alternatehistory.com

A Viennese friend of mine once idly wondered, when we were talking about the very bad old days, if the Russians had ever seriously regretted letting Austria go away (as in giving up their zone of control), particularly after Tito and Stalin had their (at the time) famous divorce.

The conversation floated by into my mind as I was contemplating doing a tour of Croatia next year, the premise going something like this:

Stalin, in his late stage syphilis (no, but we can dream can't we?), decides to kill two birds with one hammer and sickle. Orders the military discipline of Yugoslavia; moving through eastern Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.
Ah, but you say, they will resist as strongly as they did against the Germans and Italians.
But, I answer, the Russians will get a lot more collaborators - we are all Marxist-Leninist comrades - and the real seduction: the hell with Marshal Tito's fairy tales about united we stand, we will give you, Serbs, Croats, Bosnian, all full independent status within the Warsaw Pact.

The West, for cogent reasons, will of course, do little, a la 1956 and 1968. And the Russian navy gets a shot at building a serious Med force...
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