Yeah, though the regime has significantly chilled out since the days of Austrofascism (for one, the Social Democrats are not actually banned - but that's because they aren't actually a serious threat to win because 'Red Vienna' is entirely in East Germany). In fact, there is probably more state repression of neo-nazis than social democrats.
The North Star is Red: a Wallace Presidency, KMT Victory, Alternate Cold War TL
- Thread starter TastySpam
- Start date
Yeah, though the regime has significantly chilled out since the days of Austrofascism (for one, the Social Democrats are not actually banned - but that's because they aren't actually a serious threat to win because 'Red Vienna' is entirely in East Germany). In fact, there is probably more state repression of neo-nazis than social democrats.
On that topic, that actually makes Austria a very weird addition to the European right-wing authoritarian club. They like Portugal and Spain a lot. They don't like Sweden at all - especially because the 'New Sweden' is actually better aligned with the nationalist-militarist far-right opposition (while the Austrian government is more of a Catholic reactionary government). And interestingly enough, they enjoy good relations with left-wing Italy.
The problem with an independent West Austria it's that was the very very very poor part of the nation and many at the time thought she wasn't economically feasible as an independent nation, for this reason were ok with the plan of unification with Germany in case Stalin decided to not ok the unification
Anglocalvinist67
Banned
Well, I like that guy Siler. Hope he makes it. And come on, these elections are like Lucy pulling away the football for the GOP's Charlie Brown.
IOTL, Voralberg (the most western part of Austria) attempted to join Switzerland after WW1, complete with a referendum in 1919 that had over 80% of voters supporting it. This didn't go anywhere since Switzerland wasn't especially interested in Voralberg and the Allies and Vienna were all opposed to it. Depending how West Austria fares economically, it's possible they'll attempt to secede and try joining Switzerland again.
AeroTheZealousOne
Monthly Donor
If this timeline had a TV Tropes page it would have to have a whole subpage dedicated to the irony and darkly comedic parallels in this universe, ahistorical and otherwise. Between IKEA being known for its inexpensive... uh, "furnishings" to South China mocking the ROK-Jeju over the former's OTL fate to Beria appropriating elements of Titoism while purging and killing the folks who point out that "hey, this worker's self-management thing kind of sounds like what the Yugoslavians were starting to do!". Oh yeah, and that one assassination in India captured on photo similarly to a certain event IOTL in Japan.
Good God, this is just one of the reasons why I love this timeline. I may not have been vocal here for a few months, but I'm definitely still reading it!
Even that I am new member here, this timeline is one of the best TLs I read. Cant't wait to the next updates!!
So, aside from Vasilevsky, what Marshals of the Soviet Union are still alive right now?
Can someone make a TV Tropes page of this TL? It's amazing and one of my favouriteson here and definitely deserves it
I can try. Some ideas:
0% approval rating:
-One of the key reasons behind Beria's downfall. Even after the failure of the military coup, the rest of the Politburo despises him for being a sadist and Stalin's former henchman and even the students who sided with him dislike him for being too moderate with his reforms.
-Downplayed with Joseph McCarthy. He is popular as president but his willingness to use nuclear weapons during the Three Years' War led to a military coup by the US Army.
Allhistorical Allusion:
-Like in OTL a nationalist government is forced to flee to a small island after the mainland is overrun by communist forces, but in this TL it happens to the government of South Korea rather than to the KMT
-JFK being McCarthy's vicepresident in 1956 is probably a reference to him almost becoming Adlai Stevenson's running mate during the same time period in OTL .
-JFK actually rises to the presidency only after McCarthy's death, similarly to what happened with LBJ after Kennedy's assassination.
Balkanise Me:
-As the title suggests, both China and Japan are divided betweeen a communist state in the North and a capitalist state in the South.
-Subverted with Korea. It is originally divided like OTL (albeit North Korea ended up bigger than OTL), but it is reunified under communist rule at the end of The Three Years War
-Indonesia is slowly collapsing and being divided between what is left of the Dutch colonial administration, the Communists and the Islamists
-Algeria is divided between a French Tertitory in Oran, an indipendent Algerian communist state and a Tuareg state
-Iran is a weird example of this. It originally lost territories to the Soviet Union at the end of WW2, but after its government decides to side with Moscow, these territories are tecnically given back to Teheran, while being still de facto indipendents.
-Islamists backed by Washington manages to create an indipendent state in the southern part of Saudi Arabia
-Turkey lost its Kurdish provinces after being invaded by the Soviets during the Three Years War
-North Israel is successfully invaded by Syria and it is turned into the North Chines-backed state of Judeo-Palestine
-Yugoslavia loses Macadonia to Bulgaria after the Soviet invasion of The Three Years War, but successfully annexes Albania
Even Evil Has Standards: South China is a brutal communist dictatorship, but its government seems to really believe about the equality message of Communism, welcoming jewish refugees from the USSR, breaking all contacts with Syria after its genocidal intentions against Israel became clear and refusing to give up on anti-Apartheid rebels in South Africa unlike Moscow
Nuke 'Em:
-Subverted with Japan. After its government refuses to surrender after the first nuke is dropped, an horrified President Wallace opts to invade the island with Soviet assistance
-Both Washington and Moscow end up using nukes against North China and Sweden respectively during The Three Years War
Pragmatic Evil: Beria. He is a sadist as much as OTL, but he opposes Stalin's antisemitic purges simply to protect the USSR's reputation abroad and avoid damaging Moscow's relationship with the West. He also starts a series of political and economic reforms to protect his power after becoming premier of the Soviet Union
Reality Ensues:
-Unlike other timelines like Footprint of Mussolini, Wallace quickly becomes hostile to the Soviet Union after being informed of the brutality of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe by the American secret services
-In a fit of paranoia Stalin fakes his own death during the Three Years War, governing the Soviet Union in secret. This however allows Beria to expand his power and take controll of the Soviet Union after killing Stalin.
-This timeline quickly points out that neither the French Army nor the Algerians would be happy with an eventual division of Algeria. This division quickly causes the assasination of De Gaulle, the rise of a military government in France and a civil war between the Algerian Communist Party and the FLN.
Rightful King Returns: The government of West Austria restores the royal government of the Hasburgs after The Three Years War. Likewise Hungary recognises Otto Hasburg as its head of state (albeit not as monarch, as a result of still being a communist state ).
Team Switzerland: Italy ends up creating this timeline's version of the Non-Aligned Movement
Please feel free to add more.
@TastySpam is this ok ?
You forgot how Germany was balkanized ITTL for a few years before it was reversed in favor of a policy of supporting rival German governments.
Yeah , i forgot that and Iraq. Where is the post regarding the division of Germany by the way?
Whoa that's awesome, I didn't even remember some of these. Just a few tidits
1. It's technically the Navy (and Navy Seals) who launch the coup against McCarthy.
2. The "Tuareg state" in Southern Algeria is really just a French overseas territory - and it's basically France wanting the oil.
3. Japan doesn't really get invaded - they throw in the towel after the Soviets land in Sakhalin and the Kurils.
4. The French government isn't military - it's more bureaucratic. The military types turn over control almost immediately to (sympathetic) civilian technocrats and politicians. They're really following the West German model. Ironically, Francisco Franco is still the only general in charge of a European country. Technically, unlike in West Germany, the French coup didn't actually succeed. De Gaulle was assassinated in the middle and his coup-sympathizing second-in-command took over - and I guess everyone just went home.
5. Communist Turkey is strange - a majority Kurdish (and devoutly Muslim) population with a majority Turkish (and Communist/secular) leadership, mostly from Istanbul types. I should probably mention in an update that they're not so popular.
Chapter 186 - Moscow Spring and Red August
Moscow Spring and Red August
In 1964, the Soviet Spring had come. But the momentum of change did not stop. Almost in a frenzy, the population of Moscow took to quasi-democratic socialist deliberation to a fervor yet unseen. The Special Standing Committee of the Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, quickly turned out tube far more radical than anyone believed. The academics overwhelming opted to establish local elections for city managerial positions, with a minority of reformist Communist Party members siding with them to give the necessary majorities. Turnout regularly surpassed 98% in these elections, as Moscow workers and students rushed to exercise their local right to franchise. In particular, the elections, contrary to what was expected, unleashed record levels of representation among women and ethnic minorities from the Republics, as workers opted for their neighbors and coworkers over any other group. If they believed in any ideology - it was all of things, a worship of all things scientific and technological. The Soviet landing on the moon energized the entire Soviet Union, as Soviet propaganda, hoping to avoid taking any sides, largely just venerated space flight as a safe, apolitical sign of Soviet triumph.
In theory, these were still intra-party elections within the one-party Communist system, but they had lowered the bar for Communist Party membership so low - that practically every worker in Moscow who wanted to could easily qualify. Much of Moscow's Communist Party elite feared for their futures, feeling that the Soviet system might be unraveling. However, many simply took the past of least resistance: joining the wave of political change and congratulating every exercise of the franchise - in what they quickly called the Second Soviet Revolution. However, in the midst of all of it, they began plotting against each other. Moreover, the members of the Standing Committee had begun to turn on each other, especially as the academics and the politicians quickly viewed each other as plotting against the "Moscow Spring." Meanwhile, radical divisions also appeared, with the students often viewing the academics (appointed to represent them) as insufficiently radical - and many other Stalinist stalwarts (especially in the Warsaw Pact) viewing the whole experiment as a disaster.
Surprisingly, the Moscow experiment was largely tolerated because it amazingly didn't affect the governance or stability outside of Moscow. A widespread belief emerged that the loosening of Communist Party control in Moscow would spark mass ethnic violence and economic collapse, and those predictions had not come quite true. In contrast, the national government simply seemed to ignore what was going on in Moscow as a result. After all, the rest of the country essentially ran on autopilot (Soviet bureaucrats still went to work as normal) - and a consensus was slowly building that the rest of the Soviet Union could adopt the Moscow reforms. In fact, by June of 1964, the Politburo was seriously discussing a bill to simply dissolve the NKVD into various weaker agencies - and release most political prisoners. However, "business as normal" bureaucrats also had a tendency to hide severe economic dislocation in Moscow itself as the self-managing worker enterprises competed more fiercely against each other - economic dislocation that created more finger-pointing between workers of different firms.
However, in August, disaster would strike. A bomb was seemingly triggered at the meeting of the Standing Committee in Moscow, killing three of the members at the meeting. Recriminations immediately exploded in every direction as to who planted the bomb - and naturally, each side blamed each other. In reality, an investigation in the 1970's would ultimately find that the "bomb" was caused by a gas leak caused by a negligent maintenance technician. Students attempted to swarm the Moscow City Hall - and they were quickly met by members of the Moscow police, who violently assaulted them (albeit with no fatalities, due to recent reforms made to public security).
The roots of Red August actually began in July, when two members of the Standing Committee (one academic and one politician), Andrei Snezhnevsky and Yuri Andropov, as well hundreds of intellectuals, journalists, and students (including some who weren't even ardent Communists, such as Alexander Prokhanov, Lev Gumilyov, and Viktor Glushkov) published an article (the "Scientific Socialist Appeal") that elements of the Soviet state, including "reactionary Beria operatives" and "militarist-fascists", and "capital-luddites" were plotting to overturn the "democratic scientific-socialist Moscow revolution." Although the letter was largely penned by Snezhnevsky, the sign-on Andropov lent it great credence when he was a relatively high-ranking former member of the NKVD before his appointment to the Standing Committee. The amazing thing was that regardless of their political views, all factions saw it as their greatest opportunity. Amazingly, the partnership of Snezhnevsky and Andropov brought together both the radical students as well as NKVD remnants into believing that a conspiracy against the revolution was afoot. Although they had disposed of Beria in the path, somehow the coalition that he had constructed (the security forces abetting radical students) had returned. Except this time, swept along with the fury were also the children of top Soviet Communist Party cadres, who saw the dream of Beriaism without Beria. The coalition of academics rallied behind "democratic socialism", "science", and "vigilance."
Many of those who had signed the original article were immediately horrified when Snezhnevsky declared that the application of the manifesto was simple: the Moscow City Government and Communist Party had been infiltrated by hundreds of those who had inculcated in "psychological capitalism" - a "fundamental disease rotting the mind" that caused sufferers to "atavistically imitate semi-feudal conditions inserted into their genome." The impact was immediate. Roving mobs of students and young party cadres (often the children of Soviet elites), armed by secret service agents, simply went around the streets, homes, hospitals, and schools of Moscow, simply murdering those that they deemed "psychologically impure" based on the guidelines of old Stalin and Beria-era "psychological assessment tools" (that had originally just been written as a pretense to arrest dissidents). In many cases, competing bands of young party cadres fired upon each other, with the only winner surviving. In the flash of a week, thousands of Soviets had been shot, lynched, or otherwise murdered, usually by gunfire. As these bands very quickly began targeting each other and the families of each other - and as they were largely staffed by the children elite party cadres), this meant often targeting influential Soviets. Although far far less in death toll than anything that ever took place under the Stalin era (or even Beria era), this eviscerated much of the élite political class. After the gunfire quieted, a huge swath of the USSR's top bureaucrats either found themselves dead or (more likely) in hiding in the countryside, with Snezhnevsky firmly triumphant, having purged the members of the Standing Committee who opposed his agenda. Despite that, Suslov, who was listed as Snezhnevsky as Public Enemy No. 1, actually ironically escaped in time.
The Politburo, seeing many of their friends and families simply killed in mob violence, were furious, infamously fleeing Moscow through the metro, which proved a mistake because that was seen as a sign of "treason" and thus those that failed to get out were simply brutally killed. Almost immediately, it was ordered by the Politburo that the Red Army would "restore order" in Moscow against the "counter-revolution." In contrast, Snezhnevsky and his supporters declared the creation of the Moscow Commune, which promised "democratic socialism" and "scientific utopia" to the workers of Moscow, who quickly sided with the Commune. Although many were individually nervous and skeptical of the "Second Revolution", the worker's self management system of Beria allowed factories to quickly make decisions - usually with elected factory managers (often elected with NKVD aid) quickly siding with the Moscow Commune. Worst of all, Aleksandr Vasilevskiy, perhaps with more foresight than most (or just indecisive), had simply fled entirely, all the way to his dacha in his hometown, declaring neutrality in the conflict, leaving the Soviet government with almost no remaining Marshals.
All of this took place in the span of two weeks in August of 1964, just in time for the most melancholy meeting of the Warsaw Pact ever recorded, which archives from Poland indicated the highest alcohol consumption ever recorded at a Warsaw Pact meeting.
Last edited:
Didn't Beria heavily purge the Red Army? That should have some interesting implications.