For an alt-history sort of timeline I think we have to look at the plausible factor, even if it's REALLY exceedingly unlikely to actually have happened (or succeed).
Some form of monarchist restoration in Russia does not strike me as utterly impossible... just highly improbable. I think if you assume everything in HOI IV is the same until the start of the game (1936) then it's really hard to have happen organically from within Russia all by itself with any chance of success, in my opinion. You'd simply need to have some sort of external influence to encourage action, and to aid it if there was any sliver of hope... but is that really so hard to imagine?
In 1936 it's possible that with perhaps kRaZy!!! circumstances a coalition of what we'll just call "Whites" (anti-communists, traditionalists, conservatives, and yes... monarchists among them) maybe could have attempted a "second revolution" with international backing, and/or far more likely formed a break-away state that was anti-Communist in the Ukraine/Crimea and/or elsewhere (again, with international backing). The Allies and Japanese had militarily aided the Czechoslovaks/Whites against the Bolsheviks during the revolution -- so for this new cobbled together alliance of "Whites" to call back to old friends for help is not such a stretch. In the 1930s are plenty of international actors (ie, everyone not a communist) who want the Communists out of power in Russia, or to simply see a weaker USSR for their own gains.
In gameplay terms:
- A revolution/civil war starting in the Ukraine/Crimea/Caucasus area with Allied and/or Axis help, and perhaps a second front could open in Siberia with Japanese assistance.
- Any restoration of a tsar would probably be more of a state figurehead (perhaps to appease conservatives and monarchists and keep them in the coalition of our new "Whites"?) rather than wielding actual political power. Could it be Anastasia? Seems a tsar too far, to me. I'd suggest that Kirill would be it, who was the widely recognized claimant at the time in the '30s, though maybe a sobor could be held and give the player a choice if the re-revolution was successful in restoring the core of Russia? That'd be fun to see.
- On the other hand, I'd expect the whatever coalition made up these new Whites would be highly fragile and fractious, just like it really was. Plenty of opportunity for ongoing political adventure there, low stability, subsequent unrest, from breakaways, etc.
Zombie, by your own words you're saying you live in Russia, and that those events were "overclaimed" and "solved by the mid '30s" -- but you're minimizing the famines which hit the whole of the USSR during that time frame and echoing a bit of the old Soviet Party Line. For decades the famines were scoffed at or outright denied by the Soviet reckoning history. Be careful.
Here's the reality of the famines: across
all of the USSR at the time we're talking ~10 million dead by famine and forced displacement - but this number grossly and disproportionately affected Ukrainians, Kazakhs and other ethno-geographic groups over Russians. The impact of the famines hitting some peoples more than others was by the outright design of the Soviet leadership at the time -- not chance. This is on top of the famines of the 1920s, which were made far worse by Bolshevik leadership decisions/economic fiddling as well, and those famines resulted in millions dead, too.
Directly related to the floundering agriculture at the time, the Soviet economy was a bit of a train wreck. Whatever promises of collectivism that was made to the People were quickly broken by Stalin -- the first Five Year Plan numbers (1928-32) put forward (especially in terms of agriculture) have been shown to be utter fantasy and unworkable by modern economists both from within Russia and outside it. It's no wonder that things turned out as they did.
So there we have the famines, and the massive Soviet economic and political instability in general, in the 1920s through the 1930s, as one starting point for our hypothetical uprising that our hypothetical Whites take advantage of.
No doubt the White Terrors were hell for the people at the time (hundreds of thousands killed) and there may have been a bad taste in the mouths of many still in the 1930s. However, the Red Terror and the systematized destruction of life and property at the hands of the Bolsheviks/Soviets overshadows even that if you look at the long-view from the Revolution through the '30s (and beyond, of course). Stalinst Russia was no worker's paradise whether you're talking about "free" worker conditions, and certainly not of the forced labor camps. Again, this is doubly so for some ethno-groups more than others.
So there's another point, of living under the terrors of the Bolsheviks and beyond, especially so for ethnic minorities, that our Whites can use to foment and back an uprising.
If there's enough of a locus for South Africa to install Edward VII, go fascist, and call on Germany to help out I think there's ample opportunity for a resurgent monarchist faction in Russia.
I'd suggest that the Caucuses and/or Ukraine would be the prime spot for it and have plenty of historical fodder to play with.
