As an idea for a minimalist POD: reduce the influence of the Slavophiles in Rusian politics.
e.g.:
Ernst Mikhail Shternmiler (b. 1784 in Kharkov, d. 1856 in St Petersburg) was the son of a prominent Russian jurist of German descent. Born to privilege, he studied law at Moscow and St Petersburg and the Classics and History at Marburg before entering the civil service. On his posting to Kertch, he first encountered the Crimean Gothic language and took an interest. In 1814, he began a long and fruitful correspondence with his university friend Jacob Grimm on his observations and recordings that led to several publications in learned journals and eventually, the 1823 "Beiträge zur Grammatik der Krim-deutschen Sprache". By this time, Shternmiler was actively researching the folk traditions of the Crimean Goths and in 1829 found a St Petersburg publisher for his Crimean Gothic fairy tales, originally as "Contes des Fees de la Crimee Gothique", but translated by the author into Russian and a heavily annotated German edition by 1832. The success of this book got the provincial magistrate noticed at the court, and he received a salaried position in St Petersburg in the following year, being adlected to the Russian Academy in 1839.
Being a competent liguist and romantic, Shternmiler identified Crimean Gothic (or, as he referred to it - Krim-Deutsch) as an East Germanic language and during his lengthy excursions into the countryside sought to unearth the earliest layers of its identity before it was invaded by West Germanic loan words and patterns brought in by German settlers. In the process, he created a historical panorama of the Gothic peoples of the Crimea as a proto-Rurikid dynasty, a foreshadowing of the later Russian princes and historical heritage for the current regime to base its claim to the formerly Ottoman territory on. Archeology, another interest of Shternmiler in his old age, continued to supply evidence of Gothic presence in Southern Russia, boosting the historical legend and shaping a generation of eager scholars that descended on the Crimea to record dialects, document folk tales and customs, collect art and in the process create an intellectual identity of the 'Crimean Gothic' population. In 1852, Crimean Gothic became a formal part of the philological curriculum in Göttingen, where the ageing Shternmiler, doyen of the field, received a hero's welcome by the student corporations. The following year, Shternmiler's chair at St Petersburg was expanded into an institute with a total of four professors (Germanic history, law and senior and associate professor of philology) and chairs of Germanic philology dedicated to the study of the Goths were established, at Kharkov and Kasan, all going to the old professor's star students.
Fast forward to 1917: a growing elite of educated young Crimean Gothic speakers has created an eloquent and forceful national sentiment that encompasses many Crimeans and Ukrainians now rediscovering their Gothic roots. Crimean Goth nationalists strongly identify with the Czarist regime as "loyal hearthmen to their Rurikid lord" (as the anticicising banner of the Odessa volunteer regiment reads in Runic). However, the anti-German sentiment of the war and the upheaval that followed revolution has made many long to form their own state. Throwing in their lot with the Whites, tens of thousands of Crimean Goth volunteers and bourgeois are evacuated with their families, most eventually settling in Canada and the Central United States. The Soviet government initially treats the remaining Crimean Goths well, as they are regarded as an agricultural 'peasant people' antithetical to the monarchist and backwards Cossacks. The Stalinistera sees the deportation of practically the entire population to Kazakhstan as potential collaborators with the German invader. They are not allowed to return home until the 1960s. Meanwhile, Crimean gothic studies remains a fertile, though highly politicised field at German (later West German) universities. Experts begin collaborating with Soviet universities and institutions in ther late 1960s to fund a new round of excavations in the area.
Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian nationalismheavily emphasised the Gothic element in its history, embracing Crimean Gothic language and culture as part of its heritage and distinctly non-Russian. Exchange students to West Germany return to well-funded research positions, the language becomes a fashionable choice in schools, and popular culture embraces it as a status-forming identity. Money from expartiate communities in America and from German authorities eager to assuage the disappointment of Crimean Goths being denied the coveted 'Aussiedler' status creates a sense of importance and affluence during the 1990s.
Today, Crimean Gothic is spoken (more or less) by an estimated 125,000 people in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia and Kyrgyzstan that descend from original deportees, 120,000 Canadians and Americans (most of whom probably do not know more than a few sentences) and approximately 2,800,000 in Ukraine, many of whom likely claimed that status in order to receive German aid and community support during the 1990s and early 2000s. Nonetheless, linguists in the field believe that anywehere between 200,000 and 500,000 genuine native speakers exist, and the language is used in daily communication in communities of up to 1 million people. The Ukraininan government regards Crimean Gothic as a useful tool in countering ethnic Russian influence and actively supports its use through radio and TV stations, subsidised newspapers and favoured treatment for Gothic communities in the Southeastern parts of the country. Gothic speakers from Russia are permitted to 'return' under a 2005 policy strongly condemned by Vladimir Putin, briefly revoked in early 2007 but reinstated the following year.
