What if the Russian Empire survived?

Even better case then one posted above^^

1911:
Stolypin succesfully passes his bill of Zemstvo and continue with Agrarian reforms.
He starts huntin down reacionaries at an even faster pace.

Rasputin dies in Siberia

1912

Alexay dies of Hemophelia Russian royal house in shock

Pytr soon continues passing even more reforms with a tsar in mourning

Tsar and family comforted by Pyotr who consoles the family

1913

Stolypin starts to build railways, and transportation system across Russia once he realizes war is imminent

Stolypin soon successfully cracks down on the communists


1914
Lenin tried and executed Communist leaders shot
A rogue commy named Stalin dies in a brawl
1915

Stolypin and he Duma succesfully consolidate their grip and with Stolypins reforms he becomes an icon to the Russians who love him

WWI starts


So from here just have him manage the war with competance with Brusilov and by 1920s no communists, The Duma in power and a survivng Romanov Dynasty



All accomplished with a POD after 1910
 
So, no collapse of Imperial Russia + no rise of communism and/or civil war = more socialist/syndicalist revolts in Europe(if any)

So, lets say that the Weimar Republic still existed well in to the 1940's(Sorry, I know that the ASB stuff about a commie revolt in Germany was just stupid my bad!) and that Adolf Hitler died during WWI. Would there still be some sort of national socialist movement in the nation and a grab for power occurring in the country?

Lets also just say hypothetically speaking, that Benito Mussolini's March to Rome fails and without the fears of socialism due to a successful Russian Revolution, support of the then small National Fascist Party by the Liberal Establishment would be nil(mostly), and the more you think about it...No March on Rome, right?

So would their be as big a fascist movement in Germany if the one in Italy either failed or was largely diminished?

So would this world in the '40's even see a second World War(would there even be a reason to have one?)? Would Poland be most likely annexed by the Russian Empire? Would Europe be a more peaceful(and right-wing, anti-syndicalism/socialism) region of the planet, complete with a democratic(hopefully it would stay that way) Germany that solved its inflation problems/other problems(would that be possible?), No Italian invasion of Ethiopia(unless they had plans for Ethiopia all along, idk a lot about Ethiopia back then), and no Cold War?

Phew, It took me a while to type this up. ;)
 
With Nicholas II being a constitutional Monarch in this AH, would that mean that he would not be able to oppress the people, driving them to the brink of revolution like he did in Our TL?
 
Well yes eventually Nicolas becomes a const monarch, the beuty of the scenario above is that Communism is wiped out and instead you have a reformed Russia with a monarch who has executive powers.


You see I found out that In reality Nicky and His wife were worrying too much about Alexay their son that Rasputin soon took over, however Stolypin managed to exile Rasputin, howevr Rasputin returned so in thisi POD he still has the Tsars favour and passes his reforms, Im shocked that you AH Commers well versed in Russian history haven't heard of Stolypin?????


Btw Stolypin for those who do not know was Prome minister of the Russian Duma before being assasinated in 1911 by a Bolshevik revoulutionary, he has the tsars ear, exiled Rasputin, cracked down on dissedents passed many reforms, in otl when the Zemstevo failed to pass he resigned but in this tl it
does get passed and we have a Prime minister Stolypin who then continues with his reforms, Alexay is dead, So he gains virtually free reign and he steps up his crackdown ending the Comunists, so with no Communists he is known as a hero to Russian people for his reforms and come WWI he doesn't screw up and actually Lets Russia win some battles, so with this set in stone the Monarchy survives with Executive powers after 1910 with a Nicolas II tsars rule.
 
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My question is, what would happen to Europe with the downfall of communism? Would we see a Russian Empire last even today in 2010? A Russia that functions like modern UK, where the Tsar is only a figurehead and the Duma and senate have the actual power?
 
My question is, what would happen to Europe with the downfall of communism? Would we see a Russian Empire last even today in 2010? A Russia that functions like modern UK, where the Tsar is only a figurehead and the Duma and senate have the actual power?


Oh ok well you see technically the Tsar still has executive powers, here's a quick outline, WWI ends differently most likely the Russians win at. tannenberg and soon overwlhm German Prussia with superior odds, with the heartland of the Jinkers taken the Junkers will want Russia dead, however Stolypin let's Brusilov launch his offensive earlier leading to a German defeat, in this tl Stolypin adds rails so troop movement is easier, About postwar Most likely Russia is not Humiliated so see a smaller Poland, Ah will be dialsmantled like otl Weimar Germany gets hyperinflation, however Hitler dies during war ok, so Nazis don't rise to power but I dnt know who will fill the gap, it's still unclear to me due to the massive changes this will have but what I can tell you is their might not be WW2 as we know it completly changing history...
 
My post-war points:

-Maybe by 1940's to the '50s Weimar Germany solves its hyperinflation/and other problems (if possible) while managing to stay a democracy(complete with prejudice against Jews and minorities, who I believe were blamed for Germany's post war problems, part of the reason Hitler was able to do what he did)

-Italy does not become fascist and invade Ethiopia nor does it invade the Balkans(yet then again they had their eyes on colonies for awhile as they had a late head start due to having to be reunified first back when they were only two separate kingdoms)

-The Russian Empire either is rewarded a huge chunk of Poland or completely annexes Poland.

-The Baltic states had no independence wars against the USSR/Germany. Most of the states(if not all) may still be partitioned by Russia

-The United States is still very isolationist well into the '50s-'60s. No Korean War/Vietnam War. No McCarthyism. No Red Scare. All in all a very different America

-The British Empire will still own 25% of the world(unless India revolts still)

-French also holds onto its colonies

-Maybe later in the 20th century and 21st century a movement to end colonialism erupts

-More Monarchism

-No Indiana Jones movies, No Red Dawn, No World in Conflict or C&C Red Alert series(maybe we'll get to see a Tiberium series), No Operation Flash point or Crysis, no Saving Private Ryan and my god: NO RAMBO MOVIES!

-and I could go on and on...
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
So, no collapse of Imperial Russia + no rise of communism and/or civil war = more socialist/syndicalist revolts in Europe(if any)

So, lets say that the Weimar Republic still existed well in to the 1940's(Sorry, I know that the ASB stuff about a commie revolt in Germany was just stupid my bad!) and that Adolf Hitler died during WWI. Would there still be some sort of national socialist movement in the nation and a grab for power occurring in the country?

Lets also just say hypothetically speaking, that Benito Mussolini's March to Rome fails and without the fears of socialism due to a successful Russian Revolution, support of the then small National Fascist Party by the Liberal Establishment would be nil(mostly), and the more you think about it...No March on Rome, right?

So would their be as big a fascist movement in Germany if the one in Italy either failed or was largely diminished?

So would this world in the '40's even see a second World War(would there even be a reason to have one?)? Would Poland be most likely annexed by the Russian Empire? Would Europe be a more peaceful(and right-wing, anti-syndicalism/socialism) region of the planet, complete with a democratic(hopefully it would stay that way) Germany that solved its inflation problems/other problems(would that be possible?), No Italian invasion of Ethiopia(unless they had plans for Ethiopia all along, idk a lot about Ethiopia back then), and no Cold War?

Phew, It took me a while to type this up. ;)

Hah, Mussolini might even stay a leftie, and perhaps the very amusing National Syndicalist part of the Italian Socialist Party (the part Mussolini belonged to, essentially proto- Fascists) gain control of Italy.
 
If the russian empire survives its going to be reliant on US capital (even more so if it staggers out of a civil war), so come 1929 its utterly fucked. As others have said butterflying away bolshevism, probably leads to socialism and syndiclaism being a lot stronger. Fascism probably won;t exist, and whatever brands of nationalist militarism take its place will be a fair bit weaker ITTL.

The russian empire surviving till the 50's is pretty much ASB i would have thought. Plus the idea of what would inevitably be such a weak economy facing off against the industrial might of the US in a cold war is a bit ridiculous.

Unfortunately, Stalinism may be butterflied, but fascism almost certainly won't be....... :(
 
No, that was more of a stupid joke-cough cough.

WW2 never happens as Adolf Hitler is killed in the trenches and the Weimar republic still exists even into the '50-'60's.The Russian Empire never has a civil war due to reforms and the fact that Alexander II survives and Alexander the III does not become Tsar-leading to a constitutional monarchy that Nicholas II is forced to abide to-thus he cannot be so autocratic.

The Duma and Senate have the real power. However as posted above the 1929 Great Depression would screw Russia over.
 
No, that was more of a stupid joke-cough cough.

WW2 never happens as Adolf Hitler is killed in the trenches and the Weimar republic still exists even into the '50-'60's.The Russian Empire never has a civil war due to reforms and the fact that Alexander II survives and Alexander the III does not become Tsar-leading to a constitutional monarchy that Nicholas II is forced to abide to-thus he cannot be so autocratic.

The Duma and Senate have the real power. However as posted above the 1929 Great Depression would screw Russia over.

Right...so.

See...we generally assume that a more distant divergence would create earlier additional divergences because of cause and effect and ALSO because of effects we cannot easily predict, these being the forum's beloved "butterflies". Moreover, as changes beget changes only corrected by the constraints of really writ-large economy and geopolitics (read: stuff we cannot handle in our heads if it changes too much), the amount of divergences would snowball until a huge critical mass is reached where the following decades become increasingly unlike our baseline comparison, the so-called Our Time Line, OTL).

So Alexander II living and Alex III never becoming Tsar is already by itself a very very large change, which happens about 60 years before *WW1 and 70 years before the *Great Depression. Even if it is convenient to have those *events show up in the story in some way, they would almost necessarily look nothing like OTL events. Anyway, that's why people always ask for the POD timeframe; to be able to deal with accumulating changes. Hard adherents to the butterfly principle and the chaotic weather effects would in fact say that Hitler himself will never be born in any universe where Alexander II lived, due to butterflies.

Just something to consider, even if you don't wholly agree.
 
Would the Man in the High Castle be an example of ASB? FDR dies, resulting in the US still suffering from the effects of the Great Depression and thus remaining isolationist, causing a domino effect where Germany SOMEHOW wins on the Eastern front(taking into account however, that there would be no lend lease to the Allies), Japan defeats the entire USN at pearl harbor, which happens to be all stationed there-including our aircraft carriers, resulting in all of the Pacific falling-including the logistical nightmare that would be the invasion of Australia. Thus, WWII ends with an Axis victory?
 
Well, Russian Empire may survive until the present time had Alexander II survives assassination and continues the reform that he done and transform Russia into a constitutional monarchy and industrialize the economy more than in OTL. As long as Nicolas II is around, revolution is inevitable. The OTL was a just sudden event due to huge casualties of Russian troops at the hands of the CP. Had the revolution or the WWI delayed by 15 years, Russia will be in better position to survive the monarchy or shifting the political system without resorting to communism. Russia pre-1917 is industrializing and its growth rate at that time was analogue to what China experienced right now. Had WWI delayed by 10 years, Russia will surpass Germany in terms of industrial output and makes for Germany to wage war with Russia due to more modernization of Russian transportation and warfare.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
BTW--"Tsar and Soviets!"? Wouldn't any White regime purge and denounce all references to "soviets" whatsoever? At best it would be "Tsar and Duma!" I think.

I quite realize that the Bolsheviks did not have a monopoly on the term and concept of "soviets" (indeed the word just means "council" in Russian and it might be pretty hard to purge the very word from the language!) and conceivably far-sighted and astute Whites might seek to shore up support for their regime by trying to co-opt the classes that made the soviets rather than kick them in the teeth. Unfortunately for Russia, even this ATL of yours seems to demonstrate that vision and diplomacy were rather alien to any of the Whites, certainly the ones most likely to actually come to power.
As in OTL, the idea of "Tsar and the Soviets!" probably won't come around until the 1930s when Russia drifts more towards fascism. Of course the Old Guard is going to be opposed to anything that smacks of Marxism, but with the political and economic developments of the 1930s, the new generation of Russian politicians is going to have to contend with appealing to a growing middle class that is uncomfortable with the hyper-traditionalism of the Old Guard. The Duma won't be championed since it'll likely fail and is an example of parliamentarianism, whereas "soviets" carries the connotation of populism and popular consideration. "Tsar and the Soviets!" is basically a policy that reconciles modernity to the traditional values of the autocracy.
So all right--Russia can go to hell in its own conservative way, at least they aren't conquering their neighbors.*

Or are they? If Poland is SOL, except insofar as they can fight off White Tsarist Russia by main force of their own (hah! unless WTR is amazingly weak for its size, a point I will return to); can the Baltics be far behind?
We've got to remember that White Russia isn't going to be in any position to attack Poland fresh out of the gate. They're going to have to rebuild and settle things on the homefront before they go storming into Eastern Europe.

While Poland isn't going to be receiving support from the West as they did IOTL, they are going to do their damnedest to build up their armed forces. The same goes for the Baltic States, though Estonia will probably be reabsorbed into Russia. Perhaps Latvia as well, but Lithuania is probably going to be able to retain independence.

In the time it takes for Russia to rebuild its (European) war-making potential, Poland and the Baltics are likely going to form some sort of alliance to counter Russian aggression. The Czechs may also supply the Poles with weapons since I'm sure they won't want Russia on their very doorstep. So while the Russians probably will try to retake Poland (you can count on them trying to undermine the Polish-Baltic alliance by exploiting Polish-Lithuanian hostility), they probably won't have the easiest time of it.
Finland I grant can probably hold its own, largely from the example OTL plus they would probably secure help from Sweden and get the sympathy of other Westerners too.
Agreed.
But Baltics, Poland...what about Rumania?
Romania probably won't be touched. Regardless of the traditional Russo-Romanian mistrust, we have to remember that the West won't want to see Russia too powerful. They won't have a problem selling Poland and the Baltics up-river since the former stabilizes things between Germany and Russia and the latter doesn't really matter because Russia's had the places for hundreds of years and probably will have to deal with an ugly, suppurating guerrilla war.

If the Russians make a play for Romania, everybody in the region is going to be angry. It'll give Russia too much control over the Black Sea and move them even closer to the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, which is especially discomforting considering the excellent relations Russia always enjoyed with Bulgaria. Nobody is going to want the Russians mucking about with the Straits. So Romania stands as a buffer between Russia and Southeastern Europe.
Would some "border adjustments" be deemed in order in St Petersburg? (Surely it gets its pre-WWI name back...)
It'll likely keep the name Petrograd. It's far more Russian than the Germanophonic "Sankt-Peterburg" and Russification is likely to be a huge hallmark of the new Russia.

Turkey? Iran? Afghanistan? China? Mongolia? What do these Whites do if the Japanese take Manchuria?
Turkey's too strong for the Whites to go messing around with them, and the Caucasus are going to be one bitch of a front for the Russians to plow through and the Turks will be in a better position to hold them off this time. The West won't let the Russians mess around in Iran due to the importance of the oil there. Afghanistan is too close to India for British comfort, so expect opposition and support for the Afghans if the Russians try anything funny. Russia is more than likely to woo some Chinese warlords, but that's probably the extent of it.

Mongolia, on the other hand, will be a tolerable concession to Russia since...well, since it's freaking Mongolia. The Japanese probably won't try and hold onto Russian Manchuria since not only would that violate the agreement they had with the Whites, but it would create far too much conflict in the region since Russia will have Western support to check Japanese aggression in the area, something that the Soviets didn't have.
I'd expect military adventurism would be a big part of the ruling formula in such a Russia. The Western powers might not care much about this or that victim of the Bear but when the pattern becomes evident, might not some of them start making a stand and organizing aid to the likeliest next victim, maybe even strategic guarantees via an alliance?
Military adventurism will only take place outside of Europe, probably in Central Asia or the steppes and involve genociding any Turkic populations that revolt. We'll probably see some more or less independent (i.e. STAVKA-approved warlords like Semyonov) frolicking in China and making friends with the various warlords, probably to form an anti-Japanese bloc.

As for European alliance situations, see above.
This brings me to the question of Russian weakness. It could be the regime has the good sense to refrain from all these adventures if they know that they are just not as developed as the Western powers and that the state is weak and they can't expose too many of the cracks they have painted over.

Would Tsarist Russia be weak? Would they have the ability to have sufficient industrial development plus a tolerable enough situation on the land along with adequate crops being sold to keep the cities reasonably far from desperation and the memory of 1917?
Russia will have the ability to develop because they'll still have access to the myriad resources that their lands offer. Since competent politicians will be in charge instead of people like Denikin and the whole clusterfuck year of 1917 is gone, things should be somewhat easier, or at the very least more stable.

Things aren't going to be easy, of course, but the Soviets made things more or less work before Collectivization. So long as the government leaves the peasants alone to early Soviet degrees, things should be tolerable. Of course the landed aristocracy is going to be meddlesome, but their power outside of the military will have been more or less broken by the Civil War, sort of like the Junkers in Weimar Germany but even more so.

We should also remember that Russia will be in a desperate search for foreign capital, which means opportunities galore for Western companies. Without Soviet autarky, Russia will be more accessible to the global market and there are many gains to be had from investing in it.
If industrial development resumes and continues, why would there not be new working class movements that more or less repeat variations on the Bolsheviks and in the countryside, new Left SRs? How can Tsarist Russia have even modest levels of industrial development without putting a leftist gun to its own head?
With regards to things like unions, we can expect much more Okhrana-backed unions to be set up and used to divert attention away from the government and shift blame to minorities like Jews and Old Believers and such. We should also remember that things probably won't be so bad from the get-go since the saner Whites are still around and they'll know better than to completely alienate the Left. Workers movements will probably come to be co-opted by the fascists when they start cropping up.
But if they choose repression and the price is a slowed or stagnating pace of development, they will not recover from the losses of the war and Civil War and fall farther and farther behind the West.

Or Eastern Europe for that matter. Not that these were powerhouses of innovative development policy nor visionary resolution of social conflict nor did they inherit a much better position than these Russians, and they obviously have much less territorial basis to draw from. Still, it might not be so strange for other small bordering states to replicate Finland's OTL feat of resisting the Soviet Union.
*see above
If the men you suspect would take power were reasonably smart men they might avoid all these conflicts lest their regime be put to the test. If they were less astute, the Tsar might wind up very very embarrassed and the empire might actually lose more territory. What then?
Could you clarify this please? I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say.
A weak enough Russia might be an irresistible temptation to a number of Western powers, Hitler or no Hitler. Particularly for Germany of course even under much more moderate leadership than OTL--they still would be looking for markets, for resources, for cheap labor, for all the things that tempted so many Germans before and again OTL to a "Drang nach Osten."
The Drang nach Osten was more or less a myth propagated by the Soviet and Polish governments to demonize the Germans. There were, of course, some rabid Junkers and politicians who advocated this, but they were a minority and were typically just entertaining masturbatory völkisch fantasies.
So, having sketched out the political situation, what would be the social and economic realities on the ground underlying it? Are you assuming that without those pesky Bolsheviks Russian economic development would go forward smoothly with a bit of light guidance? What are the grounds for thinking that would work? If you don't assume that--how screwed is Russia and how do your picks for running it afterward unscrew it? And how well will that work, and will it have them holding their own against their various foreign rivals they have done little or nothing to placate or set at ease?
I don't think things will just go smoothly. You're still going to have to contend with the occasional Leftist terrorist attacks and agitation and the various peasant revolts that the Soviets had to deal with. But again, since the autocracy exists in name only and saner political heads are still around in Petrograd and the nobles who spent most of their time being parasites and fucking with the peasants are going to be in a somewhat weaker position than the Junkers in Germany, things should go better than they did pre-War.

Late Imperial Russia was actually doing very well economically. While the foundations were fragile, they were strengthening, and the additional foreign investment will help. Russia will have problems, but so long as they don't go around oppressing peasants and workers to the degree that they did before (and they probably won't since lessons will have been learned from the Civil War), rebuilding should gradually recommence.

Once the fascists begin sneaking in, there will be issues. Something akin to Collectivization may very well happen, but the urban working class and entrenched elites will both probably be on the side of the quasi-syndicalist government while cultural chauvinism/ultra-nationalism and good ol' fashion scapegoating abound.
I tend to assume the Reds prevailed for a reason. Your root POD is that unlike OTL, the White leadership got their act together and submitted to a hierarchy among them. One which by the way ultimately purges many of them! Why did they not do this OTL? Could they really?
It's not so much that the White leadership got its act together so much as they didn't let it fall apart. A hierarchy did exist in that pretty much every major warlord agreed that Kolchak was more or less top dog. Once the Baltic and Southern fronts began collapsing, that changed because Yudenich gave up, Wrangel resigned, Miller was defeated, and it pretty much became "Every man for himself!" and the likes of Denikin and Semyonov and fon Shternberg began running rampant as the whole White movement rapidly decayed into shit.

The military purge is theoretical. If STAVKA surrenders and becomes absolutely loyal to whatever party takes power, well and good. If, however, it tries to retain its independence and dominance, than you'll likely see a Night of the Long Knives or something like that.

It's quite amazing to think what the outcome of one battle may have wrought. A White victory at Oryol basically means that the Southern front doesn't crumble, which means that the Baltic front doesn't crumble, which means that the Siberian front doesn't crumble, and Bolshevik Russia (which during 1919 had basically shrunk to the size of medieval Muscovy) is destroyed.
 
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