What would be the regional and global impact if instead of a 150 million rump Russia we'd have had a 500+ million Greater Russia? This is actually very doable without Communism, Nazism, and mass secessions. BTW, I mean regional and global impact in terms of geopolitics, culture, media, language, religion, et cetera.
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What would be the regional and global impact if instead of a 150 million rump Russia we'd have had a 500+ million Greater Russia?
- Thread starter Sylvanus
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- Pronouns
- he/him
Please define 'very doable.'
For one thing, you blithely state that it could be achieved 'without Communism, Nazism, and mass secessions.' One of these things is very much not like the other.
Why exactly would this hypothetical Russia be any better at taming its restive minorities than the other great empires were?
For one thing, you blithely state that it could be achieved 'without Communism, Nazism, and mass secessions.' One of these things is very much not like the other.
Why exactly would this hypothetical Russia be any better at taming its restive minorities than the other great empires were?
Because Russia's minorities were located much closer to its center than other empires' minorities were and because Russia's minorities were not a demographic threat to anywhere near the same extent that other empires' minorities were--which in turn would have made it easier for Russia to eventually grant them full citizenship and legal equality? Britain couldn't do this for India since it would result in Indians running and dominating over Britain.
Theoretically, Russia's minorities could try rebelling, but Russia should be capable of crushing most of them without serious external intervention. Only the Poles, Finns, and Balts would probably have a realistic shot at independence. The Ukrainians would likely need large-scale German military aid in order to successfully pull this off.
I will say this, though--without Communism and Nazism, even if Russia will lose all of its peripheral territories, its current population is still likely to be in the 260-280 million range as opposed to slightly less than 150 million:
polit.ru
Of course, considering that even a Russia that was in a state of extremely devastating civil war was able to recover most of its lost territories in 1918-1923, I don't actually see Russia losing all of its peripheral territories without large-scale Great Power military intervention in Russia.
Демографические катастрофы ХХ века
На рубеже XIX-XX веков Д.И. Менделеев, исходя из состояния и прироста народонаселения на тот момент, сделал прогноз, согласно которому в конце XX века численность населения России должна была достигнуть как минимум 350 миллионов человек. Что же помешало осуществлению прогноза? «Полит.ру»...
polit.ru
Of course, considering that even a Russia that was in a state of extremely devastating civil war was able to recover most of its lost territories in 1918-1923, I don't actually see Russia losing all of its peripheral territories without large-scale Great Power military intervention in Russia.
BTW, even with 260-280 million people (or 300+ million people with sufficiently large immigration), Russia would still be almost comparable to the US in terms of its total population. Heck, Russia might actually have a larger white/European population than the US has in such a scenario.
Creekmench
A shade of indigo
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- He/him
On the regional impact I would assume it would have a strong influence over the Balkans, Afghanistan, Mongolia, and Xinjiang. On the global impact i can see it being one of many great powers. As, Decolonialism happens it would be in the top 8 great powers with Germany, the US, Britian, france, China and Japan
What about the Russian language, Russian literature, Russian culture, Russian cinema, Russian animation, et cetera?
There's two very divergent possibilities here. It could be isolationist with something like China's own self sustaining culture bubble, or it could be heavily invested in Europe (or more unlikely, Asia) and thus share a lot of what it produces, or even outright dominate culture markets like the US does.
Also looking at your curve, what you need to avoid is WW1 and WW2, not just communism and nazism. The first decline starts with the WW1 slaughter, not the revolution. So I think that's your easiest route here. Find a different spark for WW1 that keeps Russia out of it.
- Pronouns
- he/him
I will say this, though--without Communism and Nazism, even if Russia will lose all of its peripheral territories, its current population is still likely to be in the 260-280 million range as opposed to slightly less than 150 million:
Демографические катастрофы ХХ века
На рубеже XIX-XX веков Д.И. Менделеев, исходя из состояния и прироста народонаселения на тот момент, сделал прогноз, согласно которому в конце XX века численность населения России должна была достигнуть как минимум 350 миллионов человек. Что же помешало осуществлению прогноза? «Полит.ру»...
Of course, considering that even a Russia that was in a state of extremely devastating civil war was able to recover most of its lost territories in 1918-1923, I don't actually see Russia losing all of its peripheral territories without large-scale Great Power military intervention in Russia.
Big doubt about that. The USSR's population growth was undoubtedly reduced by three brutal wars within a generation but the assumption that growth would be a straight line without that is too simplistic. You don't see that continued growth in other European countries which avoided those wars.
ShortsBelfast
Well-known member
That's a complex one. Prior to the Bolsheviks taking over, Russian political culture was quite religiously orientated and nationalistic or perhaps patriotic might be a less loaded word to describe it. Even OTL, the USSR gave medals out to prolific mothers. I suspect that Russia without the World Wars and Holodomor/Purges might have worked rather like the Republic of Ireland. Yes, growth rates would have slowed but remained well above replacement levels
And don't forget that a lot of displaced White Russians leading peripheral lives in exile didn't have any or as many children as they might if they had been able to stay in Russia as a police or army officer, University professor etc. And a Russian friend told me that many of his grandparents generation deliberately chose not to have children in the Stalin years or took to excessive drinking (even by Russian standards) which obviously reduces fertility as well as all its other effects.
Actually, when Russia's population growth started slowing in its tracks dates back a bit further than that, to the late 1800s, and the repercussions of the Prussian deportations of 1885-1890, personally championed and initiated by Bismarck, as well as the Prussian Settlement Commission and the anti-Polish post-unification Kulturkampf policy which he enacted, owing to his own personal belief in the existence of a widespread Catholic conspiracy, plotted by what he called the "Coalition of Catholic Revenge" (France, Austria, and the Catholic Church itself), which posed a threat to both his German and European policies. As a result of Bismarck's efforts to ethnically cleanse Germany of its Polish (and Jewish) minorities, combined with growing Nationalist and Pan-Slavic trends in Russian politics, the formerly good relations between Prussia/Germany and Russia greatly worsened in the 1880s, with the backlash increasing negative sentiments against German minorities in the Russian Empire.
With that in mind, the German ambassador in Russia, Schweinitz, advised Bismarck to abstain from further expulsions, anticipating that they would only provoke the supporters of Pan-Slavism and trigger repressions against all German settlers in Russia. And soon afterward, after Bismarck continued his expulsion policies, the Russian government imposed legal restrictions on acquisition and lease of land by Germans in Russia, thus limiting the German colonization movement in the Russian-controlled part of Poland, which had previously been their primary destination of choice, and fuelling a massive boom in immigration to the USA from Eastern and Central-Eastern Europe. Contrary to Bismarck's original intentions, the expulsion contributed to the worsening of German-Russian relations and the erosion of their long term cooperation – resulting in a shift in Russia's external policy which finally led to the creation of the Franco-Russian Alliance, soon transformed into the Triple Entente, which fought the German Empire during World War I in 1914–1918 IOTL.
So, looking at the target here, of a 'Greater Russia' with over 500M people, it's better to go back a little further than WW1. From 1850 to 1910, even IOTL, the Russian Empire's growth had been the fastest of all the major powers except for the United States, having doubled between 1850 and the Russian Imperial Census of 1897, from c.60M to 125.6M people. And this represented a marked slowing of growth from its peak growth rate, with the population growth rate of Imperial Russia having rivaled that of the USA between 1850 and 1880, largely courtesy of the far-reaching government reforms of Tsar Alexander II; however, after his assassination by populist, anti-modernisation Slavophile revolutionaries in 1881 saw his successors initiate a period of political counter-reforms from this point onward, which saw a great increase in police brutality and the major suppression of civil liberties in Russia.
IMHO, looking at the timeline, and the easiest route to achieve this AHC, I'd go for butterflying away the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, and the continuation of his reforms in Imperial Russia (which his son Alexander III reversed largely out of fear for his own life, having had his coronation delayed by two years due to the ever-present threat of his own assassination, and the belief that only by remaining true to Russian Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationalism, could Russia be saved from revolutionary agitation, and he avoid the same fate that befell his father). Perhaps as a result of Bismarck's pogroms having been delayed or dialed back somewhat, moderately weakening the populist support for Nationalist and Pan-Slavic agitation in Russian politics ITTL than IOTL?
As such, if Imperial Russia continued its trend of population growth from 1850-1880, without the mass emigrations which it saw predominantly to the USA IOTL (with the Prussian-Russian Alliance holding steady ITTL, with both German minorities in Russia and Slavic minorities in Germany predominantly being incentivized to return to Germany/Russia instead, and without the anti-Jewish riots and pogroms in the aftermath of Alexander II's assassination which forced a sizeable share of Russia's Jewish community, which had been and still remained the largest in the world, to flee from the Pale of Settlement, a vast area in the Russian Empire where Jews were allowed to live and where they dominated market-intermediary occupations, such as trading and moneylending), it wouldn't be wholly unrealistic for the Russian Empire to have a population of 200M+ by 1913 (up from 170M+ IOTL).
And even IOTL, Imperial Russia's share of the world population had increased from c.3.6% in 1800, to c.5.6% by 1860, c.7-8% by 1880, and c.9.8% by 1913, before commencing its population decline relative to that of the global population; ITTL, it'd be realistic for more than 10%, and possible for more than 12% of the world's population to live under the rule of Imperial Russia by 1913 (including the overwhelming majority of the world's Jewish population, who had comprised as much as 16-18% of the general population in the Pale of Settlement under the rule of Alexander II, which covered a vast area in Eastern Europe, including parts of contemporary Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, and the whole of contemporary Belarus and Moldova). And IMHO, it would've had a decent chance of retaining a share above 10% to the present day, especially if WW1 still happens ITTL- with the continued existence of the Prussian-Russian Alliance being most likely to result in Prussia and France subsequently trading places in TTL's equivalents to the Triple Entente and Central Powers.
And I know which side I'd be putting my money on to win ITTL; with TTL's Russia, allied with Germany and the British, being ideally poised to greatly expand its own borders, and population, with little to no concerns of invasion into Russia to worry about thanks to its alliance with Germany effectively providing it with the strongest possible buffer state against its most powerful potential adversaries, and leaving it with only the Galician, Caucasus and Odessan Fronts to worry about. Especially if the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires still fall, while the Russian Empire endures without collapsing- how much of their territories, and their populations, could end up potentially falling under Russia's control?
Yup. And more Polish, and a hell of a lot more Jewish- here's how the Jewish demographics of the PoS (Western Russia) looked in 1905 IOTL:
Alexander II had expanded the rights of rich and educated Jews to leave and live beyond the Pale, which led many Jews to believe that the Pale might soon be abolished, but these hopes vanished when Alexander II was assassinated in 1881, with rumors disseminated by the conservative nationalist reactionaries who'd truly been responsible that he'd been assassinated by Jews instead, and anti-Jewish sentiment skyrocketing in the aftermath as a result, with Anti-Jewish pogroms purportedly killing as much as a third of the Jewish population from 1881 through 1884. The reactionary 'Temporary Laws' (though they remained in full effect until at least 1903), also called the May Laws of 1881, also prohibited any new Jewish settlement outside of the Pale, as well as granting the peasantry anywhere in Russia (including in the Pale instead) the right to demand the expulsion of all Jews from their towns.
In 1910, Jewish members of the State Duma proposed the abolition of the Pale, but the power dynamic of Duma meant that the bill never had a realistic chance to pass, with Far-right political elements in the Duma responding by proposing that all Jews be expelled from Russia (in a manner akin to the Nazis' later Madagascar Plan). These extremely restrictive decrees and recurrent pogroms led to massive emigration from the Pale, mainly to the United States and Western Europe, with over 2.8M European Jews immigrating to the United States alone between the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century, 94% of whom came from Eastern Europe, and another 2M Jews emigrating from the Pale to Central, Southern and Western Europe. However, even with all these Jews leaving Russia, the net outflow of Jewish emigrants was still outweighed by the combination of birth rates and the expulsion of Jews from other parts of Russia to the Pale, and the Jewish population of the Pale itself still continued to grow, albeit with their share of the region's, and Imperial Russia's, population forced into decline from 1881 onward. Prior to this point, in 1880, the Jewish population of the Pale constituted more than 5M, roughly 50% of the entire world's Jewish population, and constituted roughly 0.4% of the entire world's population (on a par with the total populations of the Philippines, Morocco, Siam, Belgian Empire and Romania respectively at the time). Who's to say how much larger, or more important, the Russian Jewish community there could be by the present day ITTL?
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Question mark, though- mightn't this scenario (500M+ 'Greater Russia') be easier to achieve through the integration and assimilation of other, non-white/European peoples? If it won out over Japan in the Russo-Japanese War, and managed to annex Inner Manchuria (and Mongolia, and Xinjiang, along with Outer Manchuria and the rest of central Asia which it managed to rule over IOTL, even if it doesn't get Korea) for itself instead- well, Inner Manchuria's been subjected to more than its own fair share of historical population reduction, but it still has a population of over 108M people today. TTL's 'Greater Russia' could well be the most 'multi-national', multi-ethnic and diverse empire in the world; and it'd have to place great importance on diversity, along with racial/ethnic equality, to have any chance of avoiding fragmentation.
ShortsBelfast
Well-known member
Russia 's governments of whatever stripe have a tendency to be "patriotic" and quite oppressive to minorities. Russification and pushback is also an option. However a "Union of Crowns" or "Federation of Sovereign Republics" would work rather better in some ways than Austria-Hungary in that it would have a large "senior partner" in the federal Union.