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Is a Fascist Russia likely to be an expansionist power or a status quo power?

CaliGuy

Active member
In real life, the fascist countries of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan were huge expansionist powers. Nazi Germany had dreams of conquering the entire European part of the Soviet Union and subsequently expelling tens of millions of Slavs from there while Fascist Italy essentially dreamed of recreating the Roman Empire and Imperial Japan had a vision of a Japanese-led Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere:

Greater_Germanic_Reich.png




Italian_Fascist_Empire_Globe.png



Greater_Asian_Co-prosperity_sphere.png



In turn, this made me wonder--if Russia would have somehow avoided Communism (for instance, if Kerensky would have cooperated with Kornilov in restoring order to Russia instead of arming the Bolsheviks to fight Kornilov) and instead became fascist in the 1930s as a result of the Great Depression, would a Fascist Russia have been an expansionist power like Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan or a status quo power?

Any thoughts on this?
 
Fascism isn't inherently expansionist, just look at Franco or Salazar. But any Russian government that emerges from the humiliation of a Brest-Litovsk type settlement is going to seek to restore the old borders as the opportunity arises.
For what it's worth, Russia might be able to undo some of the Brest-Litovsk settlement relatively quickly--for instance, reconquering most of Ukraine and Belarus just like the Bolsheviks did. (Some pre-1914 Russian territories, such as Finland and western Poland, might be perceived as being too much of a pain in the ass for Russia to reconquer and rule over again.) However, might Russia also be interested in expanding beyond its pre-1914 borders? For instance, expanding into Turkey or Iran or Afghanistan or China or Mongolia?
 
Point. It'd depend on who comes to power and which areas are considered "Russia's sphere"
Obviously Stalin won't be coming to power in Russia in this scenario, but I wonder if he ever considered the USSR's southern territories to also be within its sphere of influence. After all, he never made any annexation moves there like he did in the west, but that might be at least in part due to him having more opportunities along his western borders than along his southern borders.
 
It occurs to me that almost anyone other than Hitler could quite easily accommodate a Fascist Russia into a lot of the thinking for the time while still having fascism in Germany- if you assume a more understated nationalism where Germany only wants Poland west of the Vistula and is happy to 'bring home' the Baltic Germans to resettle that area for example. It's still aggressively nationalistic and expansionistic, but at least initially it could be stable enough to work for a couple of decades.
 
The failure of a communist revolution in Russia would have enormous consequences for the evolution of fascism in the rest of the world - the Nazis came to see expansion to the Urals as desirable and possible because to do otherwise would concede a huge swathe of Europe to Bolshevism. Similarly there was a pretty bitter divide in Japan between those who wanted to prioritise war with Communism. tho tbf there might still be some bad blood there even if they seem ideologically aligned
 
It occurs to me that almost anyone other than Hitler could quite easily accommodate a Fascist Russia into a lot of the thinking for the time while still having fascism in Germany- if you assume a more understated nationalism where Germany only wants Poland west of the Vistula and is happy to 'bring home' the Baltic Germans to resettle that area for example. It's still aggressively nationalistic and expansionistic, but at least initially it could be stable enough to work for a couple of decades.
Yeah, AFAIK, the desire to expand up to the Urals was a Nazi idea and wasn't shared even by other German right-wingers in the years before 1933. Rather, other German right-wingers might have been content with, say, a restoration of the borders of 1914 plus perhaps an annexation of Austria, the Sudetenland, and South Tyrol.

The failure of a communist revolution in Russia would have enormous consequences for the evolution of fascism in the rest of the world - the Nazis came to see expansion to the Urals as desirable and possible because to do otherwise would concede a huge swathe of Europe to Bolshevism.

There was also a Nazi belief that such a huge amount of land would best be left to "hard-working and productive" Germans as opposed to "lazy and unproductive" Slavs. :( That, and the Nazis wanted to transform Germany into a superpower like the US was. (Well, OK, the US wasn't a superpower back then, but it definitely already had the potential to become one at short notice due to its vast population, industry, and resources.)

Similarly there was a pretty bitter divide in Japan between those who wanted to prioritise war with Communism. tho tbf there might still be some bad blood there even if they seem ideologically aligned

Why might there still be some bad blood between Japan and Russia? Or are you thinking between Germany and Russia here?
 
There was also a Nazi belief that such a huge amount of land would best be left to "hard-working and productive" Germans as opposed to "lazy and unproductive" Slavs. :( That, and the Nazis wanted to transform Germany into a superpower like the US was. (Well, OK, the US wasn't a superpower back then, but it definitely already had the potential to become one at short notice due to its vast population, industry, and resources.)

Why might there still be some bad blood between Japan and Russia? Or are you thinking between Germany and Russia here?

Yes, but I think that was partially a consequence of the Revolution - certainly Mein Kampf talks about a great Empire being laid waste by Judaeo-Bolshevism. In a world where industrialisation is proceeding under a hard-line nationalist government, it completely remoulds the thinking of early fascist thinking.

and i was thinking about how a fascist russia might have a bone to pick with japan over the aftermath of the russo-japanese war
 
Yes, but I think that was partially a consequence of the Revolution - certainly Mein Kampf talks about a great Empire being laid waste by Judaeo-Bolshevism. In a world where industrialisation is proceeding under a hard-line nationalist government, it completely remoulds the thinking of early fascist thinking.

True, Hitler did say that Russia has lost its right to exist as an independent state a result of it being taken over by Jewish Bolsheviks. That said, though, if Germany won't be able to acquire additional Lebensraum in Russia, where could it acquire additional Lebensraum?

and i was thinking about how a fascist russia might have a bone to pick with japan over the aftermath of the russo-japanese war

Russia's territorial losses in that war were fairly minor, though. Yes, Russia did lose a sphere of influence in Manchuria, but Manchuria wasn't actually a part of Russia.
 
and i was thinking about how a fascist russia might have a bone to pick with japan over the aftermath of the russo-japanese war

That would be an interesting one, because that massively impacts on Japan's own imperial ideas - "where should we strike, north or south?" is a different debate if north has a hostile nation looking to go to war.
 
That would be an interesting one, because that massively impacts on Japan's own imperial ideas - "where should we strike, north or south?" is a different debate if north has a hostile nation looking to go to war.
I wonder if Russia is going to want to get more than just some scraps (southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands) from Japan in a new war, though. Specifically, I was thinking of Russia also aiming for both Mongolia and Xinjiang.
 
True, Hitler did say that Russia has lost its right to exist as an independent state a result of it being taken over by Jewish Bolsheviks. That said, though, if Germany won't be able to acquire additional Lebensraum in Russia, where could it acquire additional Lebensraum?

Russia's territorial losses in that war were fairly minor, though. Yes, Russia did lose a sphere of influence in Manchuria, but Manchuria wasn't actually a part of Russia.

Thats why I'm saying it hugely reshapes fascist priorities - more likely the Nazis would think more like the Italians in ambition - a Mare Nostrum in Scandinavia and the Baltic, reclaiming their old African colonies etc.

and yeah, good luck convincing white European fascists that losing their sphere of influence to a non-white race isn't a big deal
 
Thats why I'm saying it hugely reshapes fascist priorities - more likely the Nazis would think more like the Italians in ambition - a Mare Nostrum in Scandinavia and the Baltic, reclaiming their old African colonies etc.

Interesting. Is that actually going to provide sufficient Lebensraum for the German population, though?

and yeah, good luck convincing white European fascists that losing their sphere of influence to a non-white race isn't a big deal

Touche.
 
Lebensraum might not be the be-all-and-end-all thing to this timeline's fascists
So, a different German Fascist (as in, someone other than Hitler) comes to power in Germany during the Great Depression in this scenario?
 
I wonder if Russia is going to want to get more than just some scraps (southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands) from Japan in a new war, though. Specifically, I was thinking of Russia also aiming for both Mongolia and Xinjiang.
Either way it's gonna be very not pretty for China. If Russia's looking in that direction then you'll likely get a serious amount of Japanese and Russian proxy support right when they're in the middle of their warlord period and that'll be filthy.
 
Either way it's gonna be very not pretty for China. If Russia's looking in that direction then you'll likely get a serious amount of Japanese and Russian proxy support right when they're in the middle of their warlord period and that'll be filthy.
Agreed. Also, honestly, I wonder if the smart thing to do for Russian Fascists would have been to try making a deal with Japan to partition China into spheres of influence (with perhaps some annexations) between the two of them. Of course, this would require Russian Fascists to abandon any racial hatred that they might have of the "yellow" Japanese--but then again it's worth noting that Fascists can sometimes be pragmatic (just look at the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in real life) when necessary!
 
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