Zhirinovsky's Russian Empire

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Pellegrino

Incognito said:
Interestingly enough, I've heard Russia being accused of something similar OTL: the argument was that the Black Sea fleet in Ukrainian Crimea serves no purpose post-Cold War and the only reason Russia wants to keep it there is to increase the Russian population in the area (via sailors and their families living in Odessa, marrying Ukrainians, swaying population statistics and opinions of the population in favor of Russia, etc). Make of it what you will.
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Hmmm, very interesting. I think the evidence is Stalin tried to tilt demographic numbers quite a bit, but I always assumed that even into the 80s that the Russians were always keenly aware of the need to play the numbers game when it came to the Russian population.
 

Pellegrino

Urban fox said:
Hmm, so with a (admittedly half-insane) Russian government in power and with collective possession of a spine & some testicular fortitude. The Latvian & Estonian nationlist are paying a hefty price for their OTL racist polices and loudly expressed anti-Russian sentiment.

Just who ''wins'' this civil war? In OTL Yugoslavia the Serbians had superior combat ability despite relying on rag-tag paramilitaries. ITTL the Baltic Russians have direct support from the motherland...
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That is what makes this war so deadly. It is really a very even battle between two rag-tag paramilitary units. The Estonians are on pretty even terms with the Russians since the UIS doesn't directly invade and bomb the country like they did with Azerbaijan. In 1995 it looks like the Helsinki Plan is almost a Korean War like stalemate. The Estonians got recognition from Russia and the Russians got to keep the land they occupy.


MSZ said:
200.000 Estonians killed and almost half a million ethnically cleansed? Russia just commited the greatest crime against humanity in Europe since WWII, seeing as there were only about a million Estonian's in the 90's. I doubt the world would ignore something like that.
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Sort of was unclear on that, and I corrected that. It was suppose to read 200,000 Estonians and Russians killed, and although Estonians made up the bulk of casualties, Russian casualties are very high as well (somewhere like 55% to 45%). This was a brutal, horroble civil war not unlike the Lebanese Civil War. I also amended the numer of internally displaced. Once again, Russians also made up that number, although clearly the bulk was Estonians.
 

General Tirpitz

Pellegrino Shots said:
Hmmm, very interesting. I think the evidence is Stalin tried to tilt demographic numbers quite a bit, but I always assumed that even into the 80s that the Russians were always keenly aware of the need to play the numbers game when it came to the Russian population.
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Russians were somewhat worried about the amount of Muslims in the USSR and thus tried to keep the balance by Russification policies. One part of that was to make Ukrainians more pro-Soviet and somewhat blend them with Russians. (I wrote an essay on the topic few years ago to high school.) The Crimea base has a very important task though being Russia's southern navy. The Black Sea Navy even saw some action during the 2008 War. New infrastructure is also expensive so it's easier to use the old base.
 

Pellegrino

DrakonFin said:
An excellent update and a great continuation to the TL, this is very well thought out.

I am curious to know how the Estonian Civil War affected Finnish attitudes and policies. On one hand, Finns woudl be very supportive of the Estonians and I could even see Finnish volunteers to go and fight for our brethren to the south. On the other hand, the Finnish government could not take a firm stand on behalf of Estonia to keep up at least some relations to Russia. Initially, for example, the Koivisto administration was very careful in officially recognizing the Baltic states, even if unofficially Finns went to great lengths to pave way for an independent Estonia. The recognition issue was ultimately resolved by saying that Finland never not recognized the Baltic states, that is it did not officially accept their annexation by the Soviet Union. While that was true, some might call it a cop-out to avoid making overt noises in support of the Baltics...

Finland would certainly be the first destination to many Estonian refugees, even if many would continue on to Sweden and towards west. That would both make the plight of the Estonian people more visible to the Finnish people, leading to widespread sympathy, but also enhance anti-immigrant sentiments towards the Estonians in some circles. Estonians ITTL would be something like the OTLs Somalians in Finland, different from the generally-accepted "gastarbeiters" they are IOTL. It seems TTLs Finland would also have other sizable refugee groups coming from the former Soviet areas, more than IOTL.

The whole Baltic situation will definitely increase anti-Russian attitudes in Finland and lead to more support for joining NATO. IOTL this was the time of the center-right Aho cabinet that pushed Finland to the EU arguably against the wishes of the main stream of the Prime Minister's own party. It would not be hard to see the same or very similar cabinet to ram through NATO membership too, that is if NATO would take Finland under the circumstances...

That the situation in Estonia was finally "resolved" by a treaty signed in Helsinki would suggest that the Finnish government is seen as at least somewhat "neutral" by the Russians. I assume that by 1995 it still keeps sitting on the fence and has not joined NATO, or is not officially about to?

How are the changes in Russia, BTW, affecting the EEC/EU and NATO expansions ITTL?
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General Mosh said:
This is an excellent timeline! I can see Finland having to take in many refugees from the Baltics, possibly hundreds of thousands. I wonder how they would deal with such an influx of population?
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Finland and Russian relations will take a very sharp turn after this. And without giving away too much, we already know many countries (like Poland) are now begging NATO to admit them. Finland may be one of them that rethinks NATO membership in the coming posts...:confused:

And Finland is in fact a major destination of Estonian refugees and as a result becoems one of the first countries that "closes the book on Russia". While the USA and the UK are trying to reason with Zhirinovsky and nudge him towards democratic reform, Finland is going to basically say "this guy if f-----g nuts," and start treating Russia more like a dangerous dictatorship that they need to be on constant guard against.
 

RadioSilence

Pellegrino Shots said:
When she sent her three children out of the country in 1993 to seek asylum in Great Britain, Mr. Zhirinovsky famously claimed that the move was because she found it too difficult to “explain to her children why she was a prostitute,” and that it was easier to get rid of her children than to “stop sleeping with any Latvian or Turk with ten rubles in his pocket.”
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Wow, that's just low.
 
Dan1988

Dan1988

RadioSilence said:
Wow, that's just low.
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It's Zhirinovsky. His OTL rhetoric is very similar to TTL, only in this case he has to back up all he says. Whilst if I lived in TTL I'd be as outraged as anyone else outside of the UIS that he'd say such a thing because I wouldn't have that context to draw on, now with context in mind I'd agree that it was a low blow, but he's just acting like Zhirinovsky. Amongst other things, he had backed polygamy and, in addition to his anti-Turkish feelings which are also applied in TTL, he's also called for all Chinese people to be deported from Russia.

His 1994 world tour should also give some insight into some of his eccentric views.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,979934-1,00.html
 

Orville_third

Banned
I wonder when some in the West will start reacting. (You may want to try and find a copy of "Second Generation", the autobiography of the late Mary Tamm, which dovetails her life story with a visit to Estonia after the end of the Cold War.)
 

Pellegrino

Dan1988 said:
It's Zhirinovsky. His OTL rhetoric is very similar to TTL, only in this case he has to back up all he says. Whilst if I lived in TTL I'd be as outraged as anyone else outside of the UIS that he'd say such a thing because I wouldn't have that context to draw on, now with context in mind I'd agree that it was a low blow, but he's just acting like Zhirinovsky. Amongst other things, he had backed polygamy and, in addition to his anti-Turkish feelings which are also applied in TTL, he's also called for all Chinese people to be deported from Russia.

His 1994 world tour should also give some insight into some of his eccentric views.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,979934-1,00.html
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This. Right now in TTL Burbilus and others are trying to keep the lid on Zhirinovsky's crazy rants that we, in OTL, know so well. By 1994 we see that they no longer can control what comes out of his mouth, and perhaps he no longer has a reason to try and appease the west since they no longer have any hope that he is anything but a dictator
 

EternalCynic

Does Zhirinovsky's hostility towards China cause any on-the-ground threats, and does it force China and the west to build a stronger strategic relationship?
 

Pellegrino

Orville_third said:
I wonder when some in the West will start reacting. (You may want to try and find a copy of "Second Generation", the autobiography of the late Mary Tamm, which dovetails her life story with a visit to Estonia after the end of the Cold War.)
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I started reading up about her recently, very interesting stuff. And as for the west, the Baltics clearly are a region that they will not ignore or brush off like they did in Tajikistan. We know that, by November of 1992, Bush loses an election in the USA due to his policies in re Russia, so I would say that Estonia and Latvia are where things change in regards to how the west deals with Zhirinovsky
 
Dan1988

Dan1988

Pellegrino Shots said:
This. Right now in TTL Burbilus and others are trying to keep the lid on Zhirinovsky's crazy rants that we, in OTL, know so well. By 1994 we see that they no longer can control what comes out of his mouth, and perhaps he no longer has a reason to try and appease the west since they no longer have any hope that he is anything but a dictator
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Exactly. Though I wonder if in TTL Zhirinovsky will also try to reintroduce polygamy as he tried in OTL in 2006. That would have some interesting consequences, for sure.
 

Admiral Matt

What interests me most about this timeline is how this - thing - would look in the modern era, having run up against economic and demographic realities.

Nothing shown yet indicates that Zhirinovsky's Russia will do anything but exacerbate the already dramatic OTL trends. Greater Russia looks good on a map, no doubt, but if the country's population is crashing in a world without numerous wars.... If the economy was dependent on oil price without huge military budget requirements....
 

Grand Prince Paul II.

Admiral Matt said:
Greater Russia looks good on a map, no doubt, but if the country's population is crashing in a world without numerous wars....
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I expect active natalistic politics from Zhirinovsky. They worked to some degree in Putin's Russia, and Zhirinovsky would be even more eager to implement them.

Admiral Matt said:
If the economy was dependent on oil price without huge military budget requirements....
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Zhirinovsky's Russia benefits from controlling the oil and gas industry of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and the other former Soviet republics in Central Asia and continued economic union between most former Soviet republics.
 

General Mosh

In 2008, during the resulting political row between the United Kingdom and Russia, he suggested dropping nuclear bombs over the Atlantic Ocean in an effort to flood Britain
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This made me laugh. Is he gonna be that insane in this timeline?
 
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