Chapter 13.5: Aftermath of the Soviet Civil War
When the dust settled, Yezhov and Beria were dead, Kaganovich and his (former) subordinates were either dead or languishing in Lubyanka, and there were only two political forces remaining out of the Civil War: The aging Marshal Zhukov with much of the Red Army at his command, and a faction of the Civil War that shocked the world by merely making it out of this mess alive without resorting to the terrible methods of the other parties. A multi-party convention was held from April of 1970 until September of 1971 to decide on the future course of the nation, a course that would involve rebuilding, and would involve failsafes to prevent the instability that plagued the post-WWII troubles that led to the near-inevitable Civil War.
The outcome of the convention held in Moscow was as follows, though many broad strokes would occur before and after, not just during:
* The NKVD would be permanently dissolved. Forces who surrendered to the Red Army and various aligned militias who went on to serve against their former allegiance would be rehabilitated.
* Forces who surrendered but did not later fight on would be put to trial, but only those who committed egregious war crimes would be ruthlessly punished under the full extent of the law.
* Generals who fought under the commands of Nikolai Yezhov or Lavrentiy Beria would be put on trial for crimes against humanity and crimes against peace, concepts that, just years earlier, were alien to many of the common folk of the country. Those found guilty would be put to death.
* Lazar Kaganovich would be charged with numerous crimes, including the aforementioned crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and general war crimes, alongside charges of treason. (Kaganovich would later be sentenced to death and executed on the 55th anniversary of the Revolution on the Gregorian Calendar: November 7, 1972.)
* Alexander Shelepin would face trial under charges of treason. (He would be found guilty, but taking into consideration his reluctant but willing surrender as well as collaboration with the Red Army in hunting down the traitorous NKVD remnants, would instead face ten years of jail time rather than a firing squad.)
* The re-establishment of both the Politburo and Central Committee, with appointments made by leadership positions in the Red Army and the more civilian-leaning provisional government still centered in Leningrad.
* The production and use of flamethrowers for any and all purposes are to be banned. Any and all remaining flamethrowers or similar incendiary devices
[1] were to be turned in to Soviet authorities and properly destroyed.
* The production and use of biological and chemical weapons for any and all means and ends are to be banned. Any and all such weapons are to be turned in to Soviet authorities and properly destroyed.
* Numerous other clauses agreed upon, mostly minor in significance.
After the Moscow Convention of 1971-72, at least twenty thousand men and women from across all warring factions in the conflict would be sent to trial and put to death hours later
[2], with a further fifty thousand or more serving hard labor in the frozen lands of northern Siberia
[3]. Others, if they held positions in the Army before the War and defected to fight for another leader but did not have a high rank and did not burn people alive, were dishonored for desertion, stripped of their ranks, and discharged, but were otherwise given a lighter hand than the rest. Following the end of what many dubbed the "Second Great Purge"
[4], Marshal Zhukov announced to the Union that he was stepping down from his position and retiring from official service, effective at the end of 1972. Many were sad to see the departure of one of the men who saved the Union, and even sadder once the stress of managing everything and his old age caught up with him. passing away months later. This threw whoever was left in any semblance of authority into a brief power struggle for leadership of the Union, one that shockingly (to the cynics, anyway) didn't result in another civil war. The details aren't all that important, but nobody in the Red Army had the charisma and stature of Zhukov, and most politicians left were the reform-minded moderates, so the event was rather civil, with impassioned speeches, promises made, and a few white lies here and there. The recently appointed and reconvened bureaucratic bodies of the Union voted to give the Premiership to Alexei Kosygin, the senior partner in the Kosygin-Gromyko duumvirate that dominated the reformist clique of the 1960s. The margin was difficult to dispute, and Kosygin set out on the difficult task of overseeing the reconstruction of the crumbled Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Railroads were rebuilt, power lines went up, materials flowed again, and farms began to grow more food beyond subsistence again. State-sponsored manufacturing was put into place, and the five-year plans that characterized part of the economic policy of the late Stalin were put into place with mostly reasonable quotas. Collectivization was not enforced, private plots of land were allotted to various individuals, and public works programs were started to expand the rebuilt infrastructure, including extensions of sewer systems. Medicine would remain in short supply throughout the early-to-mid 1970s, but some areas were sparsely populated enough that it wouldn't be all that easy to spread. Infrastructure in Siberia, neglected since the early fifties, would be brought up to modern standards. Stalingrad (now renamed Volgograd), Smolensk, Yakutsk, Rostov, and eastern Krasnoyarsk would all be rebuilt from the ground up with architectural styles both new and old. (Dnepropetrovsk fell within Ukraine, and was already mostly rebuilt by occupying forces.) A new constitution was written, and certain freedoms were legislated and small-scale market reforms were implemented. Worker's rights were enshrined, and local elections
[5] were occurring for the first time in decades. A new flag would soon be adopted in an effort to look towards the future rather than continue living within the past, and debates would rage in the Central Committee over whether to adopt a new and forward-looking name for their Motherland, ones that would fizzle out after the eventual re-integration of Central Asian territories that were part of the Union before the Civil War.
The ongoing Second Great Depression, with the USSR not engaging with much of any trading with the West and Japan's sphere of influence, did not strongly affect the state of the Union. The nation wasn't exporting all that much, anyway. The Russians were a perseverent and hardy people, roughing out the hopelessness of years past the best they could. And through the 1970s, the economic woes that would cause the end of the Italian Empire, the accelerated destabilization of Japan and her Co-Prosperity Sphere and causing the sleeping-in giant that was the United States to finally take measures to prevent another economic disaster did little to the battered nation whose duct tape was slowly but surely being replaced with strong welding and new steel. While Kosygin would die in 1977 from the stresses of leadership, Andrei Gromyko, his former partner, would become General Secretary with wide support in the echelons of government and of the people whose quality of life improving for the first time since the 1940s.
Russia will slowly move on from the horrors of her past towards a brighter future. The scars of the 1950s and 1960s would never truly disappear, and millions upon millions of human beings would have to live with how it affected them physically and psychologically. The government truly wanted to help the people, not just to ease their pain. The optimism didn't start out early, but as the years went on it built itself up, and a general sense that life was truly worth living began to emerge. Even with the rest of the world facing its own problems and the problems encompassing much of the rest of Asia, from Japan's numerous crises getting out of hand to India's looming debt crisis and sectarian divides to the regimes within Arabia and Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Even with the dark places on Earth getting darker by the day. And even though the USSR was far from utopian, Russia stole a phrase out of American history, denoting this time in the Soviet Union (technically now just the Russian SFSR) as the "Era of Good Feelings", lasting from 1978 until certain events outside of the country occurred in August of 1986...
[6]
DEATH TOLL - EARLY ESTIMATES: ~30 million estimated casualties between the years 1962 and 1971 directly as a result of the circumstances of war
* approx. 20 million from starvation and/or famine and related malnutrition problems
* approx. 6 million from naturally-spreading diseases
* a little under 5 million in combat, including deaths from biochemical warfare
FINAL DEATH TALLY AFTER INTENSE STUDY, AS OF THE YEAR 2000:
32,071,598 fatalities directly related to the 2nd Russian Civil War, with over half a million bodies missing and presumed dead.
[1] Items used to light fires in fireplaces or campfires that didn't have all that much of a military application were naturally exempt from this legislation.
[2] The Soviets when it comes to kangaroo courts have a... uh, a very interesting interpretation of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, you see. The main focus is on the "right to a speedy trial" whilst ignoring most of the other language.
[3] I mean, what did you expect? This war was a black and gray morality type of thing, where the reformist forces had their own flaws and the Red Army Junta in Moscow wasn't the most democratic or the most soft, but at least they weren't bonkers like seemingly everyone else. After a grueling war, there are plenty of people who are more than pissed that so many people are dead and their beautiful homeland is a shell of its former self.
[4] More deadly than the first one, but unlike the first one more of its victims were deserving of what they got. Not all of them, mind you, but the previous footnote probably reflects the prevalent mindset.
[5] They're not as 'free' as the West would want them to be, and they're not the de-facto socialist democracy that is the Iberian Confederation, but they're on the right track. The Communist Party is still the only major party allowed to participate, though independents are getting some token support here and there. Popular elections at the national level won't be a thing until the 1990s, where some fresh faces will finally make their way into the limelight...
[6] Details on this event will not be provided prematurely. You're welcome to speculate, though.
A lot of OTL stuff at this point is getting butterflied away due to the circumstances (both fortunate and not) this world finds itself in, and I find that the relatively brief pop culture updates are something I can no longer in good conscience get away with.