TLIAD: The Limpid Stream
- Thread starter Lord Roem
- Start date
I think the U.S. would have something to say about this. OTL, the U.S. armtwisted Japan into ceding north Sakhalin to the USSR; I can't see the U.S. holding still for Japanese control of much larger areas on the mainland against a much less obnoxious Russian government.
(I mention this because it is not widely known.)
In general, though, very nicely done.
Love you.
That's what I had in mind! The Soviets had a very good team in the fifties (they actually won the first UEFA Cup in 1960!) but it was a success that they had trouble replicating afterwards. I don't think that a *World Cup victory in 1955 is too unlikely.
I find the history of the Civil War to be very interesting, ITTL - I envisioned the secession of the Far East as being a far more bitty affair than in was in OTL, there of course, the Japanese-backed state lasted a matter of months before - as you say - Washington started to get antsy about it. Here, I think that the war in Siberia allows the Japanese-backed state to gain a much firmer foothold than it did, especially given that America is still isolationist after the end of the Great War.
I may go into more detail afterwards though, certainly, I'd like to do a map!
Many thanks - it was a lot of fun! There's only two and a bit more Premiers to do now. I am sorry that it has taken far longer than I though it was going to be - real life has intervened!
(This was created before I saw the answer from the actual creator of the thread - oh well)
Lacrosse.
The 1920 Summer games where held in Belgium as in OTL, but due to the early death of Pierre de Coubertin, Paris was not selected for the 1924 games. iTTL, the following Olympics (1924: Copenhagen, 1928: London, 1932: Washington, DC and 1936 Lisbon) were all in locations where a Winter Sports Week including Alpine events was possible.
iTTL like ours Lacrosse was a Demonstration sport in both 1928 and 1932, however with more countries participating including France and Germany, it returned as a full sport in Lisbon. Both Hockey and Lacrosse are viewed as National Sports in Canada, but Lacrosse has more worldwide appeal.
Note, the Canadians and the Russians unofficially also play an extreme version of the sport which requires at least two feet of snow to be on the ground at the beginning of the game and where the entire game is moved to a fresh field at halftime.
iOTL the Russians *don't* play Lacrosse. (To give you an idea, at the 2010 World Lacrosse Championships, Hong Kong, Bermuda and Mexico had teams, the Russians didn't)
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1996-2005: Dominic Lieven (Free Democratic and Liberal)
The aristocrat who brought government to the people and healed the wounds of war
As Romanov left the Ministerial Compound - his legacy in tatters - the first Liberal Premier since 1982 was being sworn in. Dominic Lieven, scion of the Princely Livonian family, had been a surprising choice for the leadership, squeezing past a number of more experienced rivals in the contest that had followed Trebeck’s resignation after three successive defeats in 1991. From these unassuming beginnings, Lieven enjoyed a decent gig as Leader of the Opposition - criticising Romanov’s Russocentric government at every stage possible. When the Liberals found themselves the benefactors of the fractured right-wing vote at the 1996 election, few were surprised when Lieven presided over a comfortable majority after a last-minute leadership challenge by the Shadow Minister for Eugenics and Labour, Andrei Mironov, failed to amount to much.
Dominic (a name he professes to dislike, preferring the diminutive ‘Chai’) Lieven represented a far more mercurial figure than his immediate predecessors. His political hero is Nabokov, with whom he shared a common love for the arts, education and the overall betterment of society. Within days of taking over, he rescinded almost all of Romanov’s restrictions on the arts, ushering in the so-called “Cultural Revolution”, whilst also embarking on a major decentralisation of power from Moscow to the regions. After decades of campaigning, Sloboda, Chechnya and the Russian Turkistan were finally rewarded with legislative assemblies of their own, whilst Moscow, Petrograd, Minsk and the other major cities gained directly elected mayoralties of their own. As the reforms were taking place, the opposition in the Duma embarked on the traditional civil war. After various alliances, divorces and the occasional fist-fight, the old right eventually rebadged themselves as the Progressive Conservatives - finally expelling the last of the headbangers to Dugin’s explicitly xenophobic “People's Front!”
Lieven presided over a far more open government than those that had preceded him. For the first time in years - Ministers were expected to be held accountable for their actions in the public press. Lieven led from the front in this, subjecting himself to a three-hour interview with the notoriously prickly cinescreen presenter, Erasmus Dalikova. He also pioneered the concept of “Mobile Government”, wherein the Cabinet would travel from city to city in order to hold their meetings throughout the vast territory of the Russian Republic. Lieven - no doubt enamoured by the traders of ancient Muscovy - preferred to use riverboats, visiting ports and fishing villages along the vast watercourses of the Don, Volga and Oka. The portly-figure that would hop onto land, often having to disembark in waders if no jetty was available, soon became a common sight throughout European Russia. The scheme did much to improve perceptions of the government as being prepared to visit the public directly and has since been adopted throughout Europe. Recently, the President of Spain, Miguel Portillo, visited every major town on the Salamanca-Cartagena Line over the course of five weeks.
Internationally, Lieven achieved a major goal in 1999 with the ratification of the Settlement of Borisov. The agreement, signed by Kaiser Hans-Oskar, President Struve and President Gaultier of France (with King Jan IV of Poland, the Grand Duke of Livonia and the Prince of Lithuania acting as witnesses) finally settled the ‘Eastern Question’ in a way that was suitable to all parties in the region. The last bout of reparations for the War of Iron Pact were cancelled, whilst Russia formally renounced all claims to Polish territory west of the Montague-Barlow Line. The agreement, which also merged the Eastern Customs Union with the European Commonwealth, came into effect in time for the new millennium, which Lieven saw as an opportune time to celebrate “Twelve Hundred Years of Russia” in a grand year of festivals and exhibitions. Initially, the decision greatly antagonised the Galician government, who saw themselves as the true heirs of Oleg and the Kievan ‘Rus, but the diplomatically minded Premier was at pains to invite his contemporaries to co-host the main event - lighting a vast line of beacons from Kiev, to Moscow, to Petrograd. The symbolism was not lost, and the establishment of ‘The East Slavic Association’ two years later further consolidated the relationship between the nations of Eurasia.
The multi-polar world was far from over, obviously. In 2004, Lieven suffered a personal humiliation when Russia’s first manned cosmos mission - ‘Perun’ (named after the Proto-Slavic god of thunder and lightning) - was destroyed on the launchpad. Lieven was forced to admit that the project had been brought forwards by the Ministry for Technology against the advice of the Chief Scientific Consultant in order to upstage the Anglo-Italian fly-past of Venus. Although the Prime Minister was not culpable for anything, he was still forced to sack three senior Cabinet figures, who had waved through the decision when Lieven had been out of the country to address the League of Nations in Geneva.
Further setbacks came with Polkan re-call of 2004. The Polkan, “The New People’s Car for the 21st Century” had been launched to great fanfare the previous year, becoming the first Russian-made vehicle to enjoy export success outside the Motherland. However, problems with the suspension resulted in a number of serious crashes throughout the winter, forcing the manufacturer to withdraw them from sale. The resulting costs, coupled with the negative newspaper headlines, caused the company’s share price to collapse, and the government was forced to bail out the entire firm, despite protests from the cyberneticians at the Finance Ministry. The resulting controversy further damaged Lieven’s standing. He resigned in the new year.
Today, Lieven is a prominent figure on the world stage and was recently appointed as Chairman of the Red Swastika, heading up the humanitarian efforts in the Indo-Chinese Civil War. He is also a visiting lecturer in International Government at the London School of Economics.
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Interesting. Anglo-Italian flypast of Venus? Please tell me that is somehow a manned mission. I would expect that it is "only" a robotic probe, but still, a successful space programme for the UK. It's a little bit sad that Russia is so far behind OTL in exploring space though.
I did like Miguel Portillo as Spanish President and his railway journey. I'm a bit surprised at how Poland and the Baltic states seem to be monarchies rather than republics.
A successful peacemaker in charge of Russia. That really is a change from the norm. A most welcome one too.
I did like Miguel Portillo as Spanish President and his railway journey. I'm a bit surprised at how Poland and the Baltic states seem to be monarchies rather than republics.
A successful peacemaker in charge of Russia. That really is a change from the norm. A most welcome one too.
Nicely done - I'm not particularly knowledgeable about Russia, so don't have much constructive to say, but it's enjoyable as ever.
One tiny nit-pick - the header says Lieven was in office until 2007, whilst the picture and text say he left in 2005.
One tiny nit-pick - the header says Lieven was in office until 2007, whilst the picture and text say he left in 2005.
Thande
Donor
I remember you recommending his book on Russian foreign policy, it's been a while but I really should have seen it coming by then. 
There isn't much else for me to say that others have not already said and in a much better way than I ever could, so I'll just say that this is going great and I can't wait to see more.
There isn't much else for me to say that others have not already said and in a much better way than I ever could, so I'll just say that this is going great and I can't wait to see more.
I really dig the idea of Brezhnev as the perfect dissident, the one perhaps hanging out with the jet-set on occasion...
Insert earnestly enthusiastic compliment here, please
(Edit: I'm up to the late 1960s, so, I won't be reading the page that this post is posted on, not yet.)
Insert earnestly enthusiastic compliment here, please
(Edit: I'm up to the late 1960s, so, I won't be reading the page that this post is posted on, not yet.)
2005-2014: Mikhail Ignatieff (Free Democratic and Liberal)
The academic who found tedium to his liking
There was little surprise when Lieven’s was succeeded by the veteran Foreign Minister, Mikhail Ignatieff (or, Ignatiev). However, the vote led to more than a little controversy, given that the Liberals had once again put their faith in a non-Russian aristocrat - rather than one of the working-class ‘rising stars’, (such as Kirill Lukashenko) that the outgoing Premier had promoted during his final reshuffle. “The Princeling Ascendency” thundered the Moscow Chronicle on the day of the announcement, whilst Comet wily mused “Did Mr Romanov had his restoration after all?” However, perceptions in the Duma were kinder to the new Prime Minister. As Foreign Minister, Ignatieff had presided over Lieven’s best efforts to bring Russia closer into Europe - which he saw as the latest effort in the continuum between Slavophile and Zapadnichestvo (or, ‘Westernisers’) that had been a common aspect of much of the 19th and 20th Century experience in the old Imperial Court.
Unsurprising, Ignatieff continued most of the former government’s policies. There was a slight swing to the left as the late-naughties recession began to affect the Petrograd bond-markets, but otherwise, the Prime Minister presented an image of “steady-as-she-goes” for the first few months of the government. The National Hospital Service saw a slight bump in funding, plans were made to extend the electrification of the Trans-Siberian, and the new Finance Minister, Alexey Pajitnov, enthusiastically promoted ‘New Cybernetics’ in order to increase the flow of the non-physical money supply. In an interview shortly after the Liberals were returned with a reduced majority at the 2009 General Election, the Prime Minister said that he was not too distressed by the low recognition rates of his Cabinet, “I suppose that the perception of this government being ‘boring’ would be seen as problematic by some,” he said at an FDLP rally in Tsaritsyn. “Yet I associate ‘interesting’ with atomkraft weaponry, with Civil War and with chaos. I think that the Russian people have had enough of ‘interesting’ politicians for the time being.” Although dismissed by the right-wing press as an admission of failure, the government enjoyed a last-minute rise in the polls when it seemed as though a minority government would have been the most likely outcome.
Having won a mandate of his own, Ignatieff set out to continue to set the direction of Russia’s foreign policy. In Vienna, the election of Karl von Habsburg as Chairman-President of the European Confederacy saw a marked swing-back towards the Federalists, and the new Prime Minister was keen to further incorporate Russia into the EC, following the success of the Settlement of Borisov. The decision to further incorporate the nations of Europe on political matters (which, alongside many other aspects, would have established a directly elected Parliament) was put to cross-national referenda on 1st April 2012.
However, although the “Da” campaign enjoyed a healthy lead in the initial stages of the campaign, opponents - including a rare public intervention from the former Prime Minister, Nikolai Tolstoy - soon took the initiative. In the end, the “Warsaw Accord” was rejected by the electorates of Russia, Rumania, Spain and Serbo-Croatia. Ignatieff’s position was not shot, but he had suffered a serious setback with the defeat. A state visit to Washington by the State President slightly improved matters for the Prime Minister, leading to the signing of the “Bloomberg-Spitzer Free-Trade Agreement” in October.
Despite this international success, the revelation of the so-called “Cash for Senators” scandal, which suggested that Liberal fundraisers had been selling nominations for the Upper Chamber in exchange for donations to the party, caused serious damage to the government - especially when the Party Chair and former Justice Minister, Roman Abramovich, was forced to resign his seat pending a trial for fraud. By-election defeats followed and by the end of 2013, Ignatieff was leading a minority government.
The Liberal defeat that followed was a typical example of a government being in power for one term too many. What Ignatieff’s legacy will be is still too early to say, but it is unlikely that he will be remembered as one of Russia’s great leaders. He recently accepted a teaching position at Harvard University, where he lectures on the history of Liberal Thought in Eastern Europe.
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Ah well - I was hoping for an ATL where the Millibands went East and not West.
David Milliband as PM of Russia was just a step too far
David Milliband as PM of Russia was just a step too far