The North Star is Red: a Wallace Presidency, KMT Victory, Alternate Cold War TL
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Barry Bull
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Well, I'd say the butterflies already present a severe setback for the political career of a certain Republican politician. Namely, it's unlikely that John Kennedy gets assassinated, elevating LBJ to the presidency, and giving John Tower a Senate seat that he wins.
In all seriousness, as a general rule, I don't like to plan ahead that much - I'm really doing this one step at a time. Because I don't really like it when TLs end up weirdly accurate parallels of IRL (like a certain series about the Confederacy).
If you can somehow still weave the story of how 2 boys and 1 girl build a mixed propulsion ultralight into the TL, it would be very hiliarous.
I'd say poor Burma.
How strong are two Chinas ITTL? I'd imagined the ROC is much stronger than OTL Taiwan in terms of size and resources. The PRC is much weaker than its OTL counterpart.
How strong are two Chinas ITTL? I'd imagined the ROC is much stronger than OTL Taiwan in terms of size and resources. The PRC is much weaker than its OTL counterpart.
Yeah, Cambodia was actually remarkably complex.
One of them, though there will be a post on that.
If you can somehow still weave the story of how 2 boys and 1 girl build a mixed propulsion ultralight into the TL, it would be very hiliarous.
Oh whoops, I completely misread your first post! hahaha. Hmm, maybe I should try...
Well, yeah. In 1950, ROC has 460 million people, when it had 8 million IRL. The population gap is significantly closer than OTL though, since the PRC has 64 million right now.
Chapter 9 - Redder than Red China
“Redder than Red China” (赤軍より赤がかった元帥): Old Soldiers Never Die
Another blow to MacArthur’s reputation among Japanese conservatives was his full-throated support for land reform. The MacArthur government forcibly expropriated land from Japanese landlords, compensating them in nearly worthless currency, before redistributing the land to Japanese peasants. To add insult to injury, this process was overseen by the Russian-American Socialist (and anti-Communist) Wolf Ladejinsky and the outspoken Marxist Wada Hiro.[1] Japanese politicians assailed MacArthur as “Redder than Red China” (due to land reform stalling there).
Another issue that broadly alienated Japanese politicians was MacArthur’s adherence to Japan’s war reparations policy.[2] Despite local Japanese universally insisting that fulfilling the reparations would harm the Japanese economy, MacArthur shipped large amounts of industrial machinery to the countries most devastated by Imperial Japan, in particular the Philippines and China.[3] Finally, MacArthur alienated Japanese conservatives with his industrial policy. Inspired by the works of T.A. Bisson (an outspoken supporter of Mao Zedong) and his own trust-busting sensibilities as a New Deal-friendly nationalist Republican, MacArthur endeavored to break the Zaibatsu up, something that added to Japan’s economic woes.[4]
The breaking point for MacArthur appeared to have been organized labour. Upon the division of China and the implementation of MacArthur’s “New Deal”, Soviet officials concluded Japan was not going to have a Communist takeover. As a result, they sought to divide the country, similar to China. The Japan Communist Party under Nosako Sanzo, a loyal puppet of Moscow, organized a general strike in the country over MacArthur’s refusal to adopt their suggested constitutional amendments. These strikes quickly turned violent, as strikers lynched business executives and local elites.[5] MacArthur sent the troops in and forcibly quelled the revolt, issuing an arrest warrant for Sanzo and the other Communist Party and union leaders, who fled North into the Soviet zone.[6]
Unfortunately for MacArthur, he had become a political punching bag in America. Despite the fact that he was a loyal Republican his entire life and once a hero to elements of the Republican Party for his suppression of the Bonus Army, one young Republican Senator from Wisconsin lambasted him as an example of one of the “Communist agents in the Wallace Administration.” Thomas Dewey declined to criticize him by name, though Strom Thurmond had no qualms. In January 1949, as President Russell's first act as President, MacArthur was unceremoniously fired. MacArthur, in his famous “Old Soldiers Never Die” speech, lambasted Russell for “carrying water for Tojo’s legacy.” In a nod to the Dixiecrats, Russell quickly appointed MacArthur’s replacement, Edward Almond, an army desegregation opponent who would eventually bring the occupation to an end.
Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, Edward Almond, immediately moved to reverse a variety of MacArthur’s orders. He immediately banned the Japanese Communist Party and all Communist-associated unions. In response, Nosako Sanzo in Sendai declared the People’s Republic of Japan, making official the severance of North Japan a reality. In an atmosphere of intense anti-Communism, Almond dissolved parliament. In the 1949 elections, Ichiro Hatoyama’s Liberal Party won an overwhelming landslide. Almond then reversed MacArthurs’ orders on industrial reparations and immediately limited American participation in politics.[7]
Signalling to President Russell that there remained no more reason for an occupation, Russell signed the Treaty of San Francisco, alongside the Republic of China, United Kingdom, and France, bringing the American occupation of Japan to an official close in 1950. The People’s Republic of Japan had 13 million residents, 9 million in Tohoku and 4 million in Hokkaido. Although some people moved between the two Japans, the numbers were roughly equal on both sides (unlike in China). The Tokyo government ruled over much more territory, nearly 70 million residents.
Hatoyama’s first act was to reform the electoral system. Although his majority was overwhelming, he only narrowly muscled through reforms changing both the Lower and Upper Houses to first-past-the-post districts.[8] Upon the official end of the U.S. occupation and the 1950 elections, Hatoyama immediately pushed through a package of constitutional amendments, including those that would eliminate the separation of church and state, gender equality provisions, the right to organize in labour unions, American-style rights language, and Article 9’s prohibition on war. Furthermore, the official name of the country would be revised, the role of the Emperor changed (to being an official Head of State), the Diet given a right to override courts, and the Prime Minister given a right to declare a state of emergency.[9]
Although the Japanese Diet passed all of these laws, some of them were defeated in the subsequent referendum. The gender equality and labour union amendments failed in a landslide while the Article 9 amendment failed narrowly. As a result, the government resubmitted amendments that would only prohibit public-sector unions and instead amend Article 9 to ban “offensive wars”, but permit “collective self-defense.” Both of these amendments then passed. However, the initial failure was a humiliation for Hatoyama, and would contribute to a whisper campaign against him.
One of the first actions of Hatoyama’s State of Japan (日本国) was to sign onto the Busan Pact, a pre-existing mutual self-defense agreement between the Republic of China and Republic of Korea.
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[1] As OTL.
[2] This was stopped in OTL, because the Chinese Civil War made it very hard to ship anything to China. The KMT is secure now, however.
[3] OTL, the Philippines was probably more devastated by Imperial Japan than China was.
[4] As OTL.
[5] OTL, it's widely believed that Communist rail strikers murdered rail executives.
[6] Similar to OTL, where MacArthur tried to arrest Sanzo but kept the JCP legal.
[7] A bigger landslide than the OTL 1949 Japanese elections.
[8] Hatoyama tried that in OTL, but didn’t succeed. But he didn’t have this kind of majority.
[9] These are almost all amendments proposed by the current Japanese government.
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Nic updates but one nitpick-I think this should be 日本国, not 日本国家. Maybe a native speaker could help clarify this.
No, you're completely right, I have no idea why I wrote that. Fixed.
Also with the ROC, the Marxist-Leninists in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines are gonna have a lot more trouble.
Chapter 10 - The Korean Coup
The Korean Coup
Whereas as President Wallace had a great relationship with the PRK, the new Russell Administration saw them as motley crew of protocommunists. His cabinet had been wooed by both Kim Gu and Syngman Rhee, both English-speaking Korean conservatives with close ties to the United States, who warned that the Lyuh Administration was too weak to oppose the DPRK - or even worse, disloyal to the anti-communist cause. In particular, Lyuh greatly struggled with the nascent Korean military, preferring to appoint militia leaders to power instead of actual trained officers (most Korean military officers had served in the Imperial Japanese Army). The Americans viewed this as catastrophic and warned that the PRK could be easily extinguished by a DPRK offensive. The Americans weren't the only ones worried.
Chiang Kai-Shek had reshuffled his cabinet after the 1948 elections, putting together a “cabinet of national salvation”, largely shutting out regional warlords. Both new Chinese Foreign Minister Wellington Koo and the new foreign minister of Japan, Mamoru Shigemitsu (ironically also the last foreign minister of Imperial Japan) advised Secretary of State James Forrestal that South Korea was a vulnerable “axis of advance” into Japan. The three governments discussed on what a more "robust" South Korea would look like. Although the Japanese were the most gung-ho about regime change in South Korea, the South Chinese would provide the best candidate - Lee Beom-seok, a general in the South Korean Army who had served with Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT in World War II. A close friend of Dai Li, Lee led one of the largest right-wing youth paramilitaries in Korea.
Having openly admitted admiration for Mussolini and Hitler Youth (though not the actual Holocaust, as Lee was actually a philosemite), Lee was a fierce anti-communist who believed that the different "races" of the world were involved in a survival of the fittest struggle - and only a powerful right-wing military state could protect Korean racial purity, erase class distinctions, and create a military-corporate state could repulse Soviet Communism. Charles Willoughby, commander of American intelligence in East Asia, had far-right ideological sympathies, argued that Lee was the best example of a committed anti-Communist and thus vouched for him.
The die was easily cast. The right-wing parties had gained a narrow congressional majority after the 1950 midterm elections. Traditionally, they split largely in two camps - (1) a conservative camp of landlords and industrialists who had largely collaborated with the Japanese and feared disorder more than anything (as they understood they would be the first targets of nationalist rage) and (2) an even more conservative and nationalist camp of landlords and industrialists who had opposed Imperial Japan while in the United States. Lee's personal politics trended towards radical ultranationalism, but he was socially closer to the first group, gaining their confidence as well. In March of 1951, the right-wing parties declared that Lyuh was unfit to rule. In response to their call, Lee led a band of young paramilitaries, storming the capital of Seoul, arresting and often murdering left-wing politicians. Lyuh fled the capital as Lee declared himself the new President, a claim that was unconstitutional but ratified by the right-wing Congress. A new Constitution officially declared the new "Great Korean Republic" - which had a strong president with no term limits.
Immediately, Lee's right-wing paramilitaries launched a political purge they openly modeled after the Night of Long Knives. Leaders of People's Committees, trade unionists, and left-wing intellectuals were simply murdered in their homes by right-wing paramilitaries, who had slowly planned the coup with the support of South China, South Japan, and the United States and had all the relevant information they needed. Resistance to the coup only broke into outright war in Jeju, which was met by President Lee declaring that his Korean National Youth Association would form the nucleus of a new Korean National Army. The KNA quickly responded in force, murdering tens of thousands of Jeju islanders. Revolts in Daegu and Gwangju were similarly crushed. American forces rushed to the Korean border to prevent a DPRK attack during this chaotic period, which made it quite obvious who had a hand in this. Eventually, the Korean coup was followed by a mass internment and eventual execution of nearly 200,000 suspected leftists in the span of a month - roughly 1% of the entire country in one would comprise one of the the largest political mass killings in history.
The new government was not entirely unpopular. The Lyuh administration was in a sense a victim of its own success. Land reform had largely been successful, creating a new class of middle-sized farmers who increasingly valued stability and traditional values. The industrialist and landlord class grew increasingly resentful and united in their hatred of the young. Kim Gu and Syngman Rhee were once mortal enemies, but gleefully joined the new government as ministers. Under the slogan "minjok chisang, kukka chisang" (or "race and nation first"), President Lee quickly began a rapid militarization with the support of the US, South China, and South Japan. In particular, Chiang Kai-Shek was able to disarm many Chinese warlords by arguing that their guns would needed in Korea. Living standards did go up - if only due to massive foreign (military) aid. Surviving intellectuals overwhelmingly celebrated the new Korean ruling ideology.
In contrast, the Kim il-Sung regime had difficulty procuring arms due to the fact that Soviet arms exports in Asia were first directed to North China. The military balance between the two Koreas would grow increasingly lopsided in the favor of the new South Korea, which would eventually spark a crisis of its own.
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Chapter 11 - Stalin's Foreign Policy in East Asia
Well, it was time for something dramatic.
...Stalin grew even more erratic after his stroke in March of 1953.[1] He ordered Molotov purged and executed, although the wily Communist was visiting Chairman Lin at the time and chose not to return. The Chinese did not return him. Stalin almost ordered an invasion of Communist China, but was dissuaded by General Zhukov, who was nevertheless fired from his position and removed from the Communist Party (though not killed).
Stalin was essentially mollified and with Molotov out of the picture, he focused on another imaginary threat: the Jewish doctors that supposedly "poisoned" him. By then, Stalin had forgotten his earlier hatred of Beria, and knowing his expertise in ethnic cleansing, welcomed Beria back to the Communist Party to “deal with the Jews."[2]
Despite not being morally opposed to well, anything, Beria thought a mass ethnic cleansing of Jews was strategically unwise, even though it was Stalin's antisemitic paranoia that had revived his political career. Stalin’s plan involved deporting them all to labor camps in Central Asia or Siberia, but Beria was aware that this would immediately create parallels to the Holocaust, which the Soviet Union condemned as a great evil that the Red Army destroyed. The status of the Red Army as the liberators of Auschwitz was very important to both the Soviet Union's domestic and international image.
Instead, Beria sought to deport them to friendly client states or Soviet Republics and spinning the deportations as “economic assistance.” Deporting them to a non-Communist bloc nation was out of the question, but Beria hoped he could mollify both Stalin and global condemnation by just sending them to a client state. However, acting independently of Stalin, Beria had relatively little leverage. Beria called a meeting of all the Communist Secretaries of the Soviet Republics, hoping that one of them would be willing to accept the over two million or so Jews. None accepted. Beria then called a meeting of important leaders, especially those with NKVD ties, of the Soviet client states.
Not only did they all decline, but Beria was told to his face by Jakub Berman and Hilary Minc, the two NKVD veterans and Jewish members of Communist Poland’s triumvirate, that Poland was not going to accept a single Jewish refugee. Berman and Minc were both terrified that Stalin’s anti-Jewish purge would target them next and worked as assiduously as possible to underplay their Jewish heritage.
In his desperation, Beria phoned three more Communist leaders: Kim Il-sung of North Korea, Sanzo Nosako of North Japan, and Lin Biao of North China. Kim flatly refused. Sanzo, with stronger humanitarian impulses than any of the other Eastern bloc leaders, indicated he would accept up to 100,000 refugees on a temporary basis, an impressive commitment considering North Japan only had 13 million residents. Lin Biao apparently shrugged and redirected Beria to his foreign minister, Wang Jiaxiang. Wang, who had studied in Moscow as a college student (and presumably interacted with many Russian Jews), immediately committed to taking any Jewish deportees. Beria was shocked and thought it ironic that Soviet Jews would now be headed towards a country directly next to the distinctly non-Jewish Jewish Autonomous Oblast.
Surprisingly, Wang’s proposal basically garnered no response in the Communist Party, neither positive nor negative. The vast majority of the Politburo were military men, not intellectuals, and few actually knew what a “Jew” was, other than having a vague notion that Hitler wanted to kill them all for some reason. As Hitler was a fascist, these men concluded that these “Jews” had to be alright chaps. Not to mention Mao Zedong had impressed onto everyone that an outnumbered Communist China needed more people in order to take down the KMT menace to the South, and it seemed like people were dropping into their lap[...]
...under Beria’s watch, over two million Soviet Jews were shipped to the East across the Trans-Siberian Railroad, often in deeply dehumanizing, crowded, and unsanitary cattle cars. Tens of thousands died in deeply inhumane conditions and the survivors were unceremoniously dumped in a foreign frozen wasteland, where almost none spoke the local language and were placed under the tyrannical control of stern Communist Party of China political commissars. Thousands more died when a particularly virulent strain of bubonic plague struck the refugees in their unsanitary conditions.[3] In one particular instance of Communist mismanagement, many political commissars were not aware that not all of the deportees were Russian-speaking, unaware that there were other types of Soviet Jews, which meant miscommunication and mutual recriminations were common. Global condemnation quickly rolled in, but failed to rise to crisis levels.
That being said, the Jewish refugees were a Communist economic planners dream - a relatively high-education population (at least by the extremely low standards of a country with over 90% illiteracy) with no meaningful ability to revolt. One of the most powerful men in Communist China, the Stalinist Gao Gang, frustrated at the failure of agricultural collectivism, quickly took personal charge of the deportees, organizing them in model agricultural collectives and Stalinist-style industrial towns, mirrored after Magnitogorsk in the USSR, scattered throughout the People’s Republic, often at rail hubs. Most communities near railways in Northeastern China had already been pretty used to foreigners, especially Russians, due to the long history of Imperial Russian intervention and railway ownership. In fact, rail in Northeastern China was almost entirely based on the Russian wide-gauge, as opposed to the Anglo-Japanese-style thin gauges in the rest of China. These tightly-run, totalitarian, and often internall segregated industrial model cities quickly became one of the defining traits of Northeastern China's Communist system.
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[1] I’m going off the Beria killed Stalin theory, not because it’s particularly convincing (we really have no idea what happened), but because it’s more interesting.
[2] OTL Beria masterminded the deportations of many Soviet minorities, such as the Crimean Tatars.
[3] Northeastern China was the last bastion in the world of bubonic plague, with the last cases recorded in 1960.
Stalin's Foreign Policy in East Asia
...two Soviet politicians in particularly suffered greatly from the failure of Mao’s Chinese Communists to conclusively defeat Chiang Kai-Shek; the two Soviet politicians who insisted that Mao was a sure winner - Laventry Beria and Anastas Mikoyan. Both were fired from their positions and expelled from the Communist Party. Mikoyan, already having garnered Stalin’s distrust for publishing a wartime speech of Churchill’s that reflected poorly on Stalin, was summarily executed after a fraudulent show trial. The paranoid Stalin sought buffer states to “protect” the Soviet Union from foreign invaders. The client states in Eastern Europe established this well. If there was a war with the West, it would be waged in Germany and Poland. However, the People’s Republic of China didn’t actually block off Republican China. Worst of all, it permanently poisoned relations with Chiang Kai-Shek, which Stalin thought was salvageable before the split. However, Stalin knew he couldn’t back off from Red China, or else the other Communist satellites would lose faith. He had seen how quickly Nazi Germany’s allies had turned against Hitler in 1944 and 1945 once the Soviet Union gained upper-hand.[...]
...Stalin grew even more erratic after his stroke in March of 1953.[1] He ordered Molotov purged and executed, although the wily Communist was visiting Chairman Lin at the time and chose not to return. The Chinese did not return him. Stalin almost ordered an invasion of Communist China, but was dissuaded by General Zhukov, who was nevertheless fired from his position and removed from the Communist Party (though not killed).
Stalin was essentially mollified and with Molotov out of the picture, he focused on another imaginary threat: the Jewish doctors that supposedly "poisoned" him. By then, Stalin had forgotten his earlier hatred of Beria, and knowing his expertise in ethnic cleansing, welcomed Beria back to the Communist Party to “deal with the Jews."[2]
Despite not being morally opposed to well, anything, Beria thought a mass ethnic cleansing of Jews was strategically unwise, even though it was Stalin's antisemitic paranoia that had revived his political career. Stalin’s plan involved deporting them all to labor camps in Central Asia or Siberia, but Beria was aware that this would immediately create parallels to the Holocaust, which the Soviet Union condemned as a great evil that the Red Army destroyed. The status of the Red Army as the liberators of Auschwitz was very important to both the Soviet Union's domestic and international image.
Instead, Beria sought to deport them to friendly client states or Soviet Republics and spinning the deportations as “economic assistance.” Deporting them to a non-Communist bloc nation was out of the question, but Beria hoped he could mollify both Stalin and global condemnation by just sending them to a client state. However, acting independently of Stalin, Beria had relatively little leverage. Beria called a meeting of all the Communist Secretaries of the Soviet Republics, hoping that one of them would be willing to accept the over two million or so Jews. None accepted. Beria then called a meeting of important leaders, especially those with NKVD ties, of the Soviet client states.
Not only did they all decline, but Beria was told to his face by Jakub Berman and Hilary Minc, the two NKVD veterans and Jewish members of Communist Poland’s triumvirate, that Poland was not going to accept a single Jewish refugee. Berman and Minc were both terrified that Stalin’s anti-Jewish purge would target them next and worked as assiduously as possible to underplay their Jewish heritage.
In his desperation, Beria phoned three more Communist leaders: Kim Il-sung of North Korea, Sanzo Nosako of North Japan, and Lin Biao of North China. Kim flatly refused. Sanzo, with stronger humanitarian impulses than any of the other Eastern bloc leaders, indicated he would accept up to 100,000 refugees on a temporary basis, an impressive commitment considering North Japan only had 13 million residents. Lin Biao apparently shrugged and redirected Beria to his foreign minister, Wang Jiaxiang. Wang, who had studied in Moscow as a college student (and presumably interacted with many Russian Jews), immediately committed to taking any Jewish deportees. Beria was shocked and thought it ironic that Soviet Jews would now be headed towards a country directly next to the distinctly non-Jewish Jewish Autonomous Oblast.
Surprisingly, Wang’s proposal basically garnered no response in the Communist Party, neither positive nor negative. The vast majority of the Politburo were military men, not intellectuals, and few actually knew what a “Jew” was, other than having a vague notion that Hitler wanted to kill them all for some reason. As Hitler was a fascist, these men concluded that these “Jews” had to be alright chaps. Not to mention Mao Zedong had impressed onto everyone that an outnumbered Communist China needed more people in order to take down the KMT menace to the South, and it seemed like people were dropping into their lap[...]
...under Beria’s watch, over two million Soviet Jews were shipped to the East across the Trans-Siberian Railroad, often in deeply dehumanizing, crowded, and unsanitary cattle cars. Tens of thousands died in deeply inhumane conditions and the survivors were unceremoniously dumped in a foreign frozen wasteland, where almost none spoke the local language and were placed under the tyrannical control of stern Communist Party of China political commissars. Thousands more died when a particularly virulent strain of bubonic plague struck the refugees in their unsanitary conditions.[3] In one particular instance of Communist mismanagement, many political commissars were not aware that not all of the deportees were Russian-speaking, unaware that there were other types of Soviet Jews, which meant miscommunication and mutual recriminations were common. Global condemnation quickly rolled in, but failed to rise to crisis levels.
That being said, the Jewish refugees were a Communist economic planners dream - a relatively high-education population (at least by the extremely low standards of a country with over 90% illiteracy) with no meaningful ability to revolt. One of the most powerful men in Communist China, the Stalinist Gao Gang, frustrated at the failure of agricultural collectivism, quickly took personal charge of the deportees, organizing them in model agricultural collectives and Stalinist-style industrial towns, mirrored after Magnitogorsk in the USSR, scattered throughout the People’s Republic, often at rail hubs. Most communities near railways in Northeastern China had already been pretty used to foreigners, especially Russians, due to the long history of Imperial Russian intervention and railway ownership. In fact, rail in Northeastern China was almost entirely based on the Russian wide-gauge, as opposed to the Anglo-Japanese-style thin gauges in the rest of China. These tightly-run, totalitarian, and often internall segregated industrial model cities quickly became one of the defining traits of Northeastern China's Communist system.
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[1] I’m going off the Beria killed Stalin theory, not because it’s particularly convincing (we really have no idea what happened), but because it’s more interesting.
[2] OTL Beria masterminded the deportations of many Soviet minorities, such as the Crimean Tatars.
[3] Northeastern China was the last bastion in the world of bubonic plague, with the last cases recorded in 1960.
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Hang on a minute is it South Korea that’s Communist or North Korea? You seem to use them interchangeably here.
Love the updates. At least with Mao out of the picture and Manchuria already being a fairly industrialized area, I suppose Manchuria might just be spared the most insane of Maoist policies--though that said Stalinist China isn't exactly what I'd call a preferable alternative. I'd think the CCP has a shot at doing quite well for the near future--they have the industrial and agricultural heartland of China, as well as some educated people to work with, courtesy of Beria. But then again, it's Lin Biao, and I could easily see him fuck up badly.
Speaking of that, why Lin Biao? IIRC Lin Biao was practically a nobody at this point in history and didn't quite stand out when compared to his fellow 9 marshals. Mao might choose him to counter the influence of people like Peng Dehuai or Zhu De, who are both more amicable and popular amongst the ranks of the PLA (especially before the Lushan Conference); or intellectuals the intelligentsia can rally behind like Zhou Enlai or Liu Shaoqi--but I doubt Lin can truly stand on his own without Mao's protection and patronage. It's an odd choice, and requires Mao to constantly back Lin up from the shadows...or does this imply that Mao has no intention of retiring, and hopes to control Lin as a puppet until he returns to reverse the People's Republic's fortunes, Chiang Kaishek style? I hope these questions will be answered in the upcoming Chinese politics update.
Speaking of that, why Lin Biao? IIRC Lin Biao was practically a nobody at this point in history and didn't quite stand out when compared to his fellow 9 marshals. Mao might choose him to counter the influence of people like Peng Dehuai or Zhu De, who are both more amicable and popular amongst the ranks of the PLA (especially before the Lushan Conference); or intellectuals the intelligentsia can rally behind like Zhou Enlai or Liu Shaoqi--but I doubt Lin can truly stand on his own without Mao's protection and patronage. It's an odd choice, and requires Mao to constantly back Lin up from the shadows...or does this imply that Mao has no intention of retiring, and hopes to control Lin as a puppet until he returns to reverse the People's Republic's fortunes, Chiang Kaishek style? I hope these questions will be answered in the upcoming Chinese politics update.
Oh my, we are on the Red Tsar border line... well luckily Beria put a restrain this time but still is . And even better, China won't face nuclear holocaust thanks to Chiang's victory.
Needlessly to say, Mao's plan to move in Burma instead to reach Manchuria was pretty idiotic. He put at risk an army which would have been more useful in Manchuria, instead to work in consolidate control in the North. If he lose and worse, die or being captured, would be a humiliation for the North while Chiang will raise his cheers (and what image if the British will give Mao to him...) And pratically he cuts himself off with the CCP! I wonder who would be in power now in the Popular Republic...
Needlessly to say, Mao's plan to move in Burma instead to reach Manchuria was pretty idiotic. He put at risk an army which would have been more useful in Manchuria, instead to work in consolidate control in the North. If he lose and worse, die or being captured, would be a humiliation for the North while Chiang will raise his cheers (and what image if the British will give Mao to him...) And pratically he cuts himself off with the CCP! I wonder who would be in power now in the Popular Republic...
Will Syngman Rhee's ideology of Ilminism play a role in South Korea's development?
Yes, though they had a pretty hard time IRL too. The Malaya Emergency is definitely coming up as an update.
Looking over my post, I think it's a bit confusing - when I said Rhee was from North Korea, I meant his ancestral home was from North Korea (ie, so he was a Northern Korean).
North Korea and Seoul are used interchangeably, because the border is south of Seoul and Seoul is the capital of North Korea.
Depends what you call Stalinist - China doesn't really have the administrative capacity to go full Stalin. But it is certainly a more "orthodox" Marxist-Leninist state than OTL. However, like Yugoslavia, its Communist movement was home-grown (as opposed to Soviet-installed), so it has that degree of ideological independence. However, it also has a much stronger strategic incentive to align with the USSR.
Anyways, don't want to spoil anything about Mao, except saying that you are generally good at analysis and a great deal will be answered in the upcoming PRC politics update.
I'm going to have to go read that ASAP, just so I can make sure everything goes differently here (imitation is the best form of flattery, but it's not fun). And yeah, Beria is evil, but neither stupid nor crazy. I think there's a pretty good OTL argument that the OTL Nazies were totally crazy, bordering on millenarian death cult.
FWIW, the North is pretty consolidated as it stands just because the Communists seized total control in 1946, which differs from the KMT (which took over a lot of Communist-occupied territory). But yeah, Mao is taking a crazy gamble, which is something OTL Mao did a lot whenever he was insecure about his position (see: the Cultural Revolution).
Yes, I was much more focused on the early prewar reconstruction and less the nature of the regime going forward.
Well, I went and read through a bunch of Red Tsar. Yikes, things go terribly for everyone. I'm not entirely sure what will happen, but I'm pretty sure things don't go as badly as that! If anything, on net average, I think the world is probably slightly better off. Though that's certainly not true of everywhere - some places will certainly be worse off. For example, Burma is currently going through a tough time, though tbqf, that might not be so different from OTL.
What happens to the Soviet Jews ITL 1953/1954 is closer to what Beria did to the Crimean Tatars OTL. Looks like there are some disputes, but it seems out of 220,000 Crimean Tatars, 8,000 died in the deportation itself, and a disputed number (30k-80k) died in harsh gulag-style conditions. One other thing is that the Crimean Tatars took place in 1944 (when the USSR was at total war) and this is taking place in 1953, when the USSR is much much wealthier, so Beria probably has some extra funding he can use to make the deportations less brutal. As mentioned earlier, not out of any sense of morality, but out of how terrible mass death would make the USSR look (things go very badly for the USSR in Red Tsar).
So assuming 2 million refugees (minus elite bureaucrats, scientists, engineers, and other types Beria probably spared for being useful) and more Soviet resources, we're probably looking at 40,000 dying in the inhumane deportations. As for the harsh conditions after, I'm not that sure. My impression is it wouldn't be as high as the USSR, because the Soviet gulags were slave labor for mass industrial projects (worked to death). While I'm thinking the conditions of these refugees are more similar to the "sent-down youth" in the Chinese Cultural Revolution - thrown into grueling rural poverty, humiliation, and oppression, but not worked to death because well, the Chinese communist commissars only have a vague idea of what industrial labour is.
I also use "relatively educated" because most of the refugees probably aren't that well-educated. They're still probably mostly peasantry, since Beria presumably spares most of the most useful skilled labour. Soviet Jews were somewhat more educated than other Soviets, but most were still working-class or peasants. Jewish over-representation in certain fields wasn't indicative of the norm (ie, 10% of Soviet Jews being upscale while 5% of Soviet non-Jews being upscale says nothing about the average Soviet Jew). The reason they're "relatively educated" is simple - in 1953, the Soviet peasantry and industrial working class is significantly better-educated than the average Chinese. Stalin pretty much just had 2 million pretty average Soviet commonfolk deported.
It's a weird text wall for me to have, but I've recently gotten very interested in this subject because of reading Yuri Slezkhine's The Jewish Century.
Well this is relieving, in a more tense Cold War where the Soviet Union strategy is more defensive at this phase - puppets and buffers all around, and Stalin going beyond 1953 is never a good sign but indeed the Soviet Jews are still going slightly better than RT albeit Siberian ghettos are not a good sign for them. I guess many would try to escape in China. This offers an interesting challenge to the Republic, which will enter in contact with a social, religious and cultural world world like Hebraism which in the millenarian history of the Middle Country was pratically ignored until now (I mean I don't know at all if there were historical Jewish influences in China, maybe during the Yuan period, but I guess it would have been non-existant).
Relations between Israel and China could be very intriguing TTL... Both can benefit from this.
