Well done, congratulations, and thanks! It was a good and brisk read!
Thanks mate, glad you enjoyed it!
I think you did a good job of showing how marginalized (even over OTL) nazism would be ITTL post-war. One possible side effect of that would probably be more mainstream flirtation with nazi kitsch. You hear about these themed bars and restaurants in south and east Asia IOTL, places where the horror had no direct impact. Maybe that fascination with aesthetics is more widespread ITTL. Like I had a friend in high school who wore a Red Army outfit for Halloween one year, as a big joke (she was a libertarian). I shudder to think what she would’ve worn ITTL...
I doubt she would have worn anything on that Halloween… quite likely a butterfly took her away at some point. (Here's me guessing she was born after 1940)
Oh wait... they took ME too!! 
I’ve got some questions about the post-war settlement. Just to point out the most obvious first, I don’t think you mentioned Finland gaining as much territory as is depicted in the map. It might just be a mistake, but I can see the security arguments in favor of it. It does leave a relative lot of Russians in Finnish territory (relative to the not-very-large population of Finland).
I didn't say a whole lot about the post-war borders in the timeline because for the most part, I'm not really that worried where they end up: whether the Finnish border is right next to St Petersburg or 25km further north isn't going to make any difference to how I described the situation of the 1950s, and I can't be bothered researching every little line of dirt that might be argued over.
@TheDogeOfVenice 's map is pretty close, and I didn't feel like listing errors or opening the map up and editing it, so unless it contradicts what I have written I'm happy to roll with it. For the story itself (ignoring thread commentary), it doesn't matter either way. Austria and Iran being occupied are the only major issues (Austria is free with Italian-supported leadership and Iran's old government was restored)
That said, I had envisioned Finland keeping 1938 borders.
And that leads me to another question: wholesale population removal. IOTL the Soviets got away with lots of it, before, during, and for a while after the war. They did it to Germans in Czechoslovakia and new western Polish territories with tacit acceptance by the Western Allies. ITTL one might think the practice of wholesale depopulation- basically by modern time IOTL considered a form of ethnic cleansing- might be verboten right off the bat, as a favored and particular tool of evil-doers. And yet here’s Poland and Lithuania doing it (almost certainly with allied help), possibly Finland, possibly Ukraine, possibly Japan. I get that the tactic has a certain...brute practicality to it that’s hard to ignore, and we have such justification arguments over Hiroshima and Nagasaki IOTL. Perhaps that’s the comparison I’m looking for?
At the end of the war (say, from 12/45 on), the Soviet state had pretty much unravelled, with the New White Coalition taking charge, Bandera taking the Ukraine over, fighting in the streets as locals and NKVD forces clashed &c. In amongst all that, and the need for the Allies to keep the post-war situation stable, the movement of a few millions isn't going to be high on their priority list. Especially when Mussolini was still doing stuff like that in Africa.
By 1950, once the Allies have had time to process the war and everything that happened, they would take another look and go "oh damn, better not let that happen again", but in 1946 it doesn't have that level of importance yet.
Another note on territory, I think the map shows Tuva under Chinese control as well, which seems reasonable if the timing works out (i.e. they can physically walk there before the war ends). It’s not ethnically Russian even today, after all. And it looks like the map also splits off at least part of Tajikistan for the Brits. Again, could be a zealous mapmaker, but a very minor “rush ahead and put a flag on it” campaign at the end could justify it.
Tuva going to China is correct (though I never mentioned it in that final Chinese segment). Tajikistan is not. The Mid-East frontline at the time of the surrender was still in Turkey and Iran, and there's nothing up there worth taking anyway. Post war borders in Central Asia give everything once USSR owned to the Whites.
I’m a little surprised the Northern Caucasus didn’t rebel sufficiently in the final months of war to justify independence, considering it’s impossible to clear the various peoples from those mountains and they love to rebel and had at least a tentative history of working together briefly in the form of the Mountain Republic. Now, post-war the place would be a shit show to make the Balkans look like a trip to the seaside, but that might just have Russia counting her blessings.
Forgot about that. Still not sure if rebellion right next to several hundred thousand Red Army men in Turkey is a great idea.
They were independent during the Russian Civil War though, which alone is enough of a claim to let the Allies tear them out of Russia/USSR.
Be interesting to go into decolonization as well. With no alternative power bases to turn to for support, colonies might have little choice but to keep up ties with their former masters. But something tells me what it really means is a lot more power for the US. I can also see something like Pan-Africanism being a lot stronger ITTL.
I haven't given decolonisation a lot of thought, beyond a general trend of "a bit more peaceful and faster because Britain and France can't afford to fight for them". Such a situation, coupled with better negotiation between ex-colonies and London/Paris, would result in less hostility between the two.
- BNC
