Zhirinovsky's Russian Empire
- Thread starter Pellegrino
- Start date
It is the "politics" thread, the new one by 1.36. Read it in its entirety, it is quite amusing.
With Turkey being the only NATO nation (besides technically Hungary and Norway) to share a border with the UIS, and with Zhirinovsky's bizzare anti-Turkish rhetoric, I think that they would want to stand with the Poles and Germans to oppose the Russian threat. If not, and if the situation led to more Russian threats to NATO it would almost certainly be Turkey in the cross hairs.
You mean like Russia demanding Kars back and wanting Istanbul?
One of the angles I was considering was where Russia puts demands on Turkey to give up Mount Ararat in an attempt to appease the restive Armenians. Not sure if I'm going to go with it or not yet, but I'm kicking it around...
It does, but it won't come until the mid-90s I think, so I have time to play around with it.
Thanks again! But I hate to say, things in this TL will not get much better for anyone for at least awhile. The crazy thing is this is really turning into an ever more depressing world than even I envisioned when I started...
Well, reading the update (well, the one from a couple of nights ago - the one about Gorby eating the ramen noodles) it is quite dark. That's for sure. At least in this case the Russians are getting smart - I wonder how the Israeli embassy is handling all this, because for sure there would definitely be Russians either making aliyah if they were Jewish or just trying to get the hell out (to hell with wherever they choose to end up) if they were Gentile.
So yeah, the world is going to be depressing - that's a give-in, as it's a Zhirinovsky TL. However, it means that it will make reading the TL more and more interesting, as it keeps us gripped to our seats wanting more - like a soap opera, if you think about it. So, it gets better for us.
Having seen it, I'm going to wait until 1993/1994 to see what happens vis-à-vis VGTRK and RTR, and see what I can come up with based on the transition from the UDR to the UIS. Keep in mind that VGTRK (which I assumed early on to take on the "Ostankino" monkier within the UDR, so as to show that it turned a new leaf in the post-Soviet world) was initially neutral but leaning anti-Volodya, whereas RTR was pro-Volodya. With the transition, Volodya now has his hands on the TASS wire service as well as the RIA-Novosti news agency. So, on the news side, Volodya's basically got it monopolized and can thus manipulate it any way he wants. So, on this I'll wait and see.
We get a hint in the last post that Israel decides to pack their bags and leave town as well (after just opening up the embassy a few months prior), but I have not yet decided how to handle that angle yet. As for the VGTRK angle, I really am going to need to pick your brain on that area I the coming weeks!
You are a wealth of information on the subject and I could use a crash course as that s not one of my stronger areas on Russian history.
After reading the last update - wow, just wow. I know, I kinda expected something like this from a Volodya TL, but still, just - words can't describe it enough.
Well, you're definitely going to have a lot of Russian Jews moving to the Israeli embassy, hoping eventually to make aliyah and thus leave Zhirinovsky's régime. If the Israelis left Russia, it would be very very VERY VERY VERY VERY bad PR in the Israeli press if they left all those Jews behind, as well as becoming a major political scandal which would force the resignation of many ministers and force Yitzhak Rabin's Government to resign just a couple weeks into it. If Yitzhak Shamir doesn't then try to form a Government, that means that Israelis would have to go to the polls - again, as 1992 was an election year in Israel. Based on the election results, a possible coalition I could see (but not the only one) would be Likud-Tzomet-National Religious Party-Shas-United Torah Judaism-Moledet, which gives this Likud-led Coalition 67 seats - just 5 seats more than Rabin's Labor-led Coalition. Whether or not the peace process actually begins based on that result would be a great unknown.
Just a few ideas to toss around.
Well, I can see what I can do. So sure.
I know, I kinda expected something like this from a Volodya TL, but still, just - words can't describe it enough.Well, you're definitely going to have a lot of Russian Jews moving to the Israeli embassy, hoping eventually to make aliyah and thus leave Zhirinovsky's régime. If the Israelis left Russia, it would be very very VERY VERY VERY VERY bad PR in the Israeli press if they left all those Jews behind, as well as becoming a major political scandal which would force the resignation of many ministers and force Yitzhak Rabin's Government to resign just a couple weeks into it. If Yitzhak Shamir doesn't then try to form a Government, that means that Israelis would have to go to the polls - again, as 1992 was an election year in Israel. Based on the election results, a possible coalition I could see (but not the only one) would be Likud-Tzomet-National Religious Party-Shas-United Torah Judaism-Moledet, which gives this Likud-led Coalition 67 seats - just 5 seats more than Rabin's Labor-led Coalition. Whether or not the peace process actually begins based on that result would be a great unknown.
Just a few ideas to toss around.
As for the VGTRK angle, I really am going to need to pick your brain on that area I the coming weeks!
You are a wealth of information on the subject and I could use a crash course as that s not one of my stronger areas on Russian history.
Well, I can see what I can do. So sure.
After reading the last update - wow, just wow.
Well, you're definitely going to have a lot of Russian Jews moving to the Israeli embassy, hoping eventually to make aliyah and thus leave Zhirinovsky's régime. If the Israelis left Russia, it would be very very VERY VERY VERY VERY bad PR in the Israeli press if they left all those Jews behind, as well as becoming a major political scandal which would force the resignation of many ministers and force Yitzhak Rabin's Government to resign just a couple weeks into it. If Yitzhak Shamir doesn't then try to form a Government, that means that Israelis would have to go to the polls - again, as 1992 was an election year in Israel. Based on the election results, a possible coalition I could see (but not the only one) would be Likud-Tzomet-National Religious Party-Shas-United Torah Judaism-Moledet, which gives this Likud-led Coalition 67 seats - just 5 seats more than Rabin's Labor-led Coalition. Whether or not the peace process actually begins based on that result would be a great unknown.
Just a few ideas to toss around.
Well, I can see what I can do. So sure.
I agree about Israel, I think that the PR disaster of leaving Jewish Ruissians behind would be fatal for any Israeli politician, but also it would play even worse for Russians in the international community. Targeting Russian citizens for political reasons are bad and will earn international scorn, but targeting Jews would take it to another level and could actually convince France to step it up and back Kohl. Even if Zhirinvosky doesn't care about that, odds are Lebed would and would know that targeting the Jews hiding in the embassy could push NATO into action.
Definitely. But you already have France buckling over its embassy débâcle and the Polish embassy crisis, so maybe France would probably be that stubborn. Having Shamir (who was already PM before Rabin won in 1992 - in OTL, that is) side with Kohl on this would definitely be interesting. Whether or not an Israeli embassy crisis changes France's mind would be interesting to see, but I doubt it - after all, in the end, all politics are local.
Then you've got the IDF. Maybe another Operation Solomon/Entebbe would be needed in that case?
You know, this has me thinking...
There is a guy Ive been meaning to get into this timeline that could fit into a very interesting development involving the Israeli embassy. I'm going to work on putting this into the TL...
Orville_third
Banned
This update is cool- and scary.
Minor quibble: This is the 2001 MSNBC he calls "liberal", right? Is it somehow different from the 2001 MSNBC which was certainly not the pro-Obama* channel it is today? (Though it should be noted that it might have a pro-Russian commentator, Pat Buchanan.)
* I say "Pro-Obama" as opposed to "Left-wing" because it's more than willing to attack the left if they counter the Obama line.
Minor quibble: This is the 2001 MSNBC he calls "liberal", right? Is it somehow different from the 2001 MSNBC which was certainly not the pro-Obama* channel it is today? (Though it should be noted that it might have a pro-Russian commentator, Pat Buchanan.)
* I say "Pro-Obama" as opposed to "Left-wing" because it's more than willing to attack the left if they counter the Obama line.
To be honest, for as long as I can remember there has been a claim of a liberal media bias, and in 2001 MSNBC was seen as clearly more liberal than Fox (although not as liberal as CNN) so I could see a 80-something lifetime conservative diplomat snapping at an MSNBC reporter.