Twilight of the Red Tsar

[Bookmark1995]

So it appears that Russian artists can finally breath free...but will this period really be the beginning of better things, or a short moment of hope followed by another period of madness and anarchy?

 

[Sorairo]

With some regrets as to the short amount of time between the updates, I have been given permission to post an extract focussing on how the world perceives Communism, the Space Race and the Neo-Communist movement.

Devilspawn


Excerpt from The Enemy Of The World (1958) by Frank Capra [1]​

Child #4: But, I always thought that Communists hated racism. Was that wrong?


Narrator (Ronald Reagan): Oh, they certainly pretended they were anti-racist all right, but that was always a front. At heart, Communism is a sick, racist ideology that will say anything to get into power, and then break every promise they ever made. But we don’t have to look hard inside their very writings to discover just what they thought of so called ‘lesser-races’. In 1856, the co-writer of the Communist Manifesto, Friedrich Engels said that …


(Menacing German-accented voice): "The classes and the races too weak to master the new conditions of life must give way.... They must perish in the revolutionary holocaust!"


Narrator: And this is what Karl Marx himself said about Jews:


(Second menacing German-accepted voice): " What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money … In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Jewry". [2]


Narrator: Communists believe that certain races are superior, that they are leading the charge in the historical movement to Communism, while certain ‘inferior’ races hold society back, such as Jews. The reason Communists hate Jews so much is that no race in history has proven a better example of the triumph of Capitalism.


(Montage of bustling Israeli markets)


Narrator: Back in the Middle Ages, European Kings forbade that the Jews do many different jobs, so many became bankers, merchants, the original Capitalists. Then, despite centuries of persecution, Jews started having full lives thanks to the economic liberation that Capitalism provided. They were happy, well-fed, and finally on their feet But that wasn’t enough for some!


(Montage of Pogroms)


Narrator: The forbearers of Communism said “No more! How dare these people be allowed to get so rich? They’re all just a bunch of no good greedy cheaters! Let’s take their money and spend it on what we want!” They preached a gospel of envy and hate, and even killed Jews all over Europe, none more so than Russia. It is no coincidence that the most historically Anti-Semitic country in Europe was the first to become Communist.[3] No, the Communists believe that there are two types of races in the world: those that will lead the revolution, and those that will not. Unfortunately for the Jews, they’re in the second group.


Child #2: But, if they hate Jews too, then why did they go to war with Germany?



Narrator: Well, first let’s remember one thing: the Germans declared war on them. But that didn’t stop them from working with Hitler for years. Of course, they knew full well of Hitler’s hatred for the Jews, indeed Stalin had been stoking Jew hatred in the Soviet Union since he kicked out his fellow Communist Leon Trotsky[4]. But that didn’t stop them giving supplies to the Nazis. They gave the oil that allowed Hitler to march into Paris. They gave the radio signals that allowed German bombers to destroy Poland. They even sat down and agreed to divide a whole continent between them, imprisoning millions, slaughtering millions more. They certainly had no problem with what the Nazis were doing – the only sin that Hitler ever did to Stalin was having the temerity of wanting to destroy him as well.

Excerpt from You Don’t Scare Us!: The World’s Perception of Russia by Rei Ikari​

Opposition to the Soviet Union took every form of propaganda that had been conceived. Some were a bitter blow to Russian pride, such as when the Soviets (including their occupied states) were banned from all major international sporting competitions from football to chess from 1959 onward [5]. Others took an absurd turn, such as the 1969 Godzilla movie ‘Destroy all Monsters’ which features Godzilla taking on multitudes of monsters controlled by the Soviets. But few stretched the imagination like the Space Race.


In 1955, the Soviet Union said they would launch an artificial satellite in the near future, and that they would beat America into space. This would spawn the genesis of the Space Race, an intense but ultimately short-lived contest that quickly demonstrated the differences between the two powers. While the American scientists worked out in the open, most Soviet scientists, notably Vasily Mishin and Sergei Korolev were working out of prison camps for research, known as sharashka. They were severely hampered by Stalinist restrictions, not to mention near non-existent supplies due to so many resources being thrown into the Chinese inferno.


Despite backbreaking effort, it was all for naught, and the Americans proudly announced the first artificial satellite in outer space, Explorer 1, on January 31st 1958. While it was champagne at the White House, it was quite a different mood in the Kremlin. Stalin, now totally devoid from reality, ordered the entire Soviet rocketry program shut down, and its members to be investigated for sabotage; fortunately for Korolev and Mishin, Stalin’s death prevented the likely imminent killings of them and most of ther staff. Stalin then claimed the Space Race was simply a Capitalist ploy to stop him from funding his army, and refused to restart the program – owing to the severe financial difficulties the Soviet Union faced, the program would not be restarted even after Stalin’s death. However, due to the lack of solid American intelligence in the Soviet Union, Nixon decided to keep going to “Really spike the football on those bastards”. He announced that he intended that an American would be in space while he was still President, which would ultimately come to pass when John Glenn went into space on February 20th 1962. While this was met with standing ovation in America, more ambitious types wanted to push onto the moon, including Werner Von Braun, the head of the American rocketry program. Ultimately, as it became clear the Soviets offered no response to America’s litany of victories, Nixon announced in 1963 that the space program would be scaled down to a ‘military only exercise’. By the time Knowland had come in, the arch-conservative had little stomach for the massive expenditure to reach the Moon after America’s space superiority had been so totally demonstrated. To that end, many Democrats cared more about money going to their poverty-stricken constituents than wild pie-in-the-sky schemes. It would be many years still before a Moon Landing would happen.

Excerpt from The Hammer and Stripes: Communism in America by Jason Palermo​

In the aftermath of anti-Communist laws being passed through America in the fifties, the traditional Communist organizations, notably the Communist Party USA, were obliterated. A pariah in all their old breeding grounds (the Unions, Social movements etc) the future of Communism in America would be decided by a much more dangerous subset of the movement; this was the birth of Neo-Communism. These groups were much smaller, but there were many of them, and they were incredibly hard to infiltrate. Few were interested in practical politics, but were attracted to the movement due to their own lack of opportunities and casual acceptance of violence. Many others simply had seriously mental issues and found their release through the actions of their comrades. Being so marginalized a group, they had few friends, and a laundry list of enemies – everyone from Objectivists to the Christians to the ‘Zionist Occupied Government’. While the original statements from the Soviet puppets around the world was that the Jews were being treated well, when the Soviets lacked the resources to create puppets, their genuine admirers simply justified their prejudices instead, though most repeated the notion of Holocaust Denial.


While the initial crimes committed by the organizations in the early 1960s included simple bank robbery, by the end of the decade, owing to the situation in the former Soviet Union, a much more urgent, outright bigoted streak took over. While the numbers of Russian refugees joining these movements was much lower than many believed, it was unlucky enough to happen at the same time as the Holocaust Museum Bombing [6] in Washington D.C. on December 21th 1968 (Stalin’s birthday in the Soviet calendar), which killed five people. The organisation that committed the action, ‘The American Revolutionary Committee’, would be obliterated before Christmas of that year, but not before they left an unforgettable influence on the Neo-Communist movement, and in particular, Martin Thompson.


A committed Communist, what was interesting was that he was indifferent to the ideology until he came to support it after the word of the Soviet Holocaust reached the West. Many family members suspected he could just have easily become a Nazi, since his motivation seemed more Anti-Semitic than anything else. Though he came from obscurity, he would be perhaps the most influential person in the blossoming Neo-Communist movement, but not for his terrorist exploits. He would go by the penname of ‘George Adams’ to write his infamous 1974 novel, ‘The Diary of Our Victory’. [7]


It takes place in the mid 1990s, a dystopia where it is entirely legal for rich people and Jews to rape and murder poor people at will, with the proletariat reduced to near literal serfdom. Children are forced to watch ‘atrocities as absurd as Old Wives Tales’ being shown in school of Soviet treatment of the Jews. One scene includes a Jewish woman claiming to be a Holocaust survivor being caught out in a lie by one of the students, before said student is beaten by the teacher for his ‘insubordination’. Objectivism and religion are both described as Jewish plots to control society, as is the media, Hollywood and even the sex industry. The narrator of the story, a man by the name of Carl Lennon, joins a committed organisation of Communists called ‘The Internationale’ who plan to overthrow the government and establish Communism across the world. They launch a number of terrorist attacks against the government, and after torture at the hands of Mossad, they escape and eventually take over much of California, seizing the nuclear arsenal there. From establishing a Communist society in the most populous U.S. state, they go to work. Jews, Objectivists, clergymen, businessmen, Republican and Democrat politicians, entertainers and anyone sympathetic to them are hanged from lampposts. The resulting turmoil travels over to Europe, where Communist insurrection begins to take over these countries as well, complete with Jews being killed in the streets. But the worst is yet to come: the protagonist uses the nuclear weapons to wreak international chaos. London, Zurich, Luxembourg, Monaco, Frankfurt, Singapore, Hong Kong and all other major financial centers are destroyed to ‘collapse the whole damned system’. As if making the proceedings more horrifying still, the protagonists proceed to drop five missiles on ‘Jew York’, wiping it from the map, as well as millions of lives (interestingly, Thompson himself was a New Yorker). Then, they use the missiles to obliterate the ‘traitorous’ former Eastern bloc countries such as Poland and Lithuania, before finally using the missiles to ‘obliterate every piece of land in the Colonial nations’ those being Israel, South Africa and Rhodesia. After the respective nations destructions, ‘their true inhabitants came in to righteously finish the job’. Though the protagonist ultimately sacrifices himself, his organisation triumphs, leading to Communist takeover of America, and ultimately the world. The rich and upper-middle classes, including their children, are executed, while the Jews are hunted to extinction – churches, mosques and synagogues are destroyed worldwide. Though much of the world is obliterated in the nuclear onslaught, the epilogue, written in the future of 2017 writes, “One hundred years after the beginning of our liberation, we have finally achieved what we have sought – a Communist world, where only Communists are left and the Devilspawn are dead”. [8]


‘The Diary of Our Victory’ was poorly written but became a sensation among Neo-Communists. The ADL described it as ‘The Bible of bigotry, perhaps only surpassed by Mein Kampf’. To this day, Neo-Communist extremists read the book and take inspiration from the psychopathic nature of the text. In the following years, Far-Left terrorism began to gain as brutal a reputation as her Far-Right counterpart, with its lone wolf killings; scholars suspect that many violent members of the Far-Right, or who may have been disposed to join them, were so impressed that they jumped over to ‘get their hands dirty’ as one reformed member put it. It’s also believed that the novel played a key role in laying the groundwork for the unholy fusion of Far Left and Right bigotries in the modern ‘National Bolshevik’ groups. Martin Thompson would not live long enough, however, to know the full influence his work would have.


By 1975, the FBI were closing in on him for multiple felonies, some political, others menial, and he was certain he didn’t have long before they knocked at his door. “Therefore,” he wrote in his suicide note, “I’ll at least take a Jew with me.” On March 24th 1975, Ayn Rand was giving a speech to the New York Objectivist Society, when Thompson leapt from his chair, charged the stage and shot her three times at point blank range, killing her instantly. Though the crowd ran for their lives, fearing they were next, he shot and killed himself instead. Just before he committed suicide, he called out, “Don’t worry about me! It’s the one’s coming after me you should worry about!” [9]


[1] – Rehired by the American Government to do a PSA documentary on the Soviet Union similar to the ‘Why We Fight’ Series – the men in charge worried war was coming soon.


[2] – The quotes are only slightly changed around to make them sound a little worse than they are – but they’re both pretty sociopathic quotes with context. The main point is that Western people are trying to work out the reason Communism ended up with so much racism, and this is the explanation that people seize on. Oh, and no one likes to bring up that Marx/Lenin were Jewish - neither Communist nor Anti-Communist.


[3] – Another coincidence that takes a lot of meaning ITTL.


[4] – Again, the Anti-Trotsky move is considered ITTL to be an Anti-Semitic act.


[5] – Yugoslavia beats Spain 3-2 in the Euro 1960 final, as the Soviets weren’t there.


[6] – Owing to America trying to get the moral high ground on Russia, the Museum opens decades early as part of Holocaust education.


[7] – TTL’s Turner Diaries.


[8] – Trust me, the Turner Diaries is even more terrifying in what the ‘Happy Ending’ looks like.


[9] – Owing to Rand’s more prominent public figure, her Jewish heritage, her public condemnation of Communism, she becomes enemy number one of the Neo-Communist movement. Though her assassination doesn’t make her much more popular, her critics are a lot more careful in how they assess her legacy.

 

[Lost Freeway]

Good update. Nice to see you back.

 

[Redshank Galloglass]

I think i'd end up moving to Hungary. Living in an objectivist America or a more militarist Britain on account of the Suez war being won sounds like a nightmare.

Good update nontheless the both of you.

 

[Bookmark1995]

I imagine that Rand will still be seen as a martyr. Not just to die-hard Objectivists (hell, she was shot by a man professing a love of communism), but to the community of Russian Jewish exiles that will see her as an icon. Someone who escaped the madness before it was too late.

 

[DumbersTC]

How's Jim Jones and his "People's Temple"?

 

[Neoteros]

... ... ...

With Communism so demonized, social progress in this ATL will lag behind OTL by decades; sure, OTL Communism would've made Karl Marx roll in his grave, but at least some Warsaw Pact states tried to give at least half a fuck about social equality - East Germany in particular.

 

[DumbersTC]

With Communism so demonized, social progress in this ATL will lag behind OTL by decades; sure, OTL Communism would've made Karl Marx roll in his grave, but at least some Warsaw Pact states tried to give at least half a fuck about social equality - East Germany in particular.

I wouldn't expect things like marriage equality anytime soon in this TL.

 

[Augenis]

I wouldn't expect things like marriage equality anytime soon in this TL.

...Why?

OTL Soviet Union wasn't all that much better than what you can see here ITTL, and that didn't stop things like marriage equality and social reform.

 

[Sorairo]

I wouldn't expect things like marriage equality anytime soon in this TL.

Why? The Soviets hated homosexuality even more than most of the West; it's likely gay rights in Russia at least may be ahead of the curve.

The Cultural Revolution of the 1960s still happened, its just that they're Right wing social Liberals rather than Left Wing social Liberals. Hays Code is still gone, the Pill still happened, urbanisation still pummelled the small towns - 90% of the factors that contributed to secularisation in the West still happen or have a counterpart. Hell, since Randism is openly atheistic, non-religious attitudes may be more acceptable in America, so long as you are Right wing while you're at it.

 

[MagicalPhantom345]

Excerpt from The Hammer and Stripes: Communism in America by Jason Palermo​

In the aftermath of anti-Communist laws being passed through America in the fifties, the traditional Communist organizations, notably the Communist Party USA, were obliterated. A pariah in all their old breeding grounds (the Unions, Social movements etc) the future of Communism in America would be decided by a much more dangerous subset of the movement; this was the birth of Neo-Communism. These groups were much smaller, but there were many of them, and they were incredibly hard to infiltrate. Few were interested in practical politics, but were attracted to the movement due to their own lack of opportunities and casual acceptance of violence. Many others simply had seriously mental issues and found their release through the actions of their comrades. Being so marginalized a group, they had few friends, and a laundry list of enemies – everyone from Objectivists to the Christians to the ‘Zionist Occupied Government’. While the original statements from the Soviet puppets around the world was that the Jews were being treated well, when the Soviets lacked the resources to create puppets, their genuine admirers simply justified their prejudices instead, though most repeated the notion of Holocaust Denial.


While the initial crimes committed by the organizations in the early 1960s included simple bank robbery, by the end of the decade, owing to the situation in the former Soviet Union, a much more urgent, outright bigoted streak took over. While the numbers of Russian refugees joining these movements was much lower than many believed, it was unlucky enough to happen at the same time as the Holocaust Museum Bombing [6] in Washington D.C. on December 21th 1968 (Stalin’s birthday in the Soviet calendar), which killed five people. The organisation that committed the action, ‘The American Revolutionary Committee’, would be obliterated before Christmas of that year, but not before they left an unforgettable influence on the Neo-Communist movement, and in particular, Martin Thompson.


A committed Communist, what was interesting was that he was indifferent to the ideology until he came to support it after the word of the Soviet Holocaust reached the West. Many family members suspected he could just have easily become a Nazi, since his motivation seemed more Anti-Semitic than anything else. Though he came from obscurity, he would be perhaps the most influential person in the blossoming Neo-Communist movement, but not for his terrorist exploits. He would go by the penname of ‘George Adams’ to write his infamous 1974 novel, ‘The Diary of Our Victory’. [7]


It takes place in the mid 1990s, a dystopia where it is entirely legal for rich people and Jews to rape and murder poor people at will, with the proletariat reduced to near literal serfdom. Children are forced to watch ‘atrocities as absurd as Old Wives Tales’ being shown in school of Soviet treatment of the Jews. One scene includes a Jewish woman claiming to be a Holocaust survivor being caught out in a lie by one of the students, before said student is beaten by the teacher for his ‘insubordination’. Objectivism and religion are both described as Jewish plots to control society, as is the media, Hollywood and even the sex industry. The narrator of the story, a man by the name of Carl Lennon, joins a committed organisation of Communists called ‘The Internationale’ who plan to overthrow the government and establish Communism across the world. They launch a number of terrorist attacks against the government, and after torture at the hands of Mossad, they escape and eventually take over much of California, seizing the nuclear arsenal there. From establishing a Communist society in the most populous U.S. state, they go to work. Jews, Objectivists, clergymen, businessmen, Republican and Democrat politicians, entertainers and anyone sympathetic to them are hanged from lampposts. The resulting turmoil travels over to Europe, where Communist insurrection begins to take over these countries as well, complete with Jews being killed in the streets. But the worst is yet to come: the protagonist uses the nuclear weapons to wreak international chaos. London, Zurich, Luxembourg, Monaco, Frankfurt, Singapore, Hong Kong and all other major financial centers are destroyed to ‘collapse the whole damned system’. As if making the proceedings more horrifying still, the protagonists proceed to drop five missiles on ‘Jew York’, wiping it from the map, as well as millions of lives (interestingly, Thompson himself was a New Yorker). Then, they use the missiles to obliterate the ‘traitorous’ former Eastern bloc countries such as Poland and Lithuania, before finally using the missiles to ‘obliterate every piece of land in the Colonial nations’ those being Israel, South Africa and Rhodesia. After the respective nations destructions, ‘their true inhabitants came in to righteously finish the job’. Though the protagonist ultimately sacrifices himself, his organisation triumphs, leading to Communist takeover of America, and ultimately the world. The rich and upper-middle classes, including their children, are executed, while the Jews are hunted to extinction – churches, mosques and synagogues are destroyed worldwide. Though much of the world is obliterated in the nuclear onslaught, the epilogue, written in the future of 2017 writes, “One hundred years after the beginning of our liberation, we have finally achieved what we have sought – a Communist world, where only Communists are left and the Devilspawn are dead”. [8]


‘The Diary of Our Victory’ was poorly written but became a sensation among Neo-Communists. The ADL described it as ‘The Bible of bigotry, perhaps only surpassed by Mein Kampf’. To this day, Neo-Communist extremists read the book and take inspiration from the psychopathic nature of the text. In the following years, Far-Left terrorism began to gain as brutal a reputation as her Far-Right counterpart, with its lone wolf killings; scholars suspect that many violent members of the Far-Right, or who may have been disposed to join them, were so impressed that they jumped over to ‘get their hands dirty’ as one reformed member put it. It’s also believed that the novel played a key role in laying the groundwork for the unholy fusion of Far Left and Right bigotries in the modern ‘National Bolshevik’ groups. Martin Thompson would not live long enough, however, to know the full influence his work would have.


By 1975, the FBI were closing in on him for multiple felonies, some political, others menial, and he was certain he didn’t have long before they knocked at his door. “Therefore,” he wrote in his suicide note, “I’ll at least take a Jew with me.” On March 24th 1975, Ayn Rand was giving a speech to the New York Objectivist Society, when Thompson leapt from his chair, charged the stage and shot her three times at point blank range, killing her instantly. Though the crowd ran for their lives, fearing they were next, he shot and killed himself instead. Just before he committed suicide, he called out, “Don’t worry about me! It’s the one’s coming after me you should worry about!” [9]

HOOOLY SHIT!!

 

[Clandango]

Aaaah, Westerns. Apparently a favorite of Stalin, though apparently he saw Soviet made ones, using Turks and Siberians as the natives oppressed by settlers. I would make a comment about the irony, but I think I read somewhere on here, or some books on gulags I got, about some Siberians bringing back escape do prisoners for a fee. Might be mixing that up with the Natives bringing back escaped slaves in Arose from the Azure Main, though. Anyways, this mean cowboy hats are more popular in Russia? I can see it being a way to symbolize non-Muslim oil magnates or off-duty workers in the petroleum industry (probably want a hard hat while working), though the exact type of hat would vary. Americans, Canadians, Argentinians, Australian, etc in the cattle industry all tend to have their own type of hats, and they probably wouldn't be great for keeping ears warm.

 

[Johannes Parisiensis]

A Culture Transformed

And what about promoting pre-1917 Russian culture? I could see some thinking Imperial Russia was a Golden Age, compared to TTL.

Ultimately, as it became clear the Soviets offered no response to America’s litany of victories, Nixon announced in 1963 that the space program would be scaled down to a ‘military only exercise’. By the time Knowland had come in, the arch-conservative had little stomach for the massive expenditure to reach the Moon after America’s space superiority had been so totally demonstrated. To that end, many Democrats cared more about money going to their poverty-stricken constituents than wild pie-in-the-sky schemes. It would be many years still before a Moon Landing would happen.

Space program is less advanced than OTL; are satellites still developped, given their utility, and will space stations be established or will they be considered as a waste of money?

In the aftermath of anti-Communist laws being passed through America in the fifties, the traditional Communist organizations, notably the Communist Party USA, were obliterated.

Will Syndicalistsimplicate themselves in the Civil Rights Movement, instead of Communists?

‘The Diary of Our Victory’ was poorly written but became a sensation among Neo-Communists. The ADL described it as ‘The Bible of bigotry, perhaps only surpassed by Mein Kampf’. To this day, Neo-Communist extremists read the book and take inspiration from the psychopathic nature of the text. In the following years, Far-Left terrorism began to gain as brutal a reputation as her Far-Right counterpart, with its lone wolf killings; scholars suspect that many violent members of the Far-Right, or who may have been disposed to join them, were so impressed that they jumped over to ‘get their hands dirty’ as one reformed member put it. It’s also believed that the novel played a key role in laying the groundwork for the unholy fusion of Far Left and Right bigotries in the modern ‘National Bolshevik’ groups. Martin Thompson would not live long enough, however, to know the full influence his work would have.

How much was political violence in the 1970s, compated to OTL? I would certainly see Neo-Communists, National Bolsheviks and various segregationists such as the United Klans of America or the NAtional States' Rights Party blow buildings and murder people.

By 1975, the FBI were closing in on him for multiple felonies, some political, others menial, and he was certain he didn’t have long before they knocked at his door. “Therefore,” he wrote in his suicide note, “I’ll at least take a Jew with me.” On March 24th 1975, Ayn Rand was giving a speech to the New York Objectivist Society, when Thompson leapt from his chair, charged the stage and shot her three times at point blank range, killing her instantly. Though the crowd ran for their lives, fearing they were next, he shot and killed himself instead. Just before he committed suicide, he called out, “Don’t worry about me! It’s the one’s coming after me you should worry about!” [9]

I would have thought he would have murdered more Objectivists before offing himself.

How's Jim Jones and his "People's Temple"?

OTL, he created a church as a "front organisation" for Communism; TTL, he might try to create a Syndicalist commune to attract new disciples.

 

[Clandango]

And what about promoting pre-1917 Russian culture? I could see some thinking Imperial Russia was a Golden Age, compared to TTL.

I imagine that Stalin would seen as an extension of the Czars. Most of which had some rather unpleasant major anti-Russian programs, at least for preceding century and a half. Also, paying for Romanov memorabilia or knock-offs would be a bit expensive. I can see Nicholas II being seen as an imcompetent, half-German(seen as, not is) autocrat who didn't should have either dropped out of the war earlier, never joined it, or at least have done something about those murderous Bolsheviks. Yah, the Bolsheviks didn't come to power until after much of the legwork had been done and they started overturning local elections they lost, but I expect a lot of anachronism and lies in the school textbooks available to them.

Also, do Golden Ages usually happen when a country is larger than it was at that point? Suppose in the case of the Netherlands and England looking back to the 1600s it is about art and culture, with people being happy with their lives as they are now, but how would it work for Russia? Petrograd would be a spiritual capital in that case, though i expect many would bring up how I guy who went to the West came back and enslaved Russians to swamp.

 

[Bookmark1995]

And what about promoting pre-1917 Russian culture? I could see some thinking Imperial Russia was a Golden Age, compared to TTL.

My dad took a Russian history course that was taught by a Russian immigrant. He told he learned about Peter the Great-not the Peter the Great that built fancy palaces and sought to modernize Russia, but the Peter the Great that oppressed serfs and murdered one of his sons.

My dad wrote a paper on Peter's dark side, and the Russian professor gave him a bad grade because he thought Peter was a cool guy.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn OTL has made statements defending tsarist Russia.

So there could be nostalgia for the time of the tsars-hopefully without nostalgia for the violent antisemitism of the era.

 

[Lalli]

So there could be nostalgia for the time of the tsars-hopefully without nostalgia for the violent antisemitism of the era.

There might very well be more nostalgy towards monarchy and idea about restoration of monarchy might be bit higher than in OTL.

 

[KuboCaskett]

Snip.

Somehow I honestly don't see how The Diary of Our Victory would be any better than the Turner Diaries, both involve mass murder of anyone considered to be the "undesirable"; and damn, what that guy did to Rand makes me almost sorry for her (though I'm of the indifferent yet somewhat critical opinion of her Objectivist philosophy).

 

[Sorairo]

Somehow I honestly don't see how The Diary of Our Victory would be any better than the Turner Diaries, both involve mass murder of anyone considered to be the "undesirable"; and damn, what that guy did to Rand makes me almost sorry for her (though I'm of the indifferent yet somewhat critical opinion of her Objectivist philosophy).

The Turner Diaries involves killing all non whites and Jews. The death toll there is like 95% of the worlds population including hardship and subversive killings.

 

[Magnimik]

Again, the Anti-Trotsky move is considered ITTL to be an Anti-Semitic act.

I would like to know how Trotsky (and, by this point, the Old Bolsheviks in general) is viewed ITTL? Even in OTL, they sometimes are viewed more favorably than Stalin. They can get even more sympathy since Stalin, without any exaggeration, is the worst human being in the world history, and any opposition to him would be seen more preferable just because of that; not to mention that Stalin's anti-Semitism can be easily seen as the main factor in the purges of the influential Jewish Bolshevik leaders, such as Kamenev and Zinoviev. Also, Trotsky was one of the first people who emphasied Stalin's anti-Semitism and thus can be seen as the unheard prophet in some ways.

However, aside from the fact that Bolsheviks had their own skeletons in the closet, and it is unlikely that in Objectivist America radical leftists would get any sympathy, there is a thing to consider: while both Lenin and Trotsky were sincerly horrified by Tsarist anti-Semitic policies and tried their best to fight the anti-Semitic sentiment in Russia, they viewed Jews as some kind of a Pariah caste rather than a separate nation and despised "reactionary" Jewish nationalism, to the point that Lenin once said that Zionism is worse than anti-Semitism. Lenin allowed, as a temporary measure, the existence of the special Jewish committies and the use of Yiddish as the Jewish language, but the early Soviet government at the same time suppressed the Jewish culture through eradicating the Hebrew language, Judaism and other signs of the "reactionary" Jewish cultural identity, hoping to assimilate Jews through non-violent ways. I wonder if Bolsheviks, as the result, are viewed as the unwitting instigators of the future genocides in the Soviet Union, who, despite their initial good intentions, opened the way to Stalin's crimes, who brought the problem of the reactionary nations and their inability to properly integrate into the Soviet international society to its logical conclusion...

 

[Bookmark1995]

This makes me wonder — how Trotsky (and, by this point, the Old Bolsheviks in general) is viewed ITTL? Even in OTL, they sometimes are viewed more favorably than Stalin. They can get even more sympathy since Stalin, without any exaggeration, is the worst human being in the world history, and any opposition to him would be seen more preferable just because of that; not to mention that Stalin's anti-Semitism can be easily seen as the main factor in the purges of the influential Jewish Bolshevik leaders, such as Kamenev and Zinoviev. Also, Trotsky was one of the first people who emphasied Stalin's anti-Semitism and thus can be seen as the unheard prophet in some ways.

However, aside from the fact that Bolsheviks had their own skeletons in the closet, and it is unlikely that in Objectivist America radical leftists would get any sympathy, there is a thing to consider: while both Lenin and Trotsky were sincerly horrified by Tsarist anti-Semitic policies and tried their best to fight the anti-Semitic sentiment in Russia, they viewed Jews as some kind of a Pariah caste rather than a separate nation and despised "reactionary" Jewish nationalism, to the point that Lenin once said that Zionism is worse than anti-Semitism. Lenin allowed, as a temporary measure, the existence of the special Jewish committies and the use of Yiddish as the Jewish language, but the early Soviet government at the same time suppressed the Jewish culture through eradicating the Hebrew language, Judaism and other signs of the "reactionary" Jewish cultural identity, hoping to assimilate Jews through non-violent ways. I wonder if Bolsheviks, as the result, are viewed as the unwitting instigators of the future genocides in the Soviet Union, who, despite their initial good intentions, opened the way to Stalin's crimes, who brought the problem of the reactionary nations and their inability to properly integrate into the Soviet international society to its logical conclusion...

I think anti-left historians will take this enmity and parade it around as proof that "Communists despised the Jews". Lenin and Trotsky disliked Jewish identity, Stalin just took that hate into a horrifically depraved direction.