WI-alaska was still a part of Russia.

jahenders

Banned
It IS beautiful. IT is also cold, but Anchorage, Juneau and the like are not severely so (i.e. not like Buffalo, NY or the like). Anchorage is kind of like Seattle-North in climate -- a little colder and less rainy. Heck they hardly ever get below 10 below zero. Now, other areas ARE cold (Fairbanks, Nome, etc).

So you wouldnt mind living there? I definitley wouldnt want to live in a cold place like that. Even the southern parts are on the same latitude as Siberia.
 

jahenders

Banned
Agreed. I can't see many scenarios where Russia becomes communist and Alaska remains part of it. We (and the allies) fought the communists for a while in OTL because of the threat they posed. I can't see us allowing them to hold a bunch of land in our hemisphere. We'd pull our troops out of Russia and seize Alaska, likely with some Brit help from Canada. At that time, the Russian population of Alaska would have been quite small and largely concentrated in the S/SE, so it wouldn't be too hard to take them out.

If the Russians hold Alaska and the October Revolution still happens (and it might not) - Alaska either becomes a White Russian stronghold or part of the US and/or Canada.
 
There is no need of a so heavy intervention.
Soviets hadn't a fleet worthy the name and if Alaska ends into the exile place of Whites, the Black Sea Fleet would be likely to come there (even if most of it would be later sold or scuttled as it would not be financially sustainable). Then, Japanese and US navies could easily protect Alaska, given that the only locations where the Soviets could prepare an invasion would be the ports of Vladivostok and Petropavlosk (and even that one would be useless without domination of sea); remember that beyond the Bering Straights are hostile lands devoid of any infrastructure able to sustain a major military campaign until you get to the Lena River.

I am already working on a TL on that topic for which I have already written an outline between 1860s and present day, but I need to finish details.

I already posted a ''trailer'' in the List of alternate PMs and Presidents in After 1900 forum, a first draft that I've already updated (I've removed Witte among other modifications ...) .

It could look like I have ignored butterflies, but I use some kind of historical inertia so one people travelling to this alternate universe would not remark differences at first (you would get the same news on TV, Obama is President, there a civil war in Syria ...), but there will be differences, more noticeable as you come to Northwest (local politics, more vodka, Bandy, different Prohibition years ...).

Russian Amerika leaders of 20th century


Governorate-General of Amerika - Russian Empire
1897 - 1906 : Sergei M Dukhovskoi (Independent) [ii]
1906 - 1915 : Sergei Y Witte (Independent) * [iii]
1915 - 1916 : Nikolay V Monomakhov (Independent)
1916 - 1917 : Alexei N Kuropatkin (Independent) [iv]​
Governorate-General of Amerika - First Russian Republic
1917 - 1920 : Alexei N Kuropatkin (Independent) [v]​
Second Russian Republic [vi] [vii] [viii]
1920 - 1925 : Alexei N Kuropatkin (Independent) *
1925 - 1930 : Pavel N Milyukov (Constitutional-Democrat) ** [ix]​
Third Russian Republic [x]
1930 - 1937 : Mikhail K Diterikhs (All-Russia Union) * [xi]
1937 - 1938 : Mikhail A Kedrov (All-Russia Union) ** [xii]
1938 - 1963 : Anatoly N Pepelyayev (All-Russia Union) *
1963 - 1964 : Viktor A Pepelyayev (All-Russia Union) *** [xiii] [xiv]
1964 : Archie van Winkle (Independent) [xv]​
Democratic Transition Government [xvi]
1964 : Vladimir V Nabokov (Constitutional-Democrat) [xvii]​
Fourth Russian Republic [xviii]
1964 - 1969 : Vladimir V Nabokov (Constitutional-Democrat)
1969 - 1979 : Nikolai Egan (Constitutional-Democrat) [xix] [xx]
1979 - 1989 : Dmitri V Nabokov (Constitutional-Democrat)
1989 - 1994 : Natalia N Zacharenko(Constitutional-Democrat) * [xxi]
1994 - 2004 : Yul R Brynner (Constitutional-Democrat) [xxii]
2004 - 2014 : Pavel Egan (Constitutional-Democrat) [xxiii]​
______
* : Died in office
** : Overthrown by a military coup
*** : The Amerikan Spring or Russian Amerikan Revolution of 1964

______
: Because of administrative convenience, the Krai of Kamchatka was rattached to Russian Amerika to form the Governorate-General of Amerika in the 1880's.
[ii] : General-Lieutnant Dukhovskoi, as an experienced military officer and formerly Governor General of Priamur, was appointed by Tsar Nicholas II to reassert Russian authority and presence in Russian Amerika in the aftermath of the Gold Rush.
[iii] : Count Witte appointment as Governor-General of Amerika was described as a Golden Exile; the region needed a talented administrator and diplomat who Count Witte was and many wanted to see the man kept away from the power circles of Moscow and St-Petersburg in the aftermath of the Count legislative defeat.
[iv] : The appointment of Kuropatkin in Amerika was the consequence of his disgrace and removal from the frontline command.
[v] : Kuropatkin's exile turns to be salvation as the region he holds proves relatively quiet, mainly thanks to the large local Anglo-Saxon community. However, he prefer cautious moves and acting from backrooms, leaving Kolchak leading the country.
[vi] : The Second Republic was established in Alexandrovsk (OTL Juneau) by Kuropatkin following Kolchak demise, first as a new All-Russia Provisonal Government, after Kolchak designated Kuropatkin as his successor.
[vii] : Officially, the Russian Republic still claims sovereignty over all Russia, but in facts, it lost Priamur and Vladivostok in 1922 after Japanese withdrawal, Yakutia in 1923 and the fall of Okhotsk after a long siege in 1924 opened Kamchatka to invasion, Petropavlosk being finally evacuated in early 1925. It stil retained control over North Sakhalin with Japanese support and the still intact ''naval supremacy'' of Whites in Far East along Japanese and American support kept the Red Army from crossing into Aleutians and Russian Amerika proper.
[viii] : The years of Kuropatkin ''presidency'' were characterized by lack of written rules and government by decree. However, Kuropatkin would often adopt conciliatory attitude with opposition as he did in 1918 with SRs of Siberia and now with more moderate Constitutional-Democrats, especially with American, British and Canadian governments pressuring him into further concessions. This lack of written rules was only remediated with the Constitution of 1925 which established a presidential republic on the US model, excepted for a unicameral legislature with the Duma.
[ix] : After some time in Europe, Constitutional-Democrat leader Milyukov travelled to Russian Amerika to participate into the new provisional government and won considerable influence, being appointed as successor of Kuropatkin by the Duma in exile. He then established the Constitution of 1925 and was elected in late 1925 and again in 1929 just in the aftermath of the Black Tuesday.
[x] : Called also the Junta for its was de facto the rule of military, with the All-Russia Union, made up on a nucleus of veterans, being the only authorised party.
[xi] : General Diterikhs had been among the most critical voices of Milyukov government and was close to radical right-wing circles. The collapse of Russian Amerikan economy, heavily reliant on the USA, led to large discontent among the tens and tens of thousands of refugees which had flown to Russian Amerika as a consequence of the civil war, a discontent used by Diterikhs to force Milyukov to ''resign''. As soon began the Years of Lead, with witch hunt against communists and political opponents automatically being considered communists.
[xii] : Admiral Kedrov had been since his arrival with the remains of the Black Sea Fleet in 1920 one of the most important officers of Russian Amerika and succeeded to Diterikhs, softening the military rule, but his reluctance to distance from Japan and fascists led to a US instigated coup to replace him with the more friendly General Pepelyayev and a number of Russian opponents who had fled to Canada and the USA.
[xiii] : Son to General Anatoly Pepelyayev and named after his father's killed brother and former Kolchak Prime Minister.
[xiv] : Barely a few months after Viktor Pepelyayev took power, the Good Friday Earthquakee ravaged the country. The inadequate relief effort organized by the Junta caused giant demonstrations against the regime known as the Amerikan Spring.
[xv] : Colonel van Winkle, son to migrants who had settled in Russian Amerika in the aftermath of the Gold Rush, had engaged in the Russian Army of Amerika to fight the Japanese during the Aleutians Campaign and had achieved prominence, being appointed in early 1960s to command the garrison of Kuropatkingrad (OTL Anchorage). His refusal to open fire and crack down on the protestors, and the subsequent mutiny of the local garrison, sparked the fall of the Junta, mutinies spreading and ending into Pepelyayev resignation and exile. The mutiners choose van Winkle to head the new government, making him the first Anglo-Saxon of Russian Amerika to reach the highest office of the country, but he transferred power to an opposition led Democratic Government after only a few weeks.
[xvi] : After the Junta overthrow, the DTG was established to set up a new constitution and present a more friendly face instead of setting up a new junta like in 1938. The main problem of DTG was to face the US reaction, the memory of Cuban Revolution being still fresh, but the caution of the Anglo-Saxon Community and van Winkle presence in DTG managed to calm fears.
[xvii] : Vladimir Nabokov had accompanied Milyukov from the beginning, a close bond having developped after his father sacrified his life to save Milyukov from a right wing radical assassin in Germany, and went with him into exile in California in 1930, then succeeded him as head of the Constitutional-Democrat Party. His figure of historical opponent to the Junta made him the logical choice to set up a Democratic Transition Government.
[xviii] : The Fourth Republic is mainly about a return to the Constitution of 1925, along an extended presidential term to five years with a two terms limit.
[xix] : Nikolai Egan (OTL William A Egan), son of Anglo-Saxon migrants come during Gold Rush, had become a prominent member of the Anglo-Saxon community as representative of the exiled Constitutional-Democrats under Diterikhs and Pepelyayev and became the right hand man of Vladimir Nabokov, being chosen to succeed the retiring leader.
[xx] : Egan Sr presidency are remembered as the Years of Gold, to contrast with Diterikhs Years of Lead, due to the Oil Boom which had begun under Nabokov but which took its full extent under his administration, especially because of the Oil Crisis of the 1970s which made oil of the Russian Republic very demanded.
[xxi] : Natalia Zacharenko (OTL Natalie Wood) has been the rising star of the Constitutional-Democrat Party through the 1980's, but she had to face the collapse of USSR which created an existensial problem to the Republic of Russia, mostly due to political and economical anarchy in continental Russia and her firm stance earned her the nicname of Arctic Iron Lady. She was assassinated by a pan-russian sympathiser during an electoral rally.
[xxii] : Son to a famous actor, he had risen through the Constitutional-Democrat hierarchy and became upon Natalia Zacharenko's death the by defaut candidate. Lacking the charism of his predecessor and faced to an important wave of domestic terrorism by pan-russians, his response was so harsh that his firm term was nicnamed the Second Years of Lead. He ended reelected on grounds of fear but the Constitutional-Democrat political capital had been seriously eroded.
[xxiii] : Another Constitutional-Democrat apparatchik, he was an affirmed populist and as the memory of the Second Years of Lead faded and that the economy had recovered from the 1990's downturn, he easily carried his first term. His reelection was hotly contested because of the World financial crisis which hadn't spared the Republic of Russia, but an heavy use of populism, the timely Russo-Georgian War of August 2008 which was used to its full extent as a mean of spreading fear, and more importantly the lack of united opposition eventually led to his reelection.
Many credit Egan Jr with the likely end of a 50 years long unquestioned Constitutional-Democrat domination of the political scene as the election of 2009 had been famously said to have decided the country's prodigal son to run for President against the ruling party, and Sergey Brin was not someone to underestimate...
 
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The Russians weren't interested in developing it or settling it. If they DID, it could have been a White Russian outpost in the USSR still comes into being (with a thriving population given the number of emigres from the Revolution, possibly even the Tsar) and becoming its own country, protected by the Canadians and the US (who wouldn't have let the USSR take a part of North America). With its mineral resources it would also be quite wealthy too.

Is this a thing? Why isn't this a thing? Why haven't I read this TL?

EDIT: Sees post above about making this a thing Ahhhhhhhhh...
 
The most reasonable, high-probability comments have been made:

1) Russia wanted to sell Alaska in the first place because it wasn't easy for them to hold against strong British opposition, and insofar as was known in the 1860s it wasn't worth fighting a war over to the Tsars. For them to have refrained from offering to sell it to the Yankees would have been a bit irrational.

2) Tsarist Russia might have lost it before 1917 had they decided, for sentimental reasons or because new resources were found there, to try to hang on to it. The most likely culprit would be the British, next door in British Columbia, though conceivably the British might have encouraged the Japanese to look on parts of it as a prize. Or the Japanese might conceivably have gone for it aggressively--there's no way, in the period up to the end of the OTL Great War, that Japan could take it against British opposition however. On a long shot, Japan might have grabbed first and then dared the British to do something about it--but that would break the alliance with Britain that served Japan very well OTL in this period and so I don't think they'd have tried without a green light from London.

However I think this second sheaf of comments is more speculative and less likely than some seem to think; if we assume Alaska remains a peripheral and non-decisive issue and that the general flow of European politics goes as OTL, then crossing the line to actual seizures of territory from Tsarist Russia is ruled out, and Britain would, somewhat indirectly and reluctantly, wind up an ally of the Tsar by 1914.

New ATL developments in Alaska, such as the discovery of gold and oil, would change the picture and make British and auxiliary Japanese ambitions sharper, but I think there is considerable scope for Russia to hold on to it despite that anyway. Certainly if there is a gold rush, a lot of non-Russians will be coming in, from British territories and from the USA especially, and these would quickly outnumber the Russians who would be there before, even if we assume an optimistic scenario for Alaskan development. But perhaps Russia will send over its own contingent of gold rushers. In that scenario, Alaska might remain nominally and legally part of the Tsar's empire but it will be hard for him to rule as he is accustomed with all these unruly foreigners, who would also be giving ideas to Russians who come in after the gold. Given the diplomatic situation in the late 19th and early 20th century, I think the British would still refrain from trying to seize the place directly and respect Russian sovereignty, but also given the example of Hawaii, the flood of immigrant gold rushers might support an "independence" movement that is tantamount to conquest by either the British or the Yanks.

Might Tsarist officials alternatively suppress the news of gold and as quietly as they can set up Russian-controlled mining combines to get the gold while keeping foreigners out? Trying to do that will create new flashpoints with the British and even the Americans of course, but my hunch is that if the Tsar's government can pull it off, Russia will remain firmly in control.

3) Assuming that things still go unbutterflied for the most part in world affairs, and that come February (well, March, by the Gregorian calendar) 1917 the first revolution that overthrows Tsarist power takes place in Petrograd and we have the period of the freely elected Soviets sharing dual power with the self-appointed "provisional government" of Kerensky, I daresay that given the latter's declarations of continued war effort against Germany, the Allies will continue to support Russian sovereignty over Alaska, and given the distance from the combat zones it will be very much on the back burner then. For Alaska to become a refuge for pro-Tsarists at that point would be provocative for the Allies to actively support, since they are still trying to keep Russia in the war on the Allied side by supporting the Provisional Government, but it might be what happens because Petrograd has little control over what happens in Alaska, and the Allies won't be actively hostile to the Romanovs--so there might even a bit of under-the-table support for such a development.

However, as many have said, once the October Revolution (which happened in November by the Gregorian calendar, which the Bolsheviks would soon impose an upgraded version of on Russia at last) happened in Petrograd and the Bolsheviks followed through with taking control of many other key cities such as Moscow, the Allies would have no reason to respect or recognize Bolshevik control of Alaska (or anywhere else, as the very bloody and costly Civil War period showed OTL:rolleyes:). Alaska is someplace they can definitely do something about; British Columbia, a distant rear area of the British Empire in the Great War, is right there on the border. Would they move in and conquer it? Or simply offer their support to refugee Whites?

We should remember, the opponents of the Bolsheviks were not all one group. De facto, it wound up being pro-Tsarists versus Reds, but originally the Bolsheviks were also opposed by other stripes of revolutionaries who didn't want the Tsar back either, but didn't want Lenin dictating everything. As the Civil War progressed, the non-Bolshevik radicals and democrats either died, came to terms with the Leninists, or perforce got lumped in with the Tsarists, but that's not how it started.

The point being, that perhaps there are alternatives to Alaska becoming a refuge for Romanov pretensions, the Taiwan to Russia as PRC.

To get back to the original post's rather naive assumption that Russian Alaska would automatically be part of the Soviet Union by the 1920s and beyond, this is for the reasons given amply above quite unlikely. But I can see it perhaps happening as a very long-shot scenario:

1) Russian Alaska would have to develop quite a lot before 1914;

2) It would have to become a hotbed of pro-revolutionary sentiment by then, and yet remain strongly Russified, as opposed to being swamped with a majority of Anglo gold-rushing immigrants. Mind, a certain number of these types might not derail this long-shot, because working class people in general in the early 20th century had a lot more revolutionary notions floating around among them than is common to find in the USA anyway today.

3) this is the longest shot of them all--the Bolshevik faction is very strong among them, or gains strength as events progress. If a whole lot of Russian-Alaskans are on board with Lenin, following charismatic leaders in Alaska who obey Lenin's Central Committee, and hold out visions of a bright revolutionary future that inspire, conceivably they might fight off local "Whites" of various kinds and interventionist forces from the US and Britain (I think Washington would frown on any possible British suggestions of inviting Japanese interventionists in).

What, a ragtag band of Red frontiersmen fighting off the British Empire? We have to remember--while the governments in London and Washington did hate and fear the Bolsheviks and gave considerable aid to the Whites, not caring what sort of authoritarian regime the mostly pro-Tsarist generals and admirals would wish to impose (nor that, before the German surrender, the Whites were also aided by the Germans despite their promises to the Bolsheviks not to do so in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk)--this was not exactly a broadly popular stance for them to take among the broad publics of Britain and even the USA. Had the Entente powers had the full support of their people in their anti-Red crusade, there can be little doubt the Bolsheviks would have been crushed handily, in the early years of the Civil War anyway. The thing is, they didn't; there was a lot of opposition to the policy of supporting the Whites among working-class leaders in Britain (and France) that greatly impeded the level of intervention the Entente powers could project. Also of course they were all, except the USA and Japan, exhausted by the terrible toll of the Great War; the British were also busy trying to suppress unrest in Ireland and distracted by discontents elsewhere in their Empire, notably India. It was one thing to send modest amounts of munitions and a handful of advisors to Russian White forces, and even to send some brigades to various ports--the USA had some in IIRC Arkangelsk and/or Murmansk. But I've also been told by a historian, some of those Yankee soldiers defected to the Reds!

Alaska is obviously a somewhat different case from playing the Great Game in Eurasia; it borders directly on Canada and is pretty near the USA too. And logistically speaking the hypothetical Alaskan Bolsheviks would be on their own, unable to buy anything from overseas even if they had the money (well, there is all that gold) and completely isolated from the Bolshevik stronghold in central Russia. But sending in a force to completely crush them, in terrain they have been living in for decades and quite forbidding to most soldiers from the south, might prove too costly and embarrassing an enterprise for the war-weary British and US governments to sustain, especially if some of the interventionist soldiers wind up defecting to the other side.

Alaska can sustain some agriculture, and if anyone can make a go of it, remember the scenario is that the Russians retain the demographic upper hand--they are used to really severe climates, to them Alaska might seem quite a land of milk and honey.

The really long shot part of this is, why would Russo-Alaskans be Bolsheviks at all? The Bolshevik movement was based on urban factory workers, there wouldn't be a lot of that in Alaska even if there was a big push to develop local industry to deal with the logistical costs another poster mentioned above. Miners were another source of Bolshevik recruitment to be sure (such as Nikita Khrushchev for instance) and there would be a lot of them in a Russian-developed Alaska, while Yankee and British miners were also often of a rather Reddish bent politically speaking so some of them might be Bolshevik-inclined.

Still, I would think it unlikely the Bolsheviks would win over Russian Alaska.

However Russian Alaska, if not inclined to support Lenin, might very well be at any rate not very friendly to the Tsars. Perhaps instead of a Tsarist breakaway state, it would instead be "on the fence" in the Civil War, being a refuge not for Old Regimists but the other brands of Russian revolutionaries--the agrarian Social Revolutionaries that Kerensky claimed to represent for instance, or various Mensheviks.

If their reaction to the October Revolution was to hold aloof from Lenin's claims and give refuge to those who fled (after they'd tried to oppose Lenin on the battlefield and been defeated) then that might deter the Anglo-American interventionists from trying to secure the place, leading to an independent but socialist Alaska that would flirt with both the capitalist powers and the new Soviet Union. During the NEP period of recovery in the 1920s, Alaska might consider voluntarily affiliating with the Soviet Union for mutual defense.

As Stalin maneuvered to take absolute power in the USSR, would Alaska be inevitably drawn in and subjugated? I'd think that he'd be forced to treat Alaska as a special case, because the Alaskans could cut and run if he tried to be too heavy-handed there; it would be necessary to use more persuasion and less force, unless the Alaskans themselves became convinced that Stalinist police state methods were necessary for their own protection and advancement. Assuming some healthy skepticism on the Alaskans' part, Stalin would seem likely to overplay his hand and cause a rupture of relations, leaving the Alaskans to make the best of their relations with British Canada and the USA--I don't think they'd find the prospect of aligning with Japan at all alluring.

Though there's another butterfly--what if the Alaskans figure they are not in danger of being subjugated by the Japanese and opt to become trading partners with them, on a socialist basis on their side of course (ie the government controls the trade, not private parties), providing Japan with a market for manufactured goods and with resources the Japanese desperately need? It might divert Japan away from their Chinese misadventures and from the rise of militarism there. Leading to an ATL where probably Hitler still rises to power in Europe, and a nasty Second Great War there, but where the Pacific is left in peace. Assuming that Hitler is as successful as OTL (not a certainty by any means!) then sooner or later he'll attack the Soviet Union, and I believe anyway suffer inevitable defeat there, especially with the USSR's Pacific flank under no threat. At that point, with Britain allied to Stalin, the way would be opened for better relations between Alaska and the Soviet Union, at the same time also with Canada and the USA. With both Japan and Alaska on the winning side, or anyway on friendly terms with the European victors, it's a very different 1945 indeed.

Such an independent, reddish Alaska would not pose the threats to the USA the always-Soviet one would to be sure; there is little reason why the Alaskans would want to allow one superpower or the other to effectively occupy them so Alaska serves as a passive buffer for both.

If in the very unlikely case that the Alaskans are instead somehow subjugated by Stalin after fighting off the interventionists as loyal Bolsheviks, the Soviet Union retains Alaska as integral Russian territory, once the Civil War period is past I suppose the British will grudgingly accept that they continue to border Russian, now Soviet, territory; the border will be sealed on both sides (getting very tenuous in the north to be sure!) Probably in that case Alaska will have suffered some territorial attrition, losing control of the Panhandle (annexed to BC) but maybe gaining some land in the north at the expense of Yukon--the borders will be redrawn based on who effectively holds what, the revolutionary miner natives having more of an edge in the far north. So actually there won't be much bordering in the effective sense of rival populations living next to each other, the Alaskan mainland being effectively an island. The tight borders will sometimes be to keep Soviet citizens in, but in the early years perhaps more to keep lefty Americans and Canadians out. By the 1930s everyone would more or less accept that that's where the Soviet border is, after all it would merely be a carry-over of where the Russian one was. Soviet opposition to the Nazis would tend to soften British fears, then the pact between Hitler and Stalin would sharpen them, but the border, though tense would remain peaceful. Come Hitler's invasion of Russia, things would change drastically, suddenly Alaska would be a gateway to the new Soviet ally for Lend-Lease goods--not making a big difference since the logistics of hauling stuff all the way from the Pacific to the fronts and the factories supporting them would remain problematic. Post-war, hopes of a peaceful cooperative world would fade and with the Korean crisis the Alaska/Canadian border would become tense again, with both sides building up the frontiers seriously. The USA would have little choice but to commit to major alliance with Canada--the Canadians would need the muscle of American military deployment to defend their border, the Americans would need the depth of defense Canadian territory alone could give them, so the Yukon would see a flood of Yankee bases being set up and ongoing eyeball-to eyeball confrontations with Soviet aircraft. Also, a credible threat of Soviet attack on the USA would be present from the beginning of the Cold War instead of developing only gradually.

Perhaps these circumstances raise the probability of outright nuclear war considerably. Just as well then that Stalinist Alaska is such a long shot!:p
 
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