Zyobot
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Post by Zyobot on Jan 21, 2022 1:05:16 GMT
Founded by a movement predisposed towards terror and social engineering from the very beginning, the Soviet Union consistently ranked as one of the most repressive, most authoritarian, and—ironically—most unequal regimes of the twentieth century. In addition to state-sponsored mass killing and invasive, incompetent micromanagement of every aspect of its people’s lives and livelihoods, its example inspired yet more communist regimes that were arguably worse throughout the second half of the century, being perfectly willing to tolerate (and even support) such dictatorships as North Korea, Maoist China, and the Eastern Bloc. However, for all its gangsterism and callous excesses, even the Stalin years didn’t cause it to descend into the same spiral of madness as its unholy contemporary, Nazi Germany, or its overzealous fellow far-left regime, the Khmer Rouge. Nevertheless, there are times when I wonder if precisely that could’ve happened, had the USSR had its own equivalent to the “perfect storm” of events that propelled the mad Austrian and his cronies to power in Germany. So, with that cheery thought in mind, are there any realistic ways we could get a USSR that goes down right alongside Hitler’s Germany or Pol Pot’s Cambodia as the most villainous regime in history? (Yes, I’m aware of Twilight of the Red Tsar over on AH.com, but am curious as to whether we can do “better”—or, I suppose, even worse—than that.)
{An over-the-top example of what I'm looking for...}
I once had an ASB story idea where, on the eve of World War II, a mysterious event known as "The Maddening" corrupts the Allies into becoming just as bad as Nazi Germany. Naturally, this "corruption" extended to Soviet Russia, too, with Stalin's paranoia shooting through the roof and his bloodthirstiness amplified to truly Hitlerian levels.
The highlights of his rule include carrying out an early Doctors' Plot, unleashing more Holodomors to completely destroy the ethnic republics, erecting "People's Guillotines" everywhere that are used non-stop, and quadrupling down on blood purges designed to whittle away the adult population and raise future generations who only know Stalin. The survivors, meanwhile, are forced through a Cultural Revolution-style erasure of Old Russia and a total militarization of Soviet society, with children raised in Sparta-inspired "youth education centers" in which they're regularly beaten, brainwashed, and culled into becoming soldiers in a "Final Revolution" to destroy capitalism forever. The result is the USSR going from a brutal, relatively isolated mega-Gulag to the bastard spawn of a Red Sparta, North Korea, and 1984's Oceania, its people giddy for a worldwide nuclear war with the West as soon as the "fascist menace" has been crushed and obliterated completely. Achieve something on the scale of what I outlined above with a more realistic PoD, and we're golden.
Thank you in advance, Zyobot
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gillan1220
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I've been depressed recently. Slow replies coming in the next few days.
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Post by gillan1220 on Jan 22, 2022 6:28:00 GMT
Founded by a movement predisposed towards terror and social engineering from the very beginning, the Soviet Union consistently ranked as one of the most repressive, most authoritarian, and—ironically—most unequal regimes of the twentieth century. In addition to state-sponsored mass killing and invasive, incompetent micromanagement of every aspect of its people’s lives and livelihoods, its example inspired yet more communist regimes that were arguably worse throughout the second half of the century, being perfectly willing to tolerate (and even support) such dictatorships as North Korea, Maoist China, and the Eastern Bloc. However, for all its gangsterism and callous excesses, even the Stalin years didn’t cause it to descend into the same spiral of madness as its unholy contemporary, Nazi Germany, or its overzealous fellow far-left regime, the Khmer Rouge. Nevertheless, there are times when I wonder if precisely that could’ve happened, had the USSR had its own equivalent to the “perfect storm” of events that propelled the mad Austrian and his cronies to power in Germany. So, with that cheery thought in mind, are there any realistic ways we could get a USSR that goes down right alongside Hitler’s Germany or Pol Pot’s Cambodia as the most villainous regime in history? (Yes, I’m aware of Twilight of the Red Tsar over on AH.com, but am curious as to whether we can do “better”—or, I suppose, even worse—than that.)
{An over-the-top example of what I'm looking for...}
I once had an ASB story idea where, on the eve of World War II, a mysterious event known as "The Maddening" corrupts the Allies into becoming just as bad as Nazi Germany. Naturally, this "corruption" extended to Soviet Russia, too, with Stalin's paranoia shooting through the roof and his bloodthirstiness amplified to truly Hitlerian levels.
The highlights of his rule include carrying out an early Doctors' Plot, unleashing more Holodomors to completely destroy the ethnic republics, erecting "People's Guillotines" everywhere that are used non-stop, and quadrupling down on blood purges designed to whittle away the adult population and raise future generations who only know Stalin. The survivors, meanwhile, are forced through a Cultural Revolution-style erasure of Old Russia and a total militarization of Soviet society, with children raised in Sparta-inspired "youth education centers" in which they're regularly beaten, brainwashed, and culled into becoming soldiers in a "Final Revolution" to destroy capitalism forever. The result is the USSR going from a brutal, relatively isolated mega-Gulag to the bastard spawn of a Red Sparta, North Korea, and 1984's Oceania, its people giddy for a worldwide nuclear war with the West as soon as the "fascist menace" has been crushed and obliterated completely. Achieve something on the scale of what I outlined above with a more realistic PoD, and we're golden.
Thank you in advance, Zyobot
Stalin surviving past 1953 and enacting more purges. That will be a nightmare scenario. |
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Zyobot
Fleet admiral
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Posts: 17,120
Likes: 7,187
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Post by Zyobot on Jan 22, 2022 15:03:59 GMT
Founded by a movement predisposed towards terror and social engineering from the very beginning, the Soviet Union consistently ranked as one of the most repressive, most authoritarian, and—ironically—most unequal regimes of the twentieth century. In addition to state-sponsored mass killing and invasive, incompetent micromanagement of every aspect of its people’s lives and livelihoods, its example inspired yet more communist regimes that were arguably worse throughout the second half of the century, being perfectly willing to tolerate (and even support) such dictatorships as North Korea, Maoist China, and the Eastern Bloc. However, for all its gangsterism and callous excesses, even the Stalin years didn’t cause it to descend into the same spiral of madness as its unholy contemporary, Nazi Germany, or its overzealous fellow far-left regime, the Khmer Rouge. Nevertheless, there are times when I wonder if precisely that could’ve happened, had the USSR had its own equivalent to the “perfect storm” of events that propelled the mad Austrian and his cronies to power in Germany. So, with that cheery thought in mind, are there any realistic ways we could get a USSR that goes down right alongside Hitler’s Germany or Pol Pot’s Cambodia as the most villainous regime in history? (Yes, I’m aware of Twilight of the Red Tsar over on AH.com, but am curious as to whether we can do “better”—or, I suppose, even worse—than that.)
{An over-the-top example of what I'm looking for...}
I once had an ASB story idea where, on the eve of World War II, a mysterious event known as "The Maddening" corrupts the Allies into becoming just as bad as Nazi Germany. Naturally, this "corruption" extended to Soviet Russia, too, with Stalin's paranoia shooting through the roof and his bloodthirstiness amplified to truly Hitlerian levels.
The highlights of his rule include carrying out an early Doctors' Plot, unleashing more Holodomors to completely destroy the ethnic republics, erecting "People's Guillotines" everywhere that are used non-stop, and quadrupling down on blood purges designed to whittle away the adult population and raise future generations who only know Stalin. The survivors, meanwhile, are forced through a Cultural Revolution-style erasure of Old Russia and a total militarization of Soviet society, with children raised in Sparta-inspired "youth education centers" in which they're regularly beaten, brainwashed, and culled into becoming soldiers in a "Final Revolution" to destroy capitalism forever. The result is the USSR going from a brutal, relatively isolated mega-Gulag to the bastard spawn of a Red Sparta, North Korea, and 1984's Oceania, its people giddy for a worldwide nuclear war with the West as soon as the "fascist menace" has been crushed and obliterated completely. Achieve something on the scale of what I outlined above with a more realistic PoD, and we're golden.
Thank you in advance, Zyobot
Stalin surviving past 1953 and enacting more purges. That will be a nightmare scenario. Yeah, that’s exactly the premise of Twilight of the Red Tsar. More specifically, Stalin surviving the stroke that killed him IOTL, with all the heightened bloodlust and wrathfulness that entails… |
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gillan1220
Consul General
I've been depressed recently. Slow replies coming in the next few days.
Posts: 12,135
Likes: 10,775
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Post by gillan1220 on Jan 22, 2022 15:10:28 GMT
Stalin surviving past 1953 and enacting more purges. That will be a nightmare scenario. Yeah, that’s exactly the premise of Twilight of the Red Tsar. More specifically, Stalin surviving the stroke that killed him IOTL, with all the heightened bloodlust and wrathfulness that entails… wrote a dystopian timeline called The Hammer, The Sickle, The Earth where the USSR forms a mighty empire stretching from Korea to Germany. The mighty USSR includes all the OTL USSR plus all of China, the Korean Peninsula, all of Eastern Europe, all of Germany, and the island SSR of Cuba. The United States dissolves in 1986 due to so much instability both internal and externally. In present day, the USSR is the mighty superpower of the world. Unchallenged and there to stay. |
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Zyobot
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Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
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Post by Zyobot on Jan 22, 2022 15:27:13 GMT
Yeah, that’s exactly the premise of Twilight of the Red Tsar. More specifically, Stalin surviving the stroke that killed him IOTL, with all the heightened bloodlust and wrathfulness that entails… wrote a dystopian timeline called The Hammer, The Sickle, The Earth where the USSR forms a mighty empire stretching from Korea to Germany. The mighty USSR includes all the OTL USSR plus all of China, the Korean Peninsula, all of Eastern Europe, all of Germany, and the island SSR of Cuba. The United States dissolves in 1986 due to so much instability both internal and externally. In present day, the USSR is the mighty superpower of the world. Unchallenged and there to stay. Sounds fun, though I was thinking something more “realistic” than a total USSR-wank, when communism holds you back and the Soviets couldn’t keep pace with the US historically. Only thing utterly necessary here is a Soviet depravity-wank, and if that calls for a Slavic Pol Pot to take the helm and reduce the USSR to rubble, then so be it! |
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Post by SpaceOrbisHistory on Jan 22, 2022 21:57:05 GMT
Yeah, that’s exactly the premise of Twilight of the Red Tsar. More specifically, Stalin surviving the stroke that killed him IOTL, with all the heightened bloodlust and wrathfulness that entails… wrote a dystopian timeline called The Hammer, The Sickle, The Earth where the USSR forms a mighty empire stretching from Korea to Germany. The mighty USSR includes all the OTL USSR plus all of China, the Korean Peninsula, all of Eastern Europe, all of Germany, and the island SSR of Cuba. The United States dissolves in 1986 due to so much instability both internal and externally. In present day, the USSR is the mighty superpower of the world. Unchallenged and there to stay. It sounds like that USSR of this world would be far closer to being called a Hyperpower. If the United States doesn't exist in 1986 and the USSR has that much land nobody could match them in anything. |
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Zyobot
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Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Posts: 17,120
Likes: 7,187
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Post by Zyobot on Jan 22, 2022 23:29:36 GMT
spanishspy wrote a dystopian timeline called The Hammer, The Sickle, The Earth where the USSR forms a mighty empire stretching from Korea to Germany. The mighty USSR includes all the OTL USSR plus all of China, the Korean Peninsula, all of Eastern Europe, all of Germany, and the island SSR of Cuba. The United States dissolves in 1986 due to so much instability both internal and externally. In present day, the USSR is the mighty superpower of the world. Unchallenged and there to stay. It sounds like that USSR of this world would be far closer to being called a Hyperpower. If the United States doesn't exist in 1986 and the USSR has that much land nobody could match them in anything. Agreed. It seems to me, then, that ATL Soviet Russia must’ve been blessed with relatively competent management to become that big and supremely powerful, while the US gets screwed (and probably the rest of the capitalist world, too, to boot). In which case, I suppose the ultra-depravity I’m looking for either never happens, or it only comes into effect well after the Soviets take over the world. Which, as I said, is a far cry from what I’m looking for here, let alone all sorts of plausibility issues with the premise itself… |
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gillan1220
Consul General
I've been depressed recently. Slow replies coming in the next few days.
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Post by gillan1220 on Jan 23, 2022 3:26:43 GMT
spanishspy wrote a dystopian timeline called The Hammer, The Sickle, The Earth where the USSR forms a mighty empire stretching from Korea to Germany. The mighty USSR includes all the OTL USSR plus all of China, the Korean Peninsula, all of Eastern Europe, all of Germany, and the island SSR of Cuba. The United States dissolves in 1986 due to so much instability both internal and externally. In present day, the USSR is the mighty superpower of the world. Unchallenged and there to stay. It sounds like that USSR of this world would be far closer to being called a Hyperpower. If the United States doesn't exist in 1986 and the USSR has that much land nobody could match them in anything. The POD is the the UN is kicked out of the Korean peninsula in 1950, followed by Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean invasions of Japan, the Philippines, and American-administered islands in the Pacific. It is then followed by a Soviet invasion of Alaska and British Columbia culminating in the nuclear detonation of Anchorage. Facing fears of a *implausible* Soviet invasion of the United States, Truman decided to surrender to the Soviet-led bloc even if the U.S. has a bigger navy, a much superior air force, and more nuclear weapons. The Soviets gain Alaska and British Columbia and rename both as the Alaskan SSR and the Canadian Pacific SSR. What follows is a period of instability across the United States as people demand to be more isolationist while another side wants revenge against the Soviet Union. But it also culminates in disastrous wars leading to U.S. military defeats in Cuba in 1962 and Nicaragua in the 1980s. Walter Mondale is elected to the presidency in 1984 to start bowing demands to the Soviet Union. Mondale also enacts the States' Rights Act, meaning if a state wanted to secede from the union, the federal government would not do anything about it. However, the Soviets then stage nuclear weapons in Cuba and the Canadian Pacific SSR to keep the United States from rising up against the Soviet hegemony. Mondale was about to declare war against the Soviet Union. By then, the American people were already tired of fighting and losing against the Soviet Union, choosing to accept the status quo instead. Mondale is assassinated by the pro-peace faction aligned to Al Haig, Secretary of State. Washington State then secedes from the union, followed by Texas, California, and New York. The South reforms the Confederate States of America. On September 4, 1986, Congress met one last-time in the U.S. Capitol and declared the union no longer exists. With that, the Soviet Union reigns supreme. *** A pure dystopic timeline. It kept me up a couple of nights when I first read it and made me realize how freedom should never be taken for granted. |
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Zyobot
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Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
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Post by Zyobot on Jan 23, 2022 4:00:24 GMT
It sounds like that USSR of this world would be far closer to being called a Hyperpower. If the United States doesn't exist in 1986 and the USSR has that much land nobody could match them in anything. The POD is the the UN is kicked out of the Korean peninsula in 1950, followed by Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean invasions of Japan, the Philippines, and American-administered islands in the Pacific. It is then followed by a Soviet invasion of Alaska and British Columbia culminating in the nuclear detonation of Anchorage. Facing fears of a *implausible* Soviet invasion of the United States, Truman decided to surrender to the Soviet-led bloc even if the U.S. has a bigger navy, a much superior air force, and more nuclear weapons. The Soviets gain Alaska and British Columbia and rename both as the Alaskan SSR and the Canadian Pacific SSR. What follows is a period of instability across the United States as people demand to be more isolationist while another side wants revenge against the Soviet Union. But it also culminates in disastrous wars leading to U.S. military defeats in Cuba in 1962 and Nicaragua in the 1980s. Walter Mondale is elected to the presidency in 1984 to start bowing demands to the Soviet Union. Mondale also enacts the States' Rights Act, meaning if a state wanted to secede from the union, the federal government would not do anything about it. However, the Soviets then stage nuclear weapons in Cuba and the Canadian Pacific SSR to keep the United States from rising up against the Soviet hegemony. Mondale was about to declare war against the Soviet Union. By then, the American people were already tired of fighting and losing against the Soviet Union, choosing to accept the status quo instead. Mondale is assassinated by the pro-peace faction aligned to Al Haig, Secretary of State. Washington State then secedes from the union, followed by Texas, California, and New York. The South reforms the Confederate States of America. On September 4, 1986, Congress met one last-time in the U.S. Capitol and declared the union no longer exists. With that, the Soviet Union reigns supreme. *** A pure dystopic timeline. It kept me up a couple of nights when I first read it and made me realize how freedom should never be taken for granted. I see...
Anyways, to bring the thread back on-topic, do you guys have any comments on the 'Ultra-Evil USSR' scenario? Because I don't think this TL quite cuts it, despite how dystopian a communist world would be.
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Post by lukedalton on Jan 23, 2022 12:56:49 GMT
*** A pure dystopic timeline. It kept me up a couple of nights when I first read it and made me realize how freedom should never be taken for granted. A thing like that will have made me realize how the author don't understand an atom of the military capacity of the entire soviet block in the 50's unless Stalin succeeded in found the nazist superweapons cache in their Artic vault, the one with the starships landing strip |
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gillan1220
Consul General
I've been depressed recently. Slow replies coming in the next few days.
Posts: 12,135
Likes: 10,775
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Post by gillan1220 on Jan 23, 2022 13:25:22 GMT
*** A pure dystopic timeline. It kept me up a couple of nights when I first read it and made me realize how freedom should never be taken for granted. A thing like that will have made me realize how the author don't understand an atom of the military capacity of the entire soviet block in the 50's unless Stalin succeeded in found the nazist superweapons cache in their Artic vault, the one with the starships landing strip The author admits that he was still a teen when he wrote that and he based on Red Alert. |
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Zyobot
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Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
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Post by Zyobot on Jan 23, 2022 14:35:13 GMT
A thing like that will have made me realize how the author don't understand an atom of the military capacity of the entire soviet block in the 50's unless Stalin succeeded in found the nazist superweapons cache in their Artic vault, the one with the starships landing strip The author admits that he was still a teen when he wrote that and he based on Red Alert. So, again, any more takers on my initial scenario? Maybe you should consider creating a separate thread, if you want to keep discussing TTL. |
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gillan1220
Consul General
I've been depressed recently. Slow replies coming in the next few days.
Posts: 12,135
Likes: 10,775
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Post by gillan1220 on Jan 23, 2022 14:38:55 GMT
The author admits that he was still a teen when he wrote that and he based on Red Alert. So, again, any more takers on my initial scenario? Maybe you should consider creating a separate thread, if you want to keep discussing TTL. Your initial scenario is probable and would present a terrible fate on the ordinary citizens of the USSR. We might see a refugee crisis of Soviet citizens. At this point, the UN can't do anything because the USSR is part of the Security Council. |
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Zyobot
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Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
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Post by Zyobot on Jan 23, 2022 14:41:44 GMT
So, again, any more takers on my initial scenario? Maybe you should consider creating a separate thread, if you want to keep discussing TTL. Your initial scenario is probable and would present a terrible fate on the ordinary citizens of the USSR. We might see a refugee crisis of Soviet citizens. At this point, the UN can't do anything because the USSR is part of the Security Council. What’s the process of expelling a UN Security Council member, then? If they’re sane, the others won’t let the Soviets have any say in determining global policy, especially since they’re apparently fine kickstarting nuclear war, either way. |
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Post by lukedalton on Jan 23, 2022 15:17:19 GMT
Krushev is succeeded not by Breznev but by someone that will start the Soviet cultural revolution and by the end of the 80's it's basically North Korea on steroids
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