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Reverse Cold War

lerk

Well-known member
I made a similar thread on AH.com but it didn't get much attention. The idea here is that a liberal, democratic Russia faces off against a communist America. Looking at older threads many people seem to think it's very hard to have this be accomplished, but I think it is more likely than what others may think. If you can get Kerensky's government to survive you might see a slow transition to a European style parliamentary system, albeit one more conservative. If you can get political extremists to lose elections after the Great Depression you will have a reformist government in power which restores Russia's economy and strengthens its democracy. There was a thread on here a while back discussing possible PODs for a socialist America, so I guess using any one of them might work.

Now the hard part, for me at least, is getting the democratic Russia and communist America to each believe that the other is a threat to its interests and a potential rival. Russia might be a bit poorer, and even with this reformist government in the 1930s it will take some time for it to become a developed, first world nation. A communist America, on the other hand, will take less time recovering from the revolution. I don't know what will trigger the events which will lead into the deterioration of Russo-American relations, in fact I think this can be discussed in this thread. You might see this reverse cold war starting a lot later than the OTL Cold War, say in the 1970s.

What do you guys think?
 
I think what you're unlikely to have is a Russia-led democratic faction; Russia part of a democratic grouping with other European countries, maybe?
 
I think what you're unlikely to have is a Russia-led democratic faction; Russia part of a democratic grouping with other European countries, maybe?

I suppose if you can get some powerful W European countries like the UK, France and Germany to go red an anti-communist faction may emerge with Russia being a part of it, and eventually becoming the leader of it due to its size and the power it has because of it.
 
I think what you're unlikely to have is a Russia-led democratic faction; Russia part of a democratic grouping with other European countries, maybe?

I think you can make it happen with a different world war 2. Let's say that France and/or the UK goes fascist and really starts to mess up economies in Europe. Even if you have an alliance between America and Russia, it would be Russia that liberated them. Especially if it isn't Germany, their own economy would still be doing pretty well as they got buffered, so they would be the natural leader of a European block in that case.
 
Really can't imagine a modern PoD which would result in Russia becoming a liberal capitalist democracy in the way the US is. The indigenous liberal movement in Russia has always been small and marginal because Russia has never been developed enough to have a large liberal middle class. And Russia's (along with the rest of Eastern Europe's) underdevelopment can be traced back all the way to the emergence of the rise of capitalism in Western Europe and the subsequent Second Serfdom in the East. Maybe Russia is successfully brought into a Western bloc? But it's hard to imagine Russia's elites ever submitting themselves to the West in the ways that would be required. And this would obviously be contrary to the possibility of a "reverse Cold War" anyway.

Communist America is probably even more difficult. The US and Canada were far more agrarian than Western Europe and generally industrialized much later. Without classical large industrial working classes (especially among natural-born Americans) socialism as a movement was basically contained to immigrant populations. This changed in the 30s and 40s as mass industrialization led to a growth in the labor movement and socialists/communists quickly rose to leadership. But similar to Japan the US and Canada had been able to witness the entire rise of communism in Europe and knew how to destroy it. They broke us, denounced us, and ripped us from the labor movement which basically destroyed what little power we had. I think the only way communism is winning in America is as the function of an anti-war effort. America badly losing an overseas war giving socialists an opportunity to ride popular anger to power. But even then there are large swaths of the country which would need to be effectively conquered, resulting in a bitter bloody civil war.

So all in all I think communist America vs. capitalist Russia is totally possible, but it would look nothing like the OTL Cold War.
 
Very interesting post d32123. Of course a democratic Russia is hard. I guess another idea for having this come about is to have Russia first be under the control of an anti-communist dictatorship, which eventually collapses due to incompetence. But I guess after that the new democratic government would make it a point to engage in detente with the communist America, viewing the rivalry as a stain of the old Russian dictatorship, which might lead to the end of a Reverse Cold War unless the Americans do something very stupid, leading to the rebirth of tensions.
 
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