To start, this is the first time I have posted a timeline here. This is not going to be a conventional posting, and will go back on forth on a number of topics. Many of the writings are done in universe and so they may have certain biases attached to them. Depending on how people respond, I may address certain aspects of the world in more detail. While I have a pretty solid outline of the timeline up until about 2000, things can change depending on other posters' observations. A project like this needs input from others to keep it balanced.
Also, it does include an original character. I know they are not prohibited in these sorts of thread, but I figured that it is better to state it upfront. That said, there are many, many historical figures as well. I came across a lot of interesting fellows in my research for this. May they get the recognition they deserve for the sacrifices (or mistakes) they made in RL.
Let's start with a brief teaser:
…It was a critical moment in Russian History. Nearly three months after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the Provisional Government of Prince Lvov was blundering closer towards collapse with each passing day. Then came the bombshell of April 20th, 1917 when the so-called Milyukov note was leaked to the Bolsheviks by a sympathizer within the government. The note, a declaration by Foreign Minister (and head of the powerful Centre-Left Kadet Party) Pavel Milyukov that the Provisional Government intended to carry on the war against the Central Powers until it was won, utterly against the wishes of the vast majority of the Russian people, started a crisis that would lead to one of the great watershed moments of 20th century history: the coup of May 25th.
The rapid seizure of Petrograd and Moscow by a number of elite units of the Russian army under the authority of General Aleksei Brusilov with the support of Petrograd Military District Commander Lavr Kornilov and the tentative approval of ex-Army Commander in Chief Mikhail Alekseyev saw the dawn of the Russian Unionist Government of 1917-20, the exit of Russia from the First World War, and the start of a nearly three year period of Civil War that raged across many regions of Russia’s vast domains. The regime that would emerge from that trial by fire would manage to survive one war with Poland, another with the Grand Axis, but its greatest challenge would be to find its way towards democracy, economic development, and political acceptance in a world where greatness always seemed to lie around the corner, but remained frustratingly elusive.
In light of developments coming from the government of Prime Minister Yakovlev in the past year, it seems a good time as any to publish a new history concerning the rise of the Unionists. Research in the past fifteen years has considerably changed the Western scholar’s perspective of what transpired in those tense days before and after the coup, especially the mindset of the men who pushed for it. One of the most critical discoveries was related to the full origins of the “evil genius” of the movement: Mikhail Stenin, on whose interference the whole conspiracy was almost certainly hatched…
From the introduction of John Griffith-Downs, “Rallying Around the Blue Banner: The All-Russian Military Union’s Leadership and Ideology: 1917-1942” St.Martin’s Press, 1982.
More to come...