinist regime, but also by the mass industrialization program embarked by the Tsar's government. Many sacrifices were made, conditions in factories being very far from ideal, but the very notion that these machines would one day be used to save Russia, a propaganda point which was constantly shouted by the State, made many be willing to commit to those sacrifices, and whenever there was hesitation, one merely had to point to the other side of the Volga and the millions of refugees who fled from there.
When it came to governance, Kislitsin was essentially the Russian Warlord, many times compared to Admiral Kolchak or Chiang Kai-Shek in China. The aging lover of Vodka was very much the opposite of the Tsar he claimed to act in name of. Andrey was traumatized by the Revolution, living his years in Britain until he was properly "encouraged" to head to Vladivostok and reclaim a decades-lost throne. He was not exactly a Liberal, he was not even a politician, but ironically he was a man of arts who found himself leading one of the largest forces on the Planet. The Warlord and the Tsar had their clashes, the hardline policies of the "Legitimist Monarchist" were many times countered by the Tsar who found himself surrounded by advisors who wished to pull him from one direction to another. One of these men was the American Lawyer James B. Donovan, who acted as a bridge with the United States government. The Lawyer, former naval commander during the Pacific War, became known after standing in the Tokyo Trials, helping to present evidence against General Okamura on his orders to destroy the City of Nanking as part of his Total Retreat to the North coast. Eventually he gained the attention of Halsey, the Supreme Commander of the Occupation Forces, who recommended him to his personal friend General Patton, the now Vice-President had decided to make him into an Advisor to the Tsar in 1953 after Wheeler was fired from the Secretary of State. Donovan would earn the Tsar's trust in time and would prove himself crucial in the coming years, he also advised the Tsar on the framework for the Constitutional reforms in 1955 which reduced the tensions between Ivan Ilyin's supporters in the Duma and more Liberal-minded groups in favor of a compromise.
Vladimir Kislitsin's health declined, but despite the disagreements he stood by the Tsar when Hitler died in 1951. Both knew that the opportunity for a Russian attack was there, but despite former Soviet and White Army officers alike calling for blood, both awaited to see the position of the United States. Despite the reforms, the Russian Imperial Army was still very far from a force capable of challenging the Wehrmacht, especially as there were no other comparable armies in the continent who would stand by them. Only a direct US intervention, as the Tsar himself warned Long, would motivate Russian troops to cross the border. As that did not happen, the war was avoided, but the quasi-war in 1951 ensured that the threat of the Wehrmacht would continue to be alive and a constant source of vigilance to the people. Kislitsin would die later that year, and once his position as Supreme Commander was made vacant, the Tsar made himself the head of the Imperial Army to ensure no other strongmen would take the Warlord's place, finally the Assembly, now renamed as Duma, would be able to function with a certain amount of freedom.
Yekaterinburg was the Imperial Capital and seat of the Tsar and his family, mostly as a statement against Bolshevism in general, but Russia did have three distinct Capitals: The High command of the Imperial Army in the City of Omsk, and the seat of the Duma in Novosibirsk. The Ural Mountains were Russia's natural defense, and Yekaterinburg's proximity was seen more as a liability which made it vulnerable to bombers and even capture, which explains why Perm was not even considered as a seat of power despite the fact it was one of the largest intact cities in the country. The reason for this decentralization, as with the reconstruction itself, was military by essence. Following the detonation of the German Atomic Bomb, the fear of a potential strike that could cripple the country led to the creation of different seats of power and constant relocations by the leadership of the Army and the Tsar. Few had access to knowing where Andrey was sleeping in one night, or where a military exercise was taking place, and many times that was not even happening above ground. Operation Sunset showed that the Japanese bunker system, which could mask entire bases under apparently small civilian areas, was very much effective to avoid the capture of High-level commanders, indeed even in the 1950s, Japanese bunkers were still being found manned by fanatics in the Mountains of Kyushu. By orders of the High command, entire bunker systems, made to resist powerful nuclear blasts, were built in cities such as Perm, Yekaterinburg, Omsk, Irkutsk, Vladivostok, Magadan, Novosibirsky, Tomsk, Tyumen, Akmolinsk, Magnitogorsk and even as far North as Norlisk.
As far as changes in the military structure went, Russia was badly damaged ever since the Stalinist purges in the High Command, and the distinct doctrines and adaptations made during the Civil war had to be restructured into a single force. Old officers still insisted in the use of cavalry, at the very least as hit and run units, other advocated for an abandonment of traditional warfare entirely and turning the whole Russia into a hunting ground for Partisans. Ultimately, the bad blood between Reds and Whites had to be set aside in the face of the fearsome and proud force of the Wehrmacht. The Germans outnumbered the Russians in 1948, although there was a redeployment of forces and retirement of Wehrmacht units in 1952 due to Hess' attempts at reaching an Entente, those same forces began to be built up again by 1956. A war was coming and all could see it, the question was how Russia would fight it. The arrival of American advisors, many of them experienced in the Pacific War, brought insights on how to support partisan units more effectively. Although the majority of the groups had been wiped out by the sheer brutality and the lack of care from the Germans about "civilian casualties", the remaining groups began to regroup, especially in the Caucasus where a large part of the German oil supply came from. Admittedly, there were few US army officers with experience of massed tank combats, as those were an exception in the Pacific conflict which saw them deployed en masse by the Japanese only in a few engagements such as Saitama, but Patton brought many officers who did participate in the Russian expedition to lend support, such as General Bradley. The KV tanks did show a good capacity in engaging the Panzers during the war, they were outdated against the German E models, the standardization of the Wehrmacht armored forces following Hitler's death and the increased effectiveness of the Luftwaffe, which was considered practically an equal to the USAAF thanks to Hess' fascination with aviation and Kesselring's effort in coordinating Air-Land battles, showed that any conflict would be skewed towards the Reich's forces. However, American model planes such as the F-86, would begin to be produced en masse by the Russian growing Industrial heartland. Russian pilots still lacked experience in commanding Jet fighters in true engagements against the Germans, however, and Air Superiority would still be quite safely in German hands at least at the start of a war.
What Russians always excelled at were attritional wars, which is precisely the kind of conflict the German "Bewegungskrieg" was made to avoid, the 1941-42 campaigns just showed how the Russian doctrine had become outdated, which is why the lessons of the war included the new methodology of "Defense in Depth", although it was far from a new tactic. Stalin originally had greatly sabotaged the Soviet effort with his orders refusing retreats in strategic moments such as in Kiev, Smolensk, Rostov, Stalingrad, and Moscow, his stubborness played perfectly in the German strategy to provoke enormous encirclements, such as in Kiev where around a million soldiers were lost in 1941, opening up Eastern Ukraine for Hitler's offensives, the Germans did similar maneuvers when capturing Rostov and crossing the Don, finally the encirclement of the Moscow Counter Offensive had destroyed any offensive capacity of the Red Army. The Tsar planned to do exactly the opposite, despite the pride of many officers being wounded, and no doubt knowing the consequences of sometimes leaving vast territories to be captured, he found it best to use the vastness of Russia to run his own type of maneuver warfare, a decision which was considered bold by many and was taken in secret. However, that still did not solve the German Air superiority and the Armor proeficiency of the Wehrmacht. One positive is that the relocation of several factories of the Ford Motors Company, which was an accidental effect of Huey Long's anti-business policies in America, and others would allow the Imperial Armed Forces to have a much more efficient logistical system than the Soviets before who at many times still depended on locomotives. Highways were built, ironically inspired in the Autobahn system, with the logic to resist bombardments and connect the main industrial hubs of Russia with military depots.
Everything in the reconstruction, from city designs to even the painting, had the coming war in mind. Russia was the most militarized State on the planet and it was not only because of the German threat. In 1952, Mao Zedong would proclaim the People's Republic of China, with no small help from Soviet exiles, and quite quicky the two states were at odds with one another. Despite the propaganda, there was no real dispute between Germania and Beijing, as a matter of fact they had a common enemy, and Mao could be a surprisingly pragmatic man. While China and the United States had their own clash of influence in the 50s, which mostly concerned Korea and Japan, Russia had their own clashes with China over Mongolia. Shortly after the Civil War, Kislitsin ordered the invasion of the Communist State in order to secure a buffer Zone. The Cossacks had instated the old Bogd Khanate in place of the communist government, although many had called for the full annexation of the country, it was seen more like a burden that would overstretch the resources better spend at reconstruction. A low level insurgency by Communists loyal to the old government was supported by Beijing, requiring a non-negligible number of Russian forces to be tied down at the country to keep control over the frontier. Not only that, Port Arthur was seized by the ROC after the fall of the Soviet Government, a dispute which was inherited by the Empire, desperate for another harbor to connect with the pacific to reduce the overeliance to Vladivostok and Magadan, and the PRC which had no interest in negotiating with "Reactionaries". There were negotiations to avoid a full scale war, many times it was the intervention of former Soviet Diplomats which calmed the heads enough, and the fact the Chinese Army was still far more outdated than the modernizing Russian forces. Perhaps in a war of Russia and China, Russia would win, but it is undeniable that a Chinese strike in a moment where the Imperial Army was facing the Reich would lead to a likely capture of cities such as Vladivostok, Chita and Irkutsk that would give a death blow to any outside help coming from the West. That was something both Russia and the United States would wish to avoid, and Mao was able to leverage that threat to gain a Treaty of Non-Aggression in 1955 that led to Russia renouncing it's claims to Port Arthur and any proprieties once held by the Empire and the Soviet Union on Chinese territory, as well as the US giving some guarantees to Mao on his interests in East Asia, but Who is to say this would not be another Molotov-Ribbentrop?
On the Political front, between 1951 and 1954, the Duma would be dominated by another man, a former exile and Russian Nationalist named Ivan Ilyin. Previously a Philosopher and Jurist, Ilyin was perhaps the most prominent figure in the Russian Monarchist circles after the Restoration once he returned from his exile in Brazil, where he lived in the South alongside Russian immigrant communities after fleeing Switzerland in 1944. Despite his distrust of the United States and the Western World, he saw the restoration of the Autocratic Tsarist system as the salvation of Russia and decided to support the American intervention, arriving in Vladivostok in 1947. Ilyin had, ironically, seen Hitler's rise with relative positivity like many other Emigrees who saw them as the best hope to destroy Bolshevism, which they did, but he had quickly become disillusioned and was persecuted by the GESTAPO. Now he saw the growing influence of the United States as a double-edged sword which threatened the Russian way of life in a more subtle way than the brutal aggressiveness of the Reich, it might be a lesser evil but an evil nonetheless in his eyes. He was elected to a seat in the Sobor in 1950 and in 1952 he became the President of the Duma, appointed as Minister-President by the Tsar in the head of the "Rodina" Coalition. Political parties were still in it's infancy, seeking an identity of their own, former Bolsheviks attempted to run for seats following Kislitsin's death and despite the very much skewed system, they did achieve a fourth of the Duma's seats, but only allowed to seat under the condition to renounce their revolutionary methods and swear an oath of allegiance to the Tsar. Even then, Ilyin was skeptic of the former Communists, claiming they had no place in political life as it would threaten a repeat of 1917. The Tsar had to keep the fragile peace between former reds and both the old and new whites that was only kept due to the fear of the Germans across the border.
Ilyin was not an easy man to deal with, his two years of rule were mirred by controversies such as his stance against the growing influence of the US, he approved a law on the Duma which set a large quota on the balance with foreign companies. American and British companies now were forced to spend 80% of their profits acquired in Russia to return in investments on Russia itself, a move which was widely encouraged by economic nationalists and, ironically, by Bolsheviks who called for harshness against the "exploitation" made by foreign capital. The one reason why many companies did not leave Russia after this law was the fact Long's government was not a much better alternative, and Russia still had a relatively cheaper workforce compared to the US where Unions still held a stronger sway than in the Anti-Communist Empire. The defeat of McCarthy in 1952 actually led to many companies to create subsidiaries in Russia to avoid the strong Anti-Trust legislation led by Estes Kefauver and other members of the Longist cabinet. Ilyin took all the advantage from this by selling his policy of economic nationalism as a great win and by 1954 his coalition held a supermajority in the Duma right on time for the fiercely debated Constitutional reform pushed by the Tsar. Andrey saw the split not only in the Duma but in Russia itself, many former Bolsheviks were beginning to feel uncomfortable with Ilyin's push for the Okhrana to detain leaders of the opposition for lengthy interrogatories and the suspicious way the 1954 Duma elections happened, such as fraudulent ballots and police officers preventing known communists from voting. His repression of any attempts to restore Unions was also widely unpopular to a generation of workers which was born in the 1910s and began to work under the cover of many laws made by the Soviets. Ilyin was a stubborn man, and the only one who could contain his power was the Tsar, which is why the Jurist made sure to become close with Andrey as a mentor figure, teaching him about the Russian past and traditions in his own way, being another of the advisors who surrounded the Tsar and attempted to pull him to support their motives.
Unfortunately for Ivan, he was not immortal, he died in that very same year shortly before his amendments could be approved to the Constitution. The Elderly statesman, Vasily Shulgin, an Emigrèe who once was a member of the Duma in the 1910s, ended up appointed as Minister-President to oversee changes to the amendments, while matters such as the status of the Orthodox Church as State religion were unchanged, the reform also allowed for a relaxation of the Censorship and created several State corporations and social rights which were once given in the Soviet Union to workers. Women were allowed the right to vote for the Duma once again, however many of the old Soviet liberties were taken out of text as Ilyin had insisted on the need to pursue natality policies which were opposed to Soviet feminism, which also led to the prohibition of Contraceptive methods in general with few medical exceptions. Overall the Russian Constitution was still very much a reflection of the ideals of the White Movement, yet there were adjustments to appease former Bolsheviks and Liberals inspired by Western Ideals such as in Vladivostok. One thing remained unchanged: The Power of the Tsar was once again reaffirmed, and the Constitution, as with everything in the Reconstruction, had military purposes such as the compulsory 2-year conscription service and the extensive powers granted by Martial Law which quickly could allow the State to establish a military command economy that was even similar to Soviet Methods, as well as ensuring the control over the populance under the "Total Mobilization" policies.
Now the countdown to the war had started and between 1955 and 1958, the Russian Military would receive an unprecedented amount of funding and support, as the Germans once again began to make headlines over their crackdown on religious institutions and consolidation of power, with Hess and Goebbels changing their Rhetoric to oppose external enemies, the mistakes of Stalin would not be repeated. The former generals of the Soviet Army were pardoned of their crimes by the Tsar's decree in 1956 under the condition they re-enlist in the armed forces as "Advisors". They did not have command of forces yet, being treated as a reserve as many feared the possibility of a coup, but they were allowed to participate in conferences and war games, coming into contact with American Advisors and their former enemies of the White Army. Anatoly Rogozhin, one of the leading officers of the White Army, once commented "The Reds cannot be trusted, but the Germans cannot keep breathing". That was a sentiment shared by many others in the Army corps, but soon their pool of knowledge did bear fruits. The endless training, expansion and modernization of the Armed forces produced one of the best defensive armies in the world, trained in both traditional and guerrilla warfare, modern infantry tactics used in the Pacific war being brought by the American advisors and readapted to the Russian Terrain, the standardization of camouflaged units to counter the enemy Air Superiority, the use of fast tanks and vehicles for Hit and Run strikes, alongside heavier units adapted from old T designs such as the T-55 MBT for heavier combats, it gave some sort of confidence to the Army. The Navy was a hopeless affair, as the lack of any major ports in the west would mean that any forces would have to cross from the Pacific, but it was also an advantage as that left the Russian supply routes to the outside world mostly protected from U-Boats who had their nearest base at places such as Goa. The Air Force was still outmatched and unexperienced, but the gap was considerably reduced within the decade. That is not even counting the sheer fanaticism that Russian forces, many of whom were refugees from the West, were willing to fight as nobody now could call the Hooked Cross a liberator, but a fate sometimes worse than death.
And in May 1958, the day had arrived, all across the Volga the same War Machine which destroyed the Soviet Union and almost wiped the very idea of Russia from the earth was on the move again. A decade of preparation would lead to this day as bombers began to strike as deep as Irkutsk and a curtain of fire crossed the Volga to close down on Eurasia. The Ural War had begun.
Nice chapter regarding the decade after the civil war in Russia. Can't wait to see how the Ural War goes!
I am aware this last chapter did not go full into details but I want to make the tricks Russia pulls during the war into twists. Time to start wondering if Mao will resist the temptation of striking a very much vulnerable Russia.
Unlikely. The problem is that the Russians would eventually run the problem of having no more bodies to throw into the grinder. Even if you go full Omnsk that is just asking for massive famines and the collapse of the state as the Germans and the Japanese showed in OTL where they practically fought until the last man. Any victory would be based on how much the Germans are willing to take and hold and less on how far the Russians go as at some point they will run out of bodies or at least military able bodies.
Still not fully sure whether China would actually intervene in the Ural War, but let’s see how you take this.
I could see the US having a carrier taskforce slowly go by China just to remind them of things. Also, have the Russians developed Chemical or Biological weapons of their own?