Post-Tsarist democratic Russia

[Grey Wolf]

Really? Giving Russia access to the warm seas is... a new approach, to say the least.
Does anybody know if it´s serious or
would they have said anything to keep the Czar in the war, like they did with Italy

I believe you have it right with the latter question - they committed to all of Russia's dreams in order to bolster the Tsarist regime.

I don't even know if Kerensky was committed to this treaty ? AFAIK it only became public knowledge when the Bolsheviks later renounced it, so one supposes it applied in theory to Kerensky's Russia. But with much less chance of ever happening

Grey Wolf

 

[Peter]

Well, Russia isn't exactly Italy and you can't screw 'em over in the same way. What happens if Russia just says "No, we want our rightfull lands"?

 

[Chris]

Have the provisional govt. make peace at once, perhaps giving germany all of Poland and the Baltics in exchange for peace.
Chris

 

[Matthew Craw]

Have the provisional govt. make peace at once, perhaps giving germany all of Poland and the Baltics in exchange for peace.
Chris

That'd work, at least if the postwar transition to a democracy went smoothly(ish)

The problem is that there's no way the pro-entente liberals who dominated the provisional government would have done it.

That's why I prefer having the Tsar make peace in late 1916, moderating the uphevals of 1917. If Ludendorf decides getting Russia out of the war is more important than raising Polish troops . . .

OTOH, this is more likely to end up as a saner monarchy, perhaps with a moderately powerful Duma, than as an outright democracy. This in itself may help to prevent extreme revolution however.

 

[Derek Jackson]

I think if Lenin had been out of the picture his 1917 coup would not have happened. In OTL peasant based parties won the elections (whch were held after the Bosheviks took power but were ignored)

I suspect that it would have been in Germany's itnerests to have offered Peace Terms that Russia could have accepted . Remember even the Bolsheviks balked at Brest Litovsk.



I picture, I fear, that gradually other forces from the Right, combined with the Nationality issues, would leave Russia in quite a lot of chaos.

I wonder if getting bread rather than land would have allowed the Germans- and perhaps Austrians- to fight on for rather longer than in OTL

 

[Mr.Bluenote]

I think if Lenin had been out of the picture his 1917 coup would not have happened.

Hmm, wonder why nobody has mentioned that as a POD. Nice thinking, Derek. Yes, that would probably be the best possible way of creating a democratic post-Tzarist Russia.

I suspect that it would have been in Germany's itnerests to have offered Peace Terms that Russia could have accepted . Remember even the Bolsheviks balked at Brest Litovsk.

I'm not real clear on what drove the Germans to demand all that they did - Russian weakness? Superiority complex? Seen today the B-L peace seems totally unjust.

I picture, I fear, that gradually other forces from the Right, combined with the Nationality issues, would leave Russia in quite a lot of chaos.

Before the Communist take over, how many Right Wingers were there? Fx Kornilov's main reason for marching on Petrograd was the Communists (in a slightly convoluted way, I know). Wouldn't it be reasonable to think, that without Lenin the extreme right would not appeare either?

I wonder if getting bread rather than land would have allowed the Germans- and perhaps Austrians- to fight on for rather longer than in OTL

Another good point, Derek! I think you're quite likely right! But as stated above something drove the Germans to make insane claims...

Hmm, it might actually be a rather interesting POD for a TL. What if the Germans aggreed to a fair peace with Russia? No revoluton? A stabil Russia? More food and resources for the Germans? Longer war on the Western Front? Italy knocked out of the war?

Best regards and all!

- Mr.Bluenote.

 

[Grey Wolf]

But the Russians didn't stop FIGHTING until the Bolsheviks took over, so any peace OTL was going to be done with them. You may recall that initially the Bolsheviks cared not a hoot for conventional diplomacy, showed the world all the secret treaties and correspondence and were certain that world revolution would sweep away all the other combatants so such a thing as a peace treaty meant nothing at all to them. In order to compel the Bolsheviks to sign the Germans had to advance sufficiently deeply into Russia that the very survival of the Bolshevik regime was at risk if they did not agree a peace treaty

Regarding the peace of Brest-Litovsk, you have to consider the twin shadows of the Russian giant always on Prussia/Germany's back door, and of Bolshevism. For example, the German landowning barons in the Baltic provinces demanded that they be annexed to Germany - with the over-arcing power of the Tsar gone they could not survive either Bolshevism (which would destroy them) or local self-determination (which would destroy their priveleges). Finland's independence hardly seems either insane or unfair. Poland - the Germans were committed to setting up an independent Polish state, in fact they had declared an embryonic one in 1916; they had absolutely no intention of ceding any of their land and it was to be comprised of ex-Russian land. White Russia (today's independent nation of Belarus) had once been Polish so for Russia to lose this in order to make Poland a viable size made sense. Again, what is actually insane about the creation of an independent Ukraine ? Ukrainian nationalists had come out in force, were working in partnership with the Central Powers and expected their reward

Now, you could claim that inevitably all the independent new states (and let's throw Lithuania into that mix) would be German vassals either directly or economically. But that is not all that much different to how France intended to use the new states of the East post-Versailles as its own buffer zone

Grey Wolf

 

[RatCatcher]

Wery interesting theme, men. What is my idea: there were no chance for democrats to stay in power in Russia. Simply because they were too stuped for this. They did not no how to rule the country, they just knew how to say beautifull words in salons. Only one fact can show how "smart" they were: soon after they came in power they... abolished police! How, how country can live without police? I'm not talking how they "democratisied" army, it is somthing unusual, only enemy spies or mad could do it!
And why are you talking about Kerensky? He was nothing, zero, just a chatterbox.
So, if such "democratic goverment" survived, Russia would collapsed same as Soviet Union did in 1991.

But it would not happened, because there were only 2 ways - Bolshevics or military dictatorship. But in case of dictatorship there would be nothing like national-fascist regime in Russia, simply because there was nothing like this in Russia. Kornilov was semi-socialist, Denikin and Kolchak were constitutionalists (like American Republicans). And they have never fighted to bring reaction back, no. They fighted to establish normal lows. They were patriots, but not fascists. I think you know the difference.
Some of you said about Kazzaks pogrom-likers? Unfortunately my English is not so well to make a good translation, but if some of you knows Russian I can give you a link to a very good information about pogroms in Southern Russia in 1919, about who exacltly killed people there and what whites did at this territory. Please do not listen to Soviet propaganda

So, htere could be 2 points of divergence:
1. Success of Kornilov's riot in August 1917 (and there was a very good chance)
2. White's victory in Civil War. There also were some chances, but it is absolutely another theme.
What would happen next? As for me, the best way is Pinochet like dictatorship, licvidation of all radical left opposition (bolshevics, left SR, anarchists) and very slow developement. Only after economic situation improves and different national movements destroyed by central goverment, slow, very slow democratisation. It will take maybe 10 or 20 years.
What then? Definetely there is no Nazis in Germany. Russo-American alliance again Japan in Far East is very possible, same as against England... So, geopolitic can be wery interesting in this world...

 

[MerryPrankster]

"I'm not real clear on what drove the Germans to demand all that they did - Russian weakness? Superiority complex? Seen today the B-L peace seems totally unjust."

Russian weakeness and Germany's pride perhaps. Plus, the states carved out of Brest-Litovsk were NON-RUSSIAN in ethnicity (generations later, they split off from the Soviet Union and left Russia at essentially its B-L borders). The local people, who'd been under the yoke of the Russian Czar for generations, would, rather than resent the Germans, be grateful to them and cooperate in key respects (thrones for royal relatives, cheap grain, etc). Theoretically at least.

 

[Karl Martell]

"I'm not real clear on what drove the Germans to demand all that they did - Russian weakness? Superiority complex? Seen today the B-L peace seems totally unjust."

Brest-Litovsk was an extremely harsh treaty. The Ukraine and Belorussia were fundamentally Russian in identity. The Germans didn't aim to promote national self-determination in any way, or to make a "just" peace. Read what Ludendorff and the others in the leadership wanted, they were very blunt... they wanted Russia amputated, and eastern Europe as their personal colonial empire so that they would never again have to fear starvation from a blockade. Eastern Europe was to become their playground, the Polish puppet kingdom would have to be kept on as short a leach as possible as not to give the Poles in Prussia any funny ideas. Finnish independence was more of an irrelevant byproduct of victory than an actually intended goal. (The benefit for the Germans was that the Finns had planned to invite a German prince to become King of Finnland, some Hessian protestant named Karl IIRC. That idea was of course abandoned after November 1918.) The German generals and the Kaiser's clique had only one thing in mind, and that was to make Germany the supreme power. They were the same people who later on said that they should have been even more ruthless in their conduct of the war.

Unfortunately I don't see a way to make their demands any more reasonable, barring ASBs coming to earth and shooting Ludendorff, Hindenburg, the Kaiser and about two hundred others in the head.

Had some people like Kornilov seen the light before the coup, they might have taken over the government before it was too late. Essentially what enabled the Bolshies to win was that their opponents (Kerensky, Mensheviks, military et al) had absolutely no clue how determined Lenin and his followers were. Their incompetence also didn't help much. IMHO then only people who had the necessary 'zeal' to put down the left radicals were unfortunately the militarists. The provisional government wasn't able to use its power in the way that would have been necessary, and was in any case too opposed to the military. A direct takeover by the militarists would probably result in a rather oppressive Russia for a couple of years, with perhaps Czarevich Mikhail as Czar but without any sort of powers for the time being. Russia would have remained instable, would have seen no land reforms and would probably have gone the way many unstable eastern European states went in the interwar period... peasant protests, oppressive police state, nasty antisemitic progroms as the depression rolls around, and at some point a 'royal coup' as the Czar and a hard core of supporters establish a royal dictatorship. Maybe after some sort of big war, involving the people who in OTL backed Hitler, some sort of reforms could have been enacted. (The Austrian corporal couldn't possible become chancellor without the red menace. He was just too unlikely a figure.)

But Russia is just so damn big. How can you rule it in any other way than with an iron fist, if the liberals and democrats are as inept as in pre-1917 Russia? After Stalin, the Communist Party managed to hold it all together through their ideology at least as much as through force. Without ideology... what's left...

 

[Chris]

The treaty of B-L happened because the russian side was collapsing - everyone expected a peace within days of the dall of the government - and the germans took advantage of the peace to take all they wanted. Have the new government take power and then immedantly offer peace on the basis of the status quo ante, that would not let the germans see that they could take more for the theving.

Chris

 

[Karl Martell]

The treaty of B-L happened because the russian side was collapsing - everyone expected a peace within days of the dall of the government - and the germans took advantage of the peace to take all they wanted. Have the new government take power and then immedantly offer peace on the basis of the status quo ante, that would not let the germans see that they could take more for the theving.

Chris

I think you're underestimating just _how_ radical the ideas in the German leadership had become. Vast annexions in the east had been on their agenda since around 1915, it wasn't just something they came up with as they say Russia fall apart in late 1917. And they had similar plans for the west. The Kaiser even suggested at one opportunity in 1917 or 1918 that the Germans ought to expel all Belgians and French from the lands that would be annexed after the final victory, and settle decorated soldiers and NCOs on the land. Granted, Wilhelm II said many things without thinking too hard, and not all of it was to be taken seriously, but that it was brought up indicates IMHO what sort of mindset these people had. Many things Ludendorff said sounded awfully like what Hitler said 15 years later.

Had the Russians negotiated from a position of strength, the German demands would of course have looked a lot different, but in fall 1917 they had no reason to be conciliant with any Russian government.

 

[Melvin Loh]

Rennenkampf- Tannenberg

FYI Rennenkampf was involved in the disastrous Battle of Tanenburg in Aug 1914 at the war's outset, when his army, together with that of his fellow Russian gen Samsonov, was thoroughly surrounded and crushed by the far numerically inferior but better led and equipped German army in east Prussia under Hindenburg and Ludendorff. IIRC some 250,000 Russians were killed or captured in this massive debacle, and Samsonov shot himself in the woods in shame. How Rennenkampf would've fared in the Russian CW IMHO would be of a very similar negative nature, given his previous failings at the war's start...

 

[RatCatcher]

FYI Rennenkampf was involved in the disastrous Battle of Tanenburg in Aug 1914 at the war's outset, when his army, together with that of his fellow Russian gen Samsonov, was thoroughly surrounded and crushed by the far numerically inferior but better led and equipped German army in east Prussia under Hindenburg and Ludendorff. IIRC some 250,000 Russians were killed or captured in this massive debacle, and Samsonov shot himself in the woods in shame. How Rennenkampf would've fared in the Russian CW IMHO would be of a very similar negative nature, given his previous failings at the war's start...

Actually, 1st russian army of gen Rennenkampf was not surrounded by Germans, but only retreated from Eastern Prussia. Germans surrounded only 2nd army of gen Samsonov and many historians say that it was Samsonov's and gen Jilinsky's (front commander) foult. But, you know, German surname - Rennenkampf, is a very good base to create a myth...