Partition 1945
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The communist world on arrival
Consists of the USSR, puppet states and occupied territories in Europe and Asia, and the area controlled by the communists in the Chinese civil war
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The communist world after 55 years
By the time of the Partition the communist world was already used to hardship. Having just emerged victorious from the most brutal war in human history they had all to many wounds to heal. Nevermind the still ongoing conflicts like China. With the rest of the world gone Stalin had no more fears of foreign intervention and unleashed yet another purge and terror on his people.
First Eastern Europe, then Northern China were forcefully incorporated directly into the union. Some states were already broken and acquiesced, others, like the Yugoslavs and the Chinese, fought to the end, and the red partisans that just years before they had armed waged a brutal insurgency for over a decade. With no help though resistance was ultimately doomed.
Stalin would rule until his probable (though never proven) assassination in 1951 (year 6 of the new world to the people living in it).
After his death Georgi Zhukov would come home to Moscow (bringing his army with him) and overthrow the temporary government which was an unstable coalition of factions loyal to Molotov and Beria.
Zhukov cleaned house and a few years later reformed the USSR into the GSU or Global Socialist Union. At this point the RSFSR was partitioned into several republics and many borders were rearranged while some smaller former SSR’s were dissolved and merged. While notionally a federal democracy like the USSR before it, the GSU is a military dictatorship of the red army. Settlement and expansion into the virgin lands and seas was prioritized and the Russian supremacist government was quick to deport any ethno-nationalist troublemakers (Or really any brand thereof. Exile is the favourite punishment for a wide range of crimes) to the frontier.
While the last partisans fought from the Chinese mountains into the early 60’s (year 17) they had stoped being a public concern or real threat long before that an it quickly became obvious that military spending was wasted in a world with no foreign enemies to fight against. Cutting funding to the army would be a quick way to get ousted from your military dictatorship though so instead Zhukov found other things for that army to do. Thus the modern government of the GSU developed where nearly all branches of bureaucracy and several industries are directly part of the military. Each republic and each Union territory (Moscow is the only big one, all others are desolate outposts where there hasn’t been enough settlement yet to warrant establishing a republic) has a military governor who is responsible for enforcing the will of the union within his territories. His deputy acts as the main representative of that republic in Moscow.
Zhukov ruled with an iron fist but proved to be a less dogmatic and fairly practical leader. For over 20 years the GSU enjoyed political stability under his leadership. In the year 28 (1973) he dropped dead of a heart attack but had previously been in good health. This is when the country got lucky. With no obvious rivals to take over (the day before making too big a name for yourself could have got you executed) it fell to the council of the union who were all the same rank to select a new premier. Naturally inclined to promote one of their own but no one had wide enough support and they all commanded equally enough matched forces that fighting it out would yield no obvious winner. Eventually a rotating council was established with 7 men holding the official powers of 1 and the premier himself from amongst the 7 having only a 1 year term
At this point the republics seized as much autonomy as Moscow let them (some instead of nearly none).
This rotating council has ruled for nearly 25 years and proved quite stable. Everyone involved has been enriched by it so they felt no need to upset the system. No political liberalization ever occurred and people don’t vote for any office higher then city mayor because beyond that it’s all military appointments, but the climate of persecution is far more relaxed then it once was, and non-violent dissenters don’t have to worry about being executed (exiled though...). Technological progress has been slow in this world, but is happening. Social change not so much, anyone who doesn’t like things as they are is
encouraged to fuck off and go be a sustenance farmer in the virgin wilderness for a while. There’s no freedom of movement outside the republic you were born in unless you want to settle the frontier, and the only path to serious wealth is reaching the upper ranks of the military where corruption, favour trading, and bribes provide a far more comfortable standard of living then the the small salary and food coupons the government issues to almost everyone else. The command economy mostly continues but some small business is allowed, especially in the frontier regions. Don’t try to grow your business though or you’ll find yourself quickly getting nationalized.
While this word isn’t rich, and isn’t democratic, it is peaceful, and for most people that’s enough.
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Ethnic map of the communist world
Russian is the official language of the Union and at least co-official in every republic, but each republic is permitted to have another official language, and 30 of the 51 republics do. Everyone under 30 speaks Russian perfectly anyways and it’s the language of all business and government. By deliberate policy most new republics weren’t settled exclusively by any one nationality but there are a few exceptions.
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The anti communist world on arival
Everything except the first map
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The anti communist world in 2000
While the disappearance of the communist block was a shock to the rest of the world it wasn’t entirely an unpleasant on for the western powers or republican Chinese. While the lost peoples of Poland, the balkans, and northern China were mourned most said “good riddance!” to the Russians.
Obviously with no communist threat there would be no NATO alliance so the western allies split up and went their owns paths. Never coming to blows directly but certainly competing much more aggressively with each other then OTL.
Republican China was a swift American ally and received Marshal Plan style development aid and recognition of all it’s previous claims in the Mongolian and Manchuria north while America moved into Siberia.
England, not wanting to loose out in China supported through India the Tibetan empire and East Turkistan, which were isolated enough in the mountains the struggling Chinese couldn’t stop them.
America has of course been the sole superpower of this world but England and France both maintain different kinds of empires and since the 1980’s Sino-American split China has been trying to rival the USA for economic dominance as an equal, with increasing success.
Without the threat of communism America told England and France in no nonsense terms to decolonize from the Americas and Pacific fast or the people there would be learning a thing or two about freedom, their way. They backed down but France retains a big chunk of Africa and England has worldwide allies in most of her former colonies and dominions.
In the former European communist east the Free city of Berlin expanded to the coast before being surrounded by north Germany, while the south got Hungary and Transylvania. Greece and Italy split the balkans. France took Greater Poland and Sweden the Baltic coast, England founded a colony and later dominion around St Petersburg and moving south into most of European Russia that’s something like an Eastern European Canada these days, North of that is Finnish Karelia and the Arkhangelsk territory. On the Black Sea Israel was established in the Crimea after the Arab state unceremoniously evicted most Jewish settlers from the holy land. Turkey colonized most of the surrounding area but deported a few too many Kurdish and Arab troublemakers north of the caucuses mountains and lost the area to a revolt in the early 1990’s. Meanwhile Thrace is in more of a Taiwan situation and still claims both North Turkey and Anatolia proper.
In Central Asia the plains state was settled mostly by Afghans who weren’t really Afghans. The American Siberian states meanwhile have a very high percentage of African Americans, the new homestead act (which is in effect and still distributing free land to this day my friends, Siberia is big...) came into effect around the stirrings of a civil rights movement which was implemented in federal government institutions before state, and the southern state governments were only too eager to encourage their politically troublesome black population to move to Siberia on the federal dime. Facing discrimination at home and offered free land and a fresh start most took the deal
No country since 1945 has run the risk of declaring itself an outright communist state, but a few post colonial countries have tried to emulate the model. More interestingly many democratic-socialist parties TTL lean much further into the red end of the spectrum and get away with it. Since communism wasn’t the great enemy to America for the second half of the century but rather the vanquished enemy of the past it’s much more tolerated in moderation.
