What would it take for Russia to permanently lose great power status?

So, when it comes to CP victories if any kind, it seems the most they can take from Russia are the non Russian areas of the western areas of the empire. But, the rest of Russia is still pretty big and fill of resources and it's hard to imagine Russia, even so weekend, becoming submissive to Germany or any other country(China?). I mean, even today, Russia stands pretty much on it's own as a relatively powerful nation that can't really be described as being submissive to any nation.

So, not counting any Nazi plans of any sort, what's the weakest point Russia could be pushed into with a pod of 1900. And by weak, I mean that it's basically a puppet/vassal state. Is such a thing even possible?
 
With 1900 as the date? Russia really screws up crimea to the point where britan france and assuming no austro prussian war force a regime change along with the ottomans take bits and pieces. Also the japenese take advantage and go war with russia way earlier and take more territory. Realistically the only real chance is germany is allowed post ww1 to keep what it had gained from russia and the bolsheviks dont take power leaving the weaker democratic government in power.
 
Just one communist nation (Stalin loses that argument with Trotsky perhaps) ends up including communist China.

Russia is overwhelmed demographically and is subsumed into the greater communist state
 
With 1900 as the date? Russia really screws up crimea to the point where britan france and assuming no austro prussian war force a regime change along with the ottomans take bits and pieces. Also the japenese take advantage and go war with russia way earlier and take more territory. Realistically the only real chance is germany is allowed post ww1 to keep what it had gained from russia and the bolsheviks dont take power leaving the weaker democratic government in power.
Would this democratic government be submissive to Germany? And if so, what would keep them loyal? Like what's the threat for not doing as Germany wishes?

I suppose that an oligarchy, made up of the old aristocracy, could end up taking over Russia through this democratic government, and then decide to keep selling it's resources to other nations, while doing nothing to benefit the nation as a whole.
 
Maybe I don't give Russia enough credit, but I think you could get them to stop being a great power from a timeline where the Central Powers win.

Let's say Germany wins World War I just after the Russian civil war begins (maybe due to a more successful offensive by Ludendorff in France or something). Brest-Litovsk - or some form of it - goes though. Denikin's Advance on Moscow succeeds, maybe due to butterflies, maybe due to foreign aid that's more forthcoming in a timeline where the war ends early. This breaks the Bolsheviks. The white Russians rule through a mix of military power, corruption, and warlordism. They spend the next few years consolidating, purging rebels, and purging each other. Some despotic strong-man democracy emerges. Maybe it's Fascistic, maybe it's Reactionary. After a bloody campaign to regain control of the Ukraine and other territories that revolted during the civil war, Russia is back on the world stage - diminished, but in there.

Another war seems inevitable. Maybe the catalyst is the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Perhaps Russia is on the losing side of this, and one of the concessions is the formation of an independent Ukraine/Belarus. If Russia gets humiliated in two world wars, never goes through forced Soviet industrialisation, loses their breadbasket to an independent, German-aligned Ukraine, is run by an informal junta of corrupt warlords, and doesn't have nuclear weapons, I think that might be enough to relegate them to some regional power that at most would spend their time bullying Central Asia and the Caucasus. Maybe they become Iran-tier.
 
Last edited:
A good analog for Third Rome is itself the late Roman Empire.

Diverse, Expansive, and Autocratic.

Only a series of very unfortunate events could collapse the Bear wholesale.

Proof is the Soviet Union, wracked with corruption, declining Treasury, risk of foreign invasion, sccesionist movements.
 
Not my area of expertise, so if this is implausible, say so.
Could the post Great War revolution and civil war lead to a balkanized Russia? Ukraine as a semi-independent puppet of someone, a White Russia, a Bolshevik Russia, and an occupied Siberia?
 
Not my area of expertise, so if this is implausible, say so.
Could the post Great War revolution and civil war lead to a balkanized Russia? Ukraine as a semi-independent puppet of someone, a White Russia, a Bolshevik Russia, and an occupied Siberia?
I'm not sure who could or would really want to full scale occupy Siberia. I guess white Russia and red Russia could coexist, but not for long as one would want to fully end the other when it comes to the occupation West Russian territory.
 
I'm not sure who could or would really want to full scale occupy Siberia. I guess white Russia and red Russia could coexist, but not for long as one would want to fully end the other when it comes to the occupation West Russian territory.

Occupy Siberia--perhaps not long term. I could see Japan snapping up Vladivostok and vicinity, intending to keep it forever.

White Russia and Red Russia, perhaps with Tsarist Russia, might find themselves unable to seriously contemplate conquering the other. After all, keeping Russia divided and unable to be the hegemon in Europe is in a lot of nations' best interest...
 
I suppose Stalin fucks up the peace after WWII, Churchill gets his casus belli, and the Soviets lose WWIII after Moscow is reduced to a pile of rubble and shit-filled trousers. MacArthur mouths off about nuking Moscow a month or so before and Truman decides, fuck it, why not, and Russia ends us Balkanized while the other SSRs end up as husks of their former...umm, stateness.
 
Occupy Siberia--perhaps not long term. I could see Japan snapping up Vladivostok and vicinity, intending to keep it forever.

White Russia and Red Russia, perhaps with Tsarist Russia, might find themselves unable to seriously contemplate conquering the other. After all, keeping Russia divided and unable to be the hegemon in Europe is in a lot of nations' best interest...
Well, one or the other would have to give in as there's only so many weapons and supplies one could have. And retaking land from the other would be a high priority of both.

But, getting beyond Russia collapsing in on itself, is there a way that Western Russia could actually be occupied and vassalized, like with a puppet ruler? Like, where I'm getting at is if Germany/China (both?) could ever have a mostly intact Russia that acts as a resource bucket for them. Like bringing Russia into a type of trade zone with the other, in which Russia is clearly disadvantaged.
 
I'm not sure who could or would really want to full scale occupy Siberia. I guess white Russia and red Russia could coexist, but not for long as one would want to fully end the other when it comes to the occupation West Russian territory.

The Japanese

Best regards
Grey Wolf
 
Germany keeps the Ukraine. Japan keeps western Siberia. One or two major cities are divided along armistice lines between competing fashions. Meanwhile, obsolete war materials somehow get sent to one faction or the other. "That was high grade scrap steel--not OUR fault that they didn't melt down those obsolete tanks/machine guns/rifles as we thought they would..."
 
Germany keeps the Ukraine. Japan keeps western Siberia. One or two major cities are divided along armistice lines between competing fashions. Meanwhile, obsolete war materials somehow get sent to one faction or the other. "That was high grade scrap steel--not OUR fault that they didn't melt down those obsolete tanks/machine guns/rifles as we thought they would..."
So, you're telling me that the Japanese would be able to get as far as here.
%D0%97%D0%B0%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%A1%D0%B8%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%80%D1%8C.jpg

From the Pacific? I mean eastern Siberia is understandable, but the farther West, it looks more difficult.
 
And by the way, does anyone know what becomes of central Asia in worst case scenario for the Russian Empire ( not the USSR).
 
OOPS! I should have said eastern Siberia. That's a brain cramp. Japan keeps some of the easten part--mainly far enough inland to secure the entire coast and any good mining claims that have turned up.
 
Absent full scale Nuclear War?

Limited use of nukes by Germany in a CP victory would allow them to win a rematch against Russia and force them into a vassal state, with Japan or possibly China nibbling at the Far East, Central Asia leaving and the Turks/Ottomans taking a bigger bite out of the Caucuses

Apart from that revolutionary situation that at some point results in a prolonged division of the core areas of Russia into multiple states that are themselves vassals of other powers, IE a German backed state versus a British backed State vs. a Japanese backed state, vs. a Communist Pariah
 

Ian_W

Banned
If your industrial base continues to decline and you stay a raw material exporter, then as population stops being important you lose Great Power status.
 
Russian civil war having no clear winner for quite some time sees Russia descending into a warlord-esque situation.
 
The things that come to my mind are : losing the pacific (and maybe even Siberia east to the Baikal lake) ; losing access to the Black Sea (maybe wanking Ukraine, the Kuban was multicultural russian-ukrainian at this time, so there could be a BIG Ukraine, with russian strong minority and the troubles that goes with it) ; the minorities seceeding during the civil war ;a very very long civil war that ends up with a white victory after the imperial family was slaughtered in Iekaterinburg, russia won't be seen as a rising communist power but as some tired empire without an emperor, and will probably be forced to democratize itself by the nations that will have helped the whites (most of them were democracies).

This leaves us with no sea access apart from St Petersburg, a devastated country with a governemental crisis from the beginning, having lost most of its credit since it almost fell to some proletarian insurrection, and having lost most of its minorities (and it will be diplomatically insulated if it keeps claiming Eastern Siberia, as Japan would be enticed as a rising power by it's victory against russia). It would become some fragile regional power, similar to otl argentina, with some far bigger players keeping them in check
 
Top