What if Russia explodes after the Russian Revolution and breaks up after the Russian Civil War? What nations could be spit out? Would it end up like the Balkans with them at war a lot? How would WW2 play out with all these nations up for grabs?
WI: Balkanization of Russia after Revolution
- Thread starter ThatOneGuy
- Start date
GiantMonkeyMan
Banned
The obvious candidates would be an independent Siberia/East Russia and an independent Ukraine and independent Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.
That's OTL. Even after gobbling up many minor players the Soviet Union was only one of 6 countries established on the ruins of the Russian Empire.
If there's a longer civil war which ends inconclusively, with the continued existence of the Whites as a barrier to Soviet expansionism and/or the White movement is forced to increasingly cooperate with separatist entities to stay alive, we may be seeing even more independent countries. Ukraine, Cossack Republics in Don and Kuban which may or may not be a part of a larger White collective, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, possibly even the Northern Caucasian independence movement...
If there's a longer civil war which ends inconclusively, with the continued existence of the Whites as a barrier to Soviet expansionism and/or the White movement is forced to increasingly cooperate with separatist entities to stay alive, we may be seeing even more independent countries. Ukraine, Cossack Republics in Don and Kuban which may or may not be a part of a larger White collective, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, possibly even the Northern Caucasian independence movement...
Probably Belarus, and the Baltic states would also be spit out. Perhaps Moscow could become a city-state? I'm actually leaning towards Muscovy being a relative power in that region. In Asia, some -Stans would be there, and eventually with a weaker Russia some of the far eastern lands go to China or Japan.
MarshalBraginsky
Banned
Far Eastern Republic could become independent though. Siberia by itself might have a potential to fragment into several different states, like Yakutia and the remaining ethnic autonomous state.
This was kind of what I was thinking when I made this. IF this does happen, how does the rest of history get affected? Could one of them ally with Nazi Germany and aide in Hitler's conquest of Russia (if Hitler still goes after it)
Judging by OTL, sure. Many former government ministers, ambassadors and regional governors of the Northern Caucasian Republic, Menshevik Georgia, Dashnak Armenia and Musavatist Azerbaijan collaborated with Nazi Germany's push into the Caucasus. But in this scenario they would be statesmen, not stateless groups of political immigrants, and their policies may accordingly be much different.
If so many of these smaller states survive, and Russia's core remains weak and divided, at least one of them is practically guaranteed to be an ally of alt-Nazi Germany. But who and why can wildly vary depending on how the interplay of diplomacy and violence between Red Russia, White Russia and Germany works out. If Germany is attacking the Soviets, it will find willing allies in the Cossack republics, the Baltics and maybe the White movement as a whole...if Germany is attacking the Whites (possibly together with the Reds in some kind of a bizzaro Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?), it's easy to imagine Georgia or Northern-Caucasia joining the new order to break away from the Russian shadow and take over some long-desired territories.
Of course, if Russia/USSR is weak and divided, the whole Hitler thing comes into question. Without the omnipresent looming danger of communism to bolster their popularity many fascist and national-socialist movements are going to need some new talking points.
Much of what we think of as possible or not possible is based on the modern ethnic map of Russia and the former USSR. This is little more than static in many cases, as the ethnic composition of that part of the world was so utterly and tumultuously turned on its head by the revolution, by famine, by the war, and most particularly by wholesale population removal.
I've never found a satisfactory demographic breakdown of Russian regions at the time of the revolution. This is exacerbated by the fact that any records that were taken were organized around the old Russian Governorates, which were each organized around a central city rather than an ethnic homeland. So the exact location and continuity of the Idel-Ural peoples, the Caucasus peoples, and the Central Asian peoples is unknown to me.
It's true that a much smaller share of Russia's population than today lived east of the Urals, and that a much larger share of that population was not ethnically Russian. It's also true that a lot of ethnic groups were moved or displaced from the Volga-Ural region.
If we're supposing a collapse of central authority, who knows how many ethnic Republics and lightly-populated Russian entities could form?
I've never found a satisfactory demographic breakdown of Russian regions at the time of the revolution. This is exacerbated by the fact that any records that were taken were organized around the old Russian Governorates, which were each organized around a central city rather than an ethnic homeland. So the exact location and continuity of the Idel-Ural peoples, the Caucasus peoples, and the Central Asian peoples is unknown to me.
It's true that a much smaller share of Russia's population than today lived east of the Urals, and that a much larger share of that population was not ethnically Russian. It's also true that a lot of ethnic groups were moved or displaced from the Volga-Ural region.
If we're supposing a collapse of central authority, who knows how many ethnic Republics and lightly-populated Russian entities could form?