Prologue
When the Old Russian Empire collapsed in 1917 many of those Workers, Soldiers and Sailors imvolved in the uprisings were working towards building a better World. These hopes were however quickly smashed when the Bolsheviks under Lenin seized power and the last remanants of democracy were ground away in the horrors of the civil war. The Soviet Union under Lenin and Trotsky emerged victorious in 1922 despite massive foreign intervention. After the Civil war the hardship for the Russian and many ethnic people continued as the war had completely wrecked the agriculture and and so massive and widespread starvation took hold, allthough the situation was slowly improving by the end of 1923. Lenins death in 1924 once more threatened to throw the young Soviet Union into turmoil. Leon Trotsky, formerly Chief of the Red Army, and Joseph Vissarionovich Jugashvili "Stalin" both claimed to be the legitimate sucessor of Lenin at the head of the country.
Josef Stalin
Leon Trotzky
A fierce but still well-hidden Powerstruggle ensued between Trotzky who advocated a slow and semi-democratic socialism and Stalin who was aiming for an authoritatrian state centered around himself, ending with Trotzky beeing exiled to Mexico and Stalin retaining a bullet in his head. By 1927 the worst of the hardships of the great famine and the Civil War had faded and Stalin introduced several five year plans to "put the USSR onto the map of the worlds economic powers." This crash industrialization caused many problems and almost sent the Soviet Union into another great famine, and in the vast depths of Russia and western Siberia whisper began about people whishing Trotzky at the helm of their nation. Stalin brutally repressed those and yet, some of these wispers reached Trotzky in his exile, who much to his own regret could do nothing about it. The great depression of 1929 onwards convinced Stalin that the west had entered the last stage of capitalism and that the World, or at least Eastern and Northern Europe were ripe for the picking, ready to be integrated into the "Workers Paradise". The Red Army started to mass on the countrys western borders in l mid-1930 and this buildup lasted throughout 1931. The Western Powers, most prominently Britain, France and the slowly healing Germany paid great interest to this. Allthough Germany quickly dropped from this informal agreement versus the Soviet Union with hitlers rise to power in 1933 Russia was beeing watched, and when Stalin was ready to move against Finnland in 1933 Britain and France issued a joint Guarantee of Independence in respect to Finnland. Stalin, knowing that the outdated and underequipped Red Army would most likely be defeated in the multi-front war that a conflict with Britain and France would bring reluctantly backed down, voving to his inner Circle that this humiliation would be avenged one day.
Soviet T-28 Tanks moving south through Leningrad
He may have backed down in Finnland but was not backing down from his plan for Soviet Domination of at least Europe. In late 1935 the Red Army was once more on the move, this time towards the polish border. Stalins prestige had suffered massively and he therefore ordered Laventi Beria, the head of the NKVD to begin perparations for a massive purge throughout Soviet society. The Red Army leadership would be the first to be purged, as Stalins paranoia, some believe furthered by the bullet still lodged in his head, lead him to believe that the Generals were still loyal to Trotsky, who was becoming increasingly vocal in his criticism of Stalins Soviet Union and who had founded the Red Army at the beginning of the Civil War. The purge was to begin in January 1936.
When 1936 began, the Soviet Union looked at interesting times.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay. This is the next AAR, and a replacement for my UK AAR which came to an unplanned end. HOI2 DDA v1.1, modified 1936 scenarion DAIM ( no smep, this has screwed up too many of my plans in the past ) several custom events, vanilla events rewritten. This is a work in progres yadda yadda yadda, the same stuff I always say at this point. First update tomorrow.