Twilight of the Red Tsar
- Thread starter Napoleon IV
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- dystopia stalin lives
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It seems Ryan does not appreciate a Finnish soft drink that is deliberately made to taste like wood tar.
I...sit here in absolute awe of this TL. I am highly impressed by the amount of research that the author has done in writing this TL and the attention to details are astounding.
I look forward to the next chapter, this coming from a member who spends most of his time in the pre-1900 forum.
I have spent some 7 1/2 hours reading this today from page 1 to 142.
Bravo and excellent Napoleon IV...I salute you for your writing skills.
Joho
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I look forward to the next chapter, this coming from a member who spends most of his time in the pre-1900 forum.
I have spent some 7 1/2 hours reading this today from page 1 to 142.
Bravo and excellent Napoleon IV...I salute you for your writing skills.
Joho
.As an aside, I can imagine that ITTL, the mainstream Western discourse about the WW2 will be different from ours, with Munich and Yalta becoming synonymous, and OTLs fringe, borderline negationist ideas (such as expounded in Buchanan's Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War) getting some traction, at least in the Anglosphere and other parts of the world that haven't known the German occupation. As I mentioned earlier, some minor Axis nations could probably end with their Axis past swept under the rug if not outright excused.
Bookmark1995
Banned
Yeah. As I've said before, OTL Ukrainians often get blamed for the Holocaust. While their ITTL anti-Jewish actions may not be excused, the fact that they were caught between two bad choices would be mentioned more.
And the fact that the Holodomor would be seen as Stalin's precursor to the Second Holocaust.
The Pinyin spelling in Jiaxing. Kashing is the Postal Romanization spelling, which I used because it was pointed out that Pinyin hadn't been published at the time of the Sino-Soviet War, so the name should be in a spelling that was used prior to the adaptation of Pinyin (which is generally either Wade-Giles or Postal).
I must say that I myself am quite intrigued on the effects that Stalin will have on American pop culture in modern day TTL. OTL, the Nazis are a representation of classic villains in numerous types of media as they are a real life group who you can easily portray as the villains and not have to face any repercussions because of the sheer evil that they represent. This is also seen primarily in video games and anime with the representation of the "Evil Empire" that so often is based on either Nazi or German aesthetics. Here the Soviets could probably be seen as the greater evil in the eyes of the American people and thus Communists would have a much greater role in pop culture as the classic villains of the time. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark would be about Indy going against a Russian scientist. Captain America would be fighting the Red Skull as the leader of Soviet Hydra. Tom Clancy would probably make a killing with his books on American espionage in the Soviets being seen as realistic. Russia will always be portrayed as the bad guy and Germany will start to get a greater appreciation in the west for the other parts of their history not tainted by Hitler.
That's not even going to count the effects that this will have on politics. If an American candidate like Bernie Sanders is seen as socialist then their would be a greater amount of backlash as Socialism=Communism in the eyes of many immigrants and Conservatives. This would make for a much more capitalistic and slightly more conservative America as the ruling leadership in congress today would have grown up in the days of Soviets being revealed as perpetrators of the Second Holocaust and killing of tens of millions of Chinese with nukes.
Really looking forward to the modern day version of this timeline.
That's not even going to count the effects that this will have on politics. If an American candidate like Bernie Sanders is seen as socialist then their would be a greater amount of backlash as Socialism=Communism in the eyes of many immigrants and Conservatives. This would make for a much more capitalistic and slightly more conservative America as the ruling leadership in congress today would have grown up in the days of Soviets being revealed as perpetrators of the Second Holocaust and killing of tens of millions of Chinese with nukes.
Really looking forward to the modern day version of this timeline.
Redshank Galloglass
Banned
On one hand, Syndicalism overtakes Marxist-Leninism as the predominant radical left ideology....
On the other, this world is fucking crapsack...
Great TL. Been lurking for a while.
On the other, this world is fucking crapsack...
Great TL. Been lurking for a while.
Just caught up with this timeline and I just want to say you're doing a fantastic job! Really enjoying this!
Bookmark1995
Banned
Glad you will be updating.
I just thought of two things I think need to be brought up.
Famine.
I think the Soviet Union is headed for its worst famine since World War II.
ITTL, Russia couldn't feed itself, and now a civil war is breaking out.
In war, especially in the modern era, hunger and disease can be a bigger killer than guns. I think the problems of famine have less to do with overpopulation than a lack of infrastructure to distribute resources, bad planning, political violence, and corruption
Even if wealthy nations feel obligated to send aid, OTL a lot of aid can be stolen.
By the winter of 67-68, probably tens of thousands are going to die of famine. Unless Fyodor Kulakov isn't drunk on cool aid, the areas still controlled by the Soviets are going to be littered with the bodies of the starved.
Unless the rebels can hash out some kind of farming reform, they'll be dealing with the same problem.
***
The other issue is the status of the Soviet Jews.
Since the rebels now control Siberia, I think one their first actions will be to release the Jews from those settlements.
The rebels will be motivated both by conscience and by a desire to score points with the West.
But I think what could happen, once they come across the free settlements, is these hardened rebels may see these emaciated, hopeless individuals behind barbed wire fences, and they'll breakdown in tears.
Sure, some of them already have read the Yellow Star through samizdat and have an intellectual idea of the horrors the Jews faced, but for those who remember World War II, and remember the sickly faces in the concentration camps, and seeing those sickly faces again only in their own country, it would be too much to bear. I imagine that World War II vets elsewhere, from England to Poland seeing the same crimes they fought against, and those horrible faces, again in Europe for the second time, would be like a knife to heart.
I remember reading about how the OTL breakup of Yugoslavia horrified Europeans because it brought back the barbed wire concentration camps of World War II. Well, the generation that fought it may collectively unleashed a sob of despair at it happening again.
"We approached the barbed wire fence. Staring at us were the living remains of what were once human beings. They looked at us, not with the hope of the liberated, as we assumed, but with the hopeless glaze of one condemned. Some of us, staring at these pitiful creatures, wept. Some of us cursed Stalin, his pet sycophants, and ourselves for our betrayals. One soldier, Vasily Kruchov, believed his time in Kolyma would brace him for these horrors. However, Vasily forgot that in the Gulag, one must avoid the suffering of others to remember your own. Vasily tears became the most bitter, as for the first time, he was forced to absorb the pain of others. But the greatest pain was that the sufferers didn't wept. They had long forgotten to shed tears. Our anguish was small compared to the horrors these soulless husks endured.
Ivan Stravinov, The Red Front, 1978.
I just thought of two things I think need to be brought up.
Famine.
I think the Soviet Union is headed for its worst famine since World War II.
ITTL, Russia couldn't feed itself, and now a civil war is breaking out.
In war, especially in the modern era, hunger and disease can be a bigger killer than guns. I think the problems of famine have less to do with overpopulation than a lack of infrastructure to distribute resources, bad planning, political violence, and corruption
Even if wealthy nations feel obligated to send aid, OTL a lot of aid can be stolen.
By the winter of 67-68, probably tens of thousands are going to die of famine. Unless Fyodor Kulakov isn't drunk on cool aid, the areas still controlled by the Soviets are going to be littered with the bodies of the starved.
Unless the rebels can hash out some kind of farming reform, they'll be dealing with the same problem.
***
The other issue is the status of the Soviet Jews.
Since the rebels now control Siberia, I think one their first actions will be to release the Jews from those settlements.
The rebels will be motivated both by conscience and by a desire to score points with the West.
But I think what could happen, once they come across the free settlements, is these hardened rebels may see these emaciated, hopeless individuals behind barbed wire fences, and they'll breakdown in tears.
Sure, some of them already have read the Yellow Star through samizdat and have an intellectual idea of the horrors the Jews faced, but for those who remember World War II, and remember the sickly faces in the concentration camps, and seeing those sickly faces again only in their own country, it would be too much to bear. I imagine that World War II vets elsewhere, from England to Poland seeing the same crimes they fought against, and those horrible faces, again in Europe for the second time, would be like a knife to heart.
I remember reading about how the OTL breakup of Yugoslavia horrified Europeans because it brought back the barbed wire concentration camps of World War II. Well, the generation that fought it may collectively unleashed a sob of despair at it happening again.
"We approached the barbed wire fence. Staring at us were the living remains of what were once human beings. They looked at us, not with the hope of the liberated, as we assumed, but with the hopeless glaze of one condemned. Some of us, staring at these pitiful creatures, wept. Some of us cursed Stalin, his pet sycophants, and ourselves for our betrayals. One soldier, Vasily Kruchov, believed his time in Kolyma would brace him for these horrors. However, Vasily forgot that in the Gulag, one must avoid the suffering of others to remember your own. Vasily tears became the most bitter, as for the first time, he was forced to absorb the pain of others. But the greatest pain was that the sufferers didn't wept. They had long forgotten to shed tears. Our anguish was small compared to the horrors these soulless husks endured.
Ivan Stravinov, The Red Front, 1978.
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