The Rise of Russia

[HistoryDude]

Even as the Russian parties tore their empire apart, the French and the Prussians advanced across the border. The Russian armies that weren’t occupied by the internal conflict fought as hard as they could, but it quickly became clear that they were both too outnumbered and too disorganized to fight effectively.

In order to avoid an outright disaster, the Russian armies decided that they wouldn’t seek large or decisive battles against their foes. Attempting to end the war quickly with one of those had only resulted in the Disaster at Palanga and the collapse of Russian unity. The Tsar knew what happened when a decisive battle was lost, and he fully intended to keep executing the war until the Allies surrendered… or until Russia completely collapsed.

To do this, he ordered his border armies to wage guerrilla warfare. They were to avoid outright battles with the massive Prussian and French armies and instead attack more important things. This was Russian territory still, and the Russians knew how to use the terrain better. They would execute hit-and-run attacks on small scouting parties and supply lines and wait. If all went well, the invaders would surrender to avoid starvation - or they would allow their pride to make them starve. Either way, Russia would triumph.

This strategy lasted throughout the Anarcho-Liberal Coup, and the Anarcho-Liberals even allowed it to continue after they took over. They did form their own armies to engage in large battles against the invading armies, but they didn’t recruit from the guerrilla forces, preferring to let those men continue with their strategy.

For around a year, this strategy worked. The French managed to occupy Russian territory but were quickly forced to abandon it. The Prussians managed to occupy the Baltic, but they didn’t manage to progress further. It seemed like peace could be negotiated, and Tsar Konstantin even offered peace. His proposal involved an increase in Finnish autonomy and reparations to Prussia.

The Prussian King, naturally, liked this plan, but his allies in France and Britain hated it. They insisted that Finnish autonomy was too ephemeral as to be meaningful. In their view, the Russian government could remove it far too easily. The Prussian government noted that they could always reinvade Russia if that were to happen, which France agreed was true. Britain countered that such a reinvasion would prove that the original war was worthless and would use up vast resources. Eventually, Britain managed to convince Prussia to abandon their consideration of Russia’s peace offer by pointing out that a longer invasion would likely lead to more Russian concessions… perhaps even territorial concessions. The ambition of Prussia had gotten them involved in World War I, and that ambition kept them in World War I when they could’ve left it. Some argue that it ultimately led to their destruction.

Still, the situation was too much of a stalemate to go on, and it didn’t. The Prussian generals realized that they could leave behind small armies to defend their supply lines and to make their scouting parties much larger. This changed the war completely.

 

[HistoryDude]

The French armies, however, didn’t realize that the guerrilla warfare could be effectively stopped. They gave up on the invasion, deeming it too costly, and withdrew from Russia. Despite this, France didn’t sue for peace with Russia, reasoning that their allies could negotiate a peace themselves that they could be included in. This would prove to be a very good decision in the short term, but it became catastrophic for France in the long run.

The Prussians, for their part, continued with the division of their forces, which initially reduced the success of the guerrilla tactics of the Russian armies and led to massive casualties amongst them. However, Generals Kolchak and Yegorov quickly realized that they could combine their smaller armies into larger forces that could once more effectively harass the invading Prussians… at least for the time being. Yegorov was smart enough to realize that the consequences of that action would likely be a lot of smaller battles instead of a single decisive one… which is an outcome he wanted because it made the Prussians vulnerable to divide-and-conquer tactics.

After a few small skirmishes, things occurred as Yegorov had foreseen. The Prussian forces gathered together and divided their invading force into three massive armies - one for defending the legal Prussian border with Russia itself and Prussian Poland, one for defending the occupied Baltic territories, and one for advancing further into Russia… with the end goal of taking the city of St. Petersburg, which they hoped would force Russia’s surrender.

The Russians, for their part, split into three groups - the Army of the Capital, which existed to defend St. Petersburg, the Armies of the West, which existed to harass the occupying Prussian forces, and the Army of the Ural Mountains, which existed to defend Siberia and ensure that the White forces didn’t manage to retake control over Russia. This division shows how much the internal fighting weakened the Russian response to foreign attacks even in this late era.

Many of the Prussians of the invading army were getting tired of fighting a war without any immediate gain for them or their country. They were occupying vast swathes of Russian land, but the Russians seemed unaffected by it, and they had families that they wanted to take care of. Many were also starving due to the Russian guerrilla tactics, although that was getting better now that those tactics were no longer being used. Their commander, Ludwig Hohenzollern, picked up on this sentiment, and he ordered that the army invade St. Petersburg, which he hoped would draw out one of the main Russian forces and allow him to win a crushing victory and glory.

His plan worked amazingly well at first. He attacked St. Petersburg and quickly met a large Russian army in battle - the Army of the Capital was defending the city. Things quickly turned ugly when this army continually refused to break its ranks, which meant that the siege of the old capital couldn’t truly begin. For 2 months - from July to September - neither army broke ranks. Finally, as September began, a doomed Prussian charge found a small opening in the Army of the Capital’s ranks. They were all killed, but their charge allowed the beginning of a bloodbath that killed thousands of Prussians and most of that army.

Still, a small few refused to surrender. These men were led by General Kolchak, and the only thing that they did was to retreat inside the city and tell both the Tsar and the new Duma to evacuate. Then, they settled down to wait out the siege - once the walls fell, they planned to defend their old capital until their last breath.

They succeeded in that goal, although St. Petersburg eventually fell. Not a single member of the remnant Army of the Capital surrendered, and all fought to the death, which bought valuable time. General Kolchak alone managed to kill fifty Prussians before he finally met his maker. An estimated 15,000 Prussians died merely taking St. Petersburg because of this.

Such a pyrrhic victory should have been a success. Russia had bloodied the Prussians, and this proved that their men could fight on. Unfortunately, Russia’s allies received a different message from the battle - and that message led them to their ultimate sorrow.

 

[HistoryDude]

The message that Austria - Russia’s main ally - received from the Battle of St. Petersburg was that Russia couldn’t defend its territory. The Prussians had managed to take St. Petersburg, which they saw as the Russian capital. Austria’s government assumed that this meant that it was only a matter of time before Russia completely surrendered to Prussia, France, and Britain, so they initiated peace negotiations.

Tsar Konstantin told the Austrian government that Russia intended to fight on, but he was ignored. Austria continued negotiations under the assumption that Russia would conditionally surrender to the alliance of other European powers before the end of 1874. This assumption wasn’t helped by the remnants of the Conservative Duma sending messages to Austria and Prussia that they would surrender and proclaiming that they were the rightful government of Russia. The Conservative Duma would join the peace negotiations in September 1874.

In November, the negotiations would conclude. They resulted in the Treaty of Salzburg - Austria and Russia would both pay reparations to France and Prussia, and Finland would be granted independence from Russia. In addition, Russia’s army would be massively reduced, and they would only be able to raise 50,000 men in total. In exchange, Prussian troops would evacuate from most of their occupied Russian territory. However, they would continue occupying a large part of Russian Poland as the Mandate of Warsaw. If Russia violated the treaty’s terms, the Mandate would either be granted independence or annexed outright.

This outraged most of Russia, and it destroyed the vast majority of the Conservative Duma’s remaining support. The Conservative Duma was seen as a traitorous assembly that illegally sold out the Motherland for political gain. Attempts to assassinate their members succeeded, and the only remaining army that supported that Duma was Alexei Romanov’s, but even it suffered a huge amount of defections. For all intents and purposes, any legitimacy that the Conservative Duma retained was dead.

However, another scapegoat quickly emerged amongst the Russian population - Austria. The Russians noticed that the Austrians didn’t really seem to lose much in the treaty. All they had to do was pay reparations, but Russia had to pay reparations, lost territory, and were forced to accept a limit on the size of their armies. Many began to think that Austria had always supported the Allies against Russia and merely pretended to support the Russian cause. They thought that Austria was composed of “traitors and liars”. To make matters more interesting, this group included a lot of the Anarcho-Liberal Duma.

This faction supported building up their forces in secret and making secret treaties. Then, they proposed testing how far the allies were willing to go to support their terms, and ultimately declaring war on both the allies and Austria. The plan would then be to create a Russian Empire in Europe - and attempt to imitate Napoleon’s system in ruling the continent.

The vast majority of the Duma - and Tsar Konstantin - didn’t go that far. However, they did support building up a vast army in secret and concluding secret alliances. After that, they planned to invade Finland and erase the most enduring legacy of the conclusion to the First Phase of World War I. The era of the False Peace had begun.

 

[HistoryDude]

The era of the False Peace was destined to be extremely short. The only significant event in Russian history that occurred during it was the Capital Decree, issued by the Duma in December 1874 and which moved the capital from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Tsar Konstantin remained in St. Petersburg. The Duma’s reasoning was that St. Petersburg was on the new border with Finland and could easily fall to an alliance of Finland with one of the other great powers. They viewed Moscow as more defensible.

However, it turned out that the other great powers didn’t care about Finland at all. When the Duma declared war on Finland in June 1876, none of the great powers - not Russia, not France, and, surprisingly, not even Britain - defended it. Finland was left to fight against an enraged Russian army alone.

The first battle between Russian and Finnish forces occurred in July, where Yegorov destroyed a small scouting force of Finns at Mikkeli. This alerted him that there were Finnish forces nearby, and he began to prepare for a larger battle - sending out his own scouting forces. These groups had orders to attempt a fighting retreat back to the larger Russian army if they were discovered or ambushed by a Finnish army, although this precaution turned out to be unnecessary.

Yegorov’s scouts discovered that a massive Finnish army was gathering in Kotka, using the Kymi River as a method for transporting troops. It also turned out that Britain had previously lent Finland a few ships as the beginning of their navy, which Yegorov theorized was because they were expecting a Russian attack and knew about Russian naval weakness. However, he was confused about why Britain wouldn’t simply aid Finland directly, so he sent a message to the Duma informing them of this development and advising them to investigate what Britain was doing.

Regardless, the Finnish navy meant that they controlled the river, which would give them access to many cities on the border and threaten any cities that Russia successfully managed to take. Yegorov decided that the easiest way to deal with this was to lure the Finnish navy into a trap. He moved his entire army to Kotka and occupied the outer city. He then used this to prevent any food from reaching the center of Kotka - Kotkansaari (Island of Kotka). He hoped that the navy would move into the river near Kotka and attack him, which would allow the destruction of its personnel.

However, the Finnish navy didn’t do this. Instead, it simply waited, not interfering with the Siege of Kotka at all. A few Finns had been sent to defend the area, but they were destroyed in a quick skirmish in August.

Yegorov then left a small army to defend Kotka and moved to besiege other cities on the border between Finland and Russia. Many of them fell, but the navy remained silent.

Finally, in September, the Finnish navy attacked the small garrison that had been left to protect Mikkeli, and their victory was quick. However, a small group of heroic Russians managed to escape the battle, find Yegorov, and tell him about the attack. He promised to avenge his men and moved his massive army into Mikkeli, which was now under siege.

The Second Battle of Mikkeli was a crushing Russian victory. The Finns were defeated, and Yegorov even managed to follow a few small groups that were retreating to their ships. He managed to capture a few ships and used these to attack the larger fleet. The Finnish leadership believed that a mutiny was occurring across the fleet and destroyed most of their ships to deny them to the enemy.

Russia had managed to regain naval supremacy, and that meant that Yegorov no longer needed to leave large garrisons behind in conquered cities. More importantly, it meant that the road to Helsinki - and Finland’s surrender - was open.







My apologies about the long hiatus. I had a lot of stuff going on in real life. Thankfully, I'm done with that now, so I'll have time to finish this soon enough. Also, go vote in the 2022 YAYAs! This is the last week to vote there! This week is also the last week to vote in the Q4 ACAs, so I'd appreciate it if you did that! Thanks!

 

[HistoryDude]

It seemed like Finland wasn’t going to surrender quietly, though. Their armies had been defeated, but they still had a lot of soldiers and many foreigners willing to defend their sovereignty against the hated Russians. Officially, Britain and France were neutral in the Reclamation of Finland, but, unofficially, many soldiers in their armies went to Finland to defend it against Russia’s “unprovoked attack”. During the Border Skirmishes, this wasn’t a massive issue because Finland didn’t see the need to use this “volunteer army”.

However, Russia now controlled the sea and had a massive army en route to Helsinki, the capital of Finland. The government of the Finns decided that it was an opportune moment to use the “volunteer army” to keep the Russians away from Helsinki. This resulted in a few skirmishes a few miles away from the city, but the Russians wouldn’t be denied. Their advance wouldn’t be slowed.

The “volunteer army” did cause a diplomatic incident, though. Yegorov reported that it seemed to be made up of soldiers that looked a lot like those of the French and British armies, as even their technology and organization was the same. He even backed it up with a new technology - photographs. Tsar Konstantin noticed this as well, and he sent a complaint to the British and French governments. The French government sent an apology back but explained that they couldn’t control the activities of their troops, which had individual rights. The British were far less diplomatic - they called Russia “warmongers of the highest kind” and “guilty of violations of international treaties”. They didn’t declare war, but Tsar Konstantin would remember this insult, and many believe that it contributed to the Great Turkish War.

Regardless, the Franco-British volunteer force realized that they weren’t slowing Yegorov and his army down and retreated to Helsinki itself. They met with the Finnish government and recommended that the Finns call all of their remaining armies to the capital to fight in a last stand. The Finnish government was initially skeptical of this plan, believing that keeping a few small armies away from the capital would allow a guerrilla campaign and annoy the Russians, hopefully to the extent that they abandoned Finland. The commander of the “volunteer army”, who had resigned from a position in the French General Assembly to defend their former allies, explained that this wouldn’t work because most Russians regarded the very existence of an independent Finland as an insult.

The Finnish government conceded the point and organized the full force of their military to defend Helsinki. When Yegorov reached the city in the beginning of October 1876, he found it defended by a massive army of hundreds of thousands of men. He knew that he couldn’t defeat such a massive force on his own.

As such, he resorted to cunning. He realized that it was likely that most of the Finnish soldiers didn’t realize that the Franco-British army existed. He sent a few spies to the Finnish camp to imply that the reason that the Franco-British army didn’t fight in the border skirmishes was so that they would weaken Finland, allowing an alliance of France and Britain to vassalize the country. Many of the Finns were convinced by this logic, and it caused them to distrust the “volunteer army”.

As the sun rose on October 24th, Yegorov led the Russian army in a surprise attack on the Finnish forces. He achieved a lot of success, and, to make matters even worse for the Finns, an attack also occurred on their rear - which was composed of the “volunteer army”. The Finns managed to rally and hold back Yegorov’s initial foray, but it was too late. The attack from the rear almost managed to overwhelm the volunteers, and fighting lasted two days.

Yegorov had retreated a few miles, so only the Franco-British volunteers were under attack. The Finns began to blame them, arguing that they should’ve realized that they were being attacked and fought off the Russians, as the Finns had. Quickly, it was suggested that the Finns had deliberately been sabotaged in order to force them to request aid.

Eventually, this came to blows, and the division allowed Yegorov to attack on the night of October 30th under the cover of darkness. By October 31st, the vast majority of the Finnish forces were dead, and Helsinki surrendered.

A peace agreement was finalized in February 1877. Finland would be allowed to maintain a limited degree of autonomy, but they would answer to the Anarcho-Liberal Duma, and Tsar Konstantin would become Grand Duke of Finland. Part of the False Peace had been avenged.




Go vote in the 2022 YAYAs! Today is the last day to do that!

 

[HistoryDude]

In January 1877, Prussia declared war on France. Tsar Konstantin saw an opportunity in this declaration - two of Russia’s enemies that had forced them into the False Peace would be occupied with each other and not with Russia. Russia was still at war with Finland at this point, but their victory there was already assured.

In March, the Tsar sent a declaration of war to Prussia, forcing the King of Prussia to make a decision. He could continue his war against France and prove his leadership over the German states, or he could move his soldiers over to Russia and hope that France was willing to accept a peace offer. Tsar Konstantin didn’t intend to give him time to make this choice - he wanted a quick war that would end in victory for Russia. He sent Yegorov in with a large army, and they crossed into the Prussian Partition of Poland in April.

They encountered very little resistance. The Poles didn’t prefer either Russian or Prussian rule, and they saw little point in resisting occupation. The Prussian army was still occupied in France. That meant that there was no real resistance until Yegorov and his army reached East Prussia in June. This province was occupied by Prussian nationalists, and they had no intention of peacefully surrendering to the Russian invaders. Unfortunately for them, they weren’t soldiers, and their militias were poorly organized. The Battle of Danzig was a rout in Russia’s favor - the militias were annihilated.

However, the Battle of Danzig did achieve one of its objectives. It bought time for Prussian relief forces to arrive in the area. The King of Prussia, Wilhelm, and his chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, both wished to unite Germany, and they understood that not retaliating against Russia’s unprovoked attack would harm their reputation in European politics. They only sent a couple of small Prussian forces, as they viewed France as more important.

Yegorov’s army reached Kaliningrad in August and besieged that city, but they encountered fierce resistance from the locals. This resistance bought enough time for the Prussian relief armies to reach the city and force a battle. The Battle of Kaliningrad was a clear Russian victory, but the Russian army was bloodied and forced to move towards Berlin quickly in hopes of ending the war before France surrendered to Prussia.

The Russians succeeded in this task, and they found that Berlin was heavily defended. The capital of Prussia wouldn’t go down without a costly fight. The Battle of Berlin began in October 1877, and it would last around a month. It would end in a Russian victory, but that victory was extraordinarily costly. A bloody stalemate would dominate for most of the battle, and it would only be broken by Yegorov leading a charge against the defending Prussians. This charge would break their ranks and force the Prussian army to retreat from Berlin, but it also cost Yegorov his life. The famous general’s last words were, “Russia survived, and I have done my duty. The dead Russians are avenged”.

The death of Yegorov left the Russian army temporarily leaderless, but that didn’t matter. Tsar Konstantin managed to negotiate a favorable peace in December anyway - Russia annexed parts of East Prussia and Prussian Poland. It would also be forced to pay reparations for beginning the First World War. Soon thereafter, Prussia would secure France’s surrender and make them pay reparations and cede territory. Russia had managed to get revenge on both France and Prussia. This was the Treaty of Hamburg - or the “True Peace”, as it is more commonly known.






Rest In Peace, Yegorov. Rest In Peace. I really liked writing Yegorov for this AAR, but Valar Morghulis, I suppose. All men must die.

 

[HistoryDude]

The end of World War I had left Tsar Konstantin unsatisfied. Russia had triumphed but only because their foes had grown complacent and turned on one another. Even despite this, he wanted a period of peace - a period to allow the people of Russia to rest and recover from the ages of war. He wanted a period to train new armies that could finally be dedicated to the defense of Russia alone. His reign had been one of conquest, but he wanted, above all, to live in peace.

Unfortunately for him, that wasn’t his choice to make. The Duma commanded the Russian armies, and they didn’t want peace at all. They thought that another successful war would prove Russia’s might. While they initially attacked the Ottomans, that war would prove brief and barely successful. It proved nothing about the might of Russia.

The Duma then turned their attention to an easier and more vulnerable target - the Qing Dynasty of China. This dynasty ruled over a large part of Asia, but it was weak. Russia had technology - especially military technology - that was far more advanced than that of the Chinese. In addition, China had no inconvenient European allies. It was completely unprotected by the Great Powers.

In December 1880, the Duma voted to declare war on China. This vote was far from unanimous, as there were many members of the Duma that agreed with the Tsar and wanted a period of peace. However, they were vastly outnumbered by the people who saw an easy opportunity to acquire land and reputation by attacking China.

Unfortunately, it seemed like China was somewhat prepared for a war with Russia. They had vast armies on the border between the two nations, and these armies crossed when war was declared. None of the armies could hope to defeat the much more militarily advanced Russians, so they didn’t try. Instead, they split up, hoping to besiege large portions of Siberia and convince Russia to sign a favorable peace.

The First Battle of Chita ended in a Russian victory, but it took two months, as fighting lasted through February and March of 1881. A smaller Russian force followed that up with a victory at Nerchinsk in March.

That smaller force moved to besiege Chinese territory in Mongolia, but the larger force was attacked in Chita by a massive Chinese army in May. This Second Battle of Chita proved the benefits of technological superiority. Despite the fact that the Chinese army massively outnumbered the Russian one, they were still defeated. Tsar Konstantin was personally leading that army, and he wrote that the battle… “was a massacre. Our machine guns slaughtered their men as if they were nothing more than cattle. In truth, I felt sorry for them - they didn’t ask to be invaded”.

Meanwhile, the force that was besieging Mongolian lands besieged the few settlements that Mongolia had without resistance. The Chinese and Mongolian armies eventually did manage to unite and attack that army in Kirensk in June, but this achieved nothing. The Battle of Kirensk was a Russian victory, and it convinced the Emperor of China that opposing Russia was a hopeless battle.

China surrendered in July 1881, ceding control of Mongolia to Russia. For the briefest of moments, it seemed possible that Russia could have a lasting age of peace. After all, the False Peace was avenged, and a military victory had proved Russian might. Alas, an age of peace wasn’t about to occur - a few more wars still had to be fought.

 

[HistoryDude]

Russia had to fight against those who wished to subjugate her. After Russia’s victory in Mongolia, the European Great Powers began to fear a resurgence of Russian might. They feared a repeat of the humiliation of the First Great European War, where Russia had almost managed to overthrow their European Balance of Power. The powers thought that Russia could destroy nations that were integral to this balance, including - and especially - the Ottoman Empire.

Thankfully for Russia, the powers weren’t united. Prussian-led Germany still despised Russia’s opportunistic attack upon them, but they also feared that Russia would defeat them again, and their people were tired of war. This meant that Germany wouldn’t act overtly against Russia, but they were perfectly fine with allowing others to do so by allowing foreign armies to cross their territory.

The two powers that did act were the newly-united Italy and France. These two nations declared war independently of one another, and they executed separate wars, but most Russian histories refer to their attacks as one singular war - the War of Western Aggression. This is probably because, while Italy and France were not formal allies, they did act like they were allied - neither army besieged Russian land that the other was occupying, and the two armies did not fight one another. Russian propaganda of the time, produced by the Anarcho-Liberal Duma, included maps of “occupation zones” that each nation would take. No record of official conspiracy has been found in the archives of either nation, but the Italian archives do include occupation plans and a few suggestions about partitioning Russian territory, although these suggestions included British, German, and even Swedish zones, and there is no evidence that they were actually sent anywhere.

The good news was that Russia had suspected that an attack upon their land was coming, and Tsar Konstantin had made alliances with other nations. In October 1882, an alliance was signed with the Kingdom of Norway, which was in one of its phases of sovereignty. This alliance was presumably meant to protect against a Swedish attack by forcing any Swedish invader to fight a two-front war.

The other alliance that Tsar Konstantin created was with Spain. This alliance was signed a month after the Russo-Norwegian Alliance, and it lasted much longer. It would prove extremely helpful to the Russians for exactly one reason - Spain distracted France.

Because of the Russo-Spanish Alliance, no French soldiers set foot on Russian soil, as they were all too busy attacking Spain. However, Russia did manage to sail a fleet with a few armies to the French coast, where a Russian army under Tsar Konstantin himself occupied Brittany and Normandy and forced France to sign a status quo ante bellum peace with both Spain and Russia.

While the Tsar was fighting in Western Europe, the western borders of the Russian Empire itself were defended by an army under Leonid Chibisov. Chibisov understood that any attack from a nation that wasn’t Britain was likely to come through Germany, so he positioned his army there.

He also understood that an intervention by Britain would make his life much more difficult, so he got permission from the Anarcho-Liberal Duma to send a few envoys to the island nation and plead Russia’s case. These envoys did their job - Britain was convinced that an intervention against Russia would be tantamount to supporting an unprovoked attack on the Russian nation. This would be highly problematic for the British Parliament for both political and diplomatic reasons.

That left an attack by Italy as the only immediate threat to Russia’s western border, and it was this attack that Chibisov prepared for…

 

[HistoryDude]

Chibisov’s intuition quickly proved correct. The Italians signed a treaty with the German Empire that allowed them to cross the territory of the Germans with their army. They had gathered a massive army and took a few months to march to the border with Russia. This gave Chibisov time to prepare, but the general had a large problem - he had no idea where the Italians would attack.

The Russian Empire was large, and its border with Germany covered thousands of kilometers and many settlements. Any of these could be the first one to be attacked. In order to deal with this issue, Chibisov split many small parties from his army and told them that they would each be scouts. If they encountered any Italian forces, they were to attempt to retreat back to the main army.

This order became a problem very quickly because of one simple reason: it assumed that the Italians would allow a retreat. They did not, and that forced the small scouting force to act on their own. Eventually, two people managed to escape the battle during a night without a moon, and they managed to reach the main army… and promptly collapsed from exhaustion. Everybody else died, and even the two that escaped would die of their exhaustion and their wounds. Their sacrifice might have saved the Russian Empire - it certainly warned Chibisov’s army of the location of the Italians.

He immediately sent letters to the other scouting forces telling them to return to Minsk, where his army was camped. He waited a few days for them, and then he moved to intercept the Italian army. He found his foes at the small settlement of Elbing, and the battle that would decide Russia’s sovereignty began.

Elbing was a city with a long history, as it had once been a member of the Hanseatic League and still thrived on trade with German and Scandinavian cities. The war threatened this trade and made the citizens of the city unhappy, which didn’t help the situation. This contributed to its fall to the Italians before the Russian army arrived.

This forced Chibisov into an unenviable position - he now needed to take a city from the Italians and to ensure that they didn’t leave that city to advance deeper into Russia. This was no easy task, especially considering that the Italians had absolutely no reason to leave more than a token force to defend their beachhead.

To solve this dilemma, Chibisov split his army in half. Half would besiege Elbing, while the other half would attack the Italian army that was advancing from the city before it could split up to besiege more Russian settlements. This plan began well, as the full force of the Italian army was quickly occupied by the Russians sent to attack it, and Elbing began to fall.

At that moment, two problems became abundantly clear. First, the entire Russian army was probably needed to deal with the Italian army. Second, Elbing could survive a long siege because of its many trading partners. It would never surrender.

One of these problems was easier to solve than the other. If the Siege of Elbing finished quickly, then the besiegers could join their countrymen. Unfortunately, it was clear that Elbing wouldn’t fall easily. The only way for it to fall was if its trade was cut off, but the Russian navy couldn’t defeat the navy of Germany alone, much less the combined navies that it would have to fight if it attempted to cut off Elbing’s trade entirely. Chibisov accepted this, and he ordered his army to leave the city.

The arrival of Chibisov’s main force to the battle changed its course. The Italians fought bravely, but they weren’t defending their territory, and the Russians had more men. The Italian army was forced to leave, and they initially attempted to retreat to Elbing… but the leaders of that city now feared that giving them shelter could backfire drastically. They captured a few of the army’s leaders and let the rest retreat through Germany. The captured leaders were given to Chibisov’s army in exchange for clemency.

News of the battle quickly reached Italy, and they surrendered as 1883 began. Russia was briefly at peace… but their allies in Norway were soon overthrown by a communist insurgency, and, not coincidentally, a communist insurgency began in Russia itself in June of that year.

 

[HistoryDude]

This communist insurrection was a general revolt - people rose up across all of Russia instead of in just a specific part of it. The Duma immediately realized that this would make it a massive pain to defeat. Tsar Konstantin agreed and proposed splitting up the Russian army into many smaller forces, arguing that the professional Russian soldiers should easily be able to crush the poorly trained and poorly armed rebels.

The Duma agreed to allow this, and the army got to work. Chibisov was put in command of the Russian armies in the Russian heartland along the Dnieper and to the Baltic, although Tsar Konstantin insisted on leading a Russian force against the communists in St. Petersburg himself. He quickly achieved success, as life in St. Petersburg was generally good, and that meant that rebels were extremely rare in the capital. For his part, Chibisov cleared the revolting communists from Moscow within a month and began to move towards Kiev.

The communists throughout the Russian heartland realized what the fall of their comrades in Kiev would mean. They realized that it would severely harm their claims of being a “pan-Russian” force if they were driven from the Russian heartland that quickly. However, they also saw a bright side - if they could defeat the Imperial army at Kiev, peasants, serfs, and even a few nobles could be convinced to join their cause. From there, they could recoup their losses and threaten the heart of Imperial power.

In the end, neither side got what they wanted from the Battle of Kiev because it was a horrific stalemate. Chibisov ordered his men to form a line and hold it, assuming that the inexperienced rebels would simply charge that line and break on it. At first, this was exactly what happened, but things quickly changed. The rebel commander, Peter Pavlov, figured out that the line wouldn’t break from simple charges, so he changed tactics. He sent small parties to test the line and identify its weaknesses. It only took around a week for him to deduce the weak point in Chibisov’s line, but he lost around 7000 of his men from that week alone.

Pavlov then ordered a massive infantry charge to target that weak spot, and it worked, as Chibisov’s line broke. Still, this didn’t result in a communist victory in the battle - it only ensured that the battle disintegrated into chaos, as individual soldiers took the opportunity to take grudges out on each other.

Chibisov eventually managed to retreat from Kiev and move back towards Moscow, but his army was a shell of itself. Thankfully, the communist army was in even worse shape. Most of the unorganized men had been killed in the chaotic scuffle, and many communist soldiers even killed their own comrades over petty disputes. Pavlov managed to take command of an army of about 10,000 survivors and lead them in a siege of Kiev, which opened its gates as 1884 began. It was a strategic victory for the rebel cause, but it felt like a massive defeat. Pavlov quickly decided that he needed to whip his remaining men into shape - and that he needed to make alliances with other European countries who disliked Tsar Konstantin. The Social Republic of Norway was not a sufficient ally.

For his part, Tsar Konstantin was outraged by Chibisov’s failure, but he didn’t blame his loyal general. Instead, he told him to march to the Dnieper and prepare to defend the river against rebel attack. The Communist Insurgency was far from over.

 

[HistoryDude]

The Battle at the Dnieper was a stalemate. Chibisov and his men held against the onslaught, but they could not force the rebel army from the field. It retreated to Kiev at nightfall, and it retained its organization. The Communists couldn’t win battles, but they could force stalemates and capture cities.

For the Duma, that made them threatening enough. Tsar Konstantin shared that opinion, and he made that much clear when he asked the Duma to allow him to raise more armies to crush the rebels. The response was horrifying - the Duma refused his demand, insisting that they could end the rebellion peacefully. They proposed deposing the Tsar and allowing the communists to form small governments that would have authority over individual cities.

Tsar Konstantin was willing to accept the second point of this proposal, but he flatly refused the first. It wasn’t his decision, though - it was the Duma’s, and they split over the proposal. The proposal was rejected, but the delegates who voted in favor decided that the majority’s opinion was irrelevant. They walked out and went to Kiev, where they presented their terms. In exchange, they offered to convince as many as their states as they could to join the Communist Insurgency’s cause and contribute soldiers. Pavlov gladly agreed.

The rest of the Duma couldn’t agree on a different proposal and refused to fund the Tsar’s campaign at all. In anger, Tsar Konstantin ordered new elections. He ordered new elections where anyone could run for office, regardless of party affiliation. This was the final straw for the Duma, who proclaimed the Tsar’s reign illegitimate and ordered the population of Russia to form militias to defend the Duma’s rightful regime. They would even fund these militias. It seemed their unwillingness to part with their money didn’t apply when it was their authority that was threatened.

A few nationalists also rose up in the Baltic, Poland, and Prussia, but they were quickly crushed by Russian loyalist militias. The greatest victories for nationalism occurred in Finland and Georgia, which elected nationalist leaders. Georgia cut ties with Russia completely, becoming an independent republic, while Finland agreed to allow the Tsar to maintain his traditional title of “Grand Duke of Finland” and an alliance between his two states.

Tsar Konstantin managed to keep control of Moscow, defeating a small militia that had been loyal to the Duma as 1885 began. The new Finnish government, for its part, temporarily occupied St. Petersburg, but they made it clear that it legally belonged to Tsar Konstantin’s regime in Russia, not his regime in Finland. The Communist Insurgency had Kiev as its informal capital. Driven from all three of Russia’s traditional capitals, the Anarcho-Liberal Duma set its base of operations as Minsk.

Briefly, there was a suggestion (from Chibisov) that the three factions negotiate, but that quickly proved to be impossible. None of the three factions were willing to meet anywhere outside of their own territory, and all of them expected such a negotiation to fail or to simply kick problems down the line. Tsar Konstantin put it best when he said, “we have tried to negotiate before, my general. We both know how that story ends - in civil war and in death”. The lines were drawn, and the sides were chosen. The winner would take all of Russia, and the losers would keep nothing - probably not even their lives.

 

[HistoryDude]

Given the stakes, no faction wanted to act hastily. This led to an overabundance of caution - and to a lot of missed opportunities. All three sides wanted to rule Russia, but none of them wanted to fire the first shot. They hoped that the others would collapse - the Communists were waiting on a massive uprising of the common man. The Duma was waiting on the other two factions to destroy each other, although a few idealists within it still thought that compromise had a chance. Tsar Konstantin was waiting on the other two factions to collapse under their own weight - or at least to blink first.

This situation meant that, for a year and a half, there were three governments in Russia that were in a state of unofficial ceasefire. That didn’t prevent conflict - it just prevented large battles. Instead, the conflicts moved to the diplomatic stage - they were proxy wars and foreign alliances. In this matter, the communists had the advantage - they quickly concluded an alliance with Norway in April 1886. However, this didn’t help their case - the Norwegian communists were crushed by Britain and Sweden by August. After that, Britain couldn’t be convinced to support any of the remaining candidates - they viewed the Anarcho-Liberals in the Duma and the communists as threats to the old order, but they saw the Tsar as an unrepentant warmonger. Sweden, for their part, funded Finland and the Tsarist forces, but none of the other factions bordered them, so they couldn’t act directly - yet.

In the meantime, the Duma managed to secure foreign aid in July, but they were forced to make concessions. Their deal was with France and Italy, and their government would annul their Spanish alliance and promise to invade Austria-Hungary from the east if Italy should ever attack it from the west. Unfortunately for them, Russia was too far away from their new allies, and Germany proved unwilling to grant France or Italy military access again. The only aid that the Duma would receive was funds - and possible asylum.

The cold war looked broken in December, when the Baltic broke into a massive communist uprising, and the governor of Mongolia proclaimed himself Duke of Mongolia and swore allegiance to the Tsar. This inflamed tensions, but the Duma appointed another governor of Mongolia and simply gave him funds and an army. They told him that he would have to enforce his reign over his oblast, and the Mongolian Civil War became the first proxy war within the Communist Insurgency.

The Baltic front was far more important, however. Tsar Konstantin sent Chibisov to lead a massive Tsarist army to crush the revolt. However, this army took three months to raise, which was more than enough time for the insurgency to succeed. By March, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, East Prussia, and all of Poland’s Baltic coast were under the occupation of the Baltic rebels. This was extremely worrying, especially since these rebels had formed a provisional headquarters in Vilnius and spoke of spreading the revolution.

In April, they turned south, quickly capturing most of Russian Poland and crossing the Austro-Hungarian border and besieging Krakow. That siege failed, but the army managed to return to the Baltic in time to meet Chibisov’s army at Vilnius. The two sides fought for most of May, but the battle ended in a stalemate, and Chibisov was forced to retreat to St. Petersburg.

This was enough to convince Sweden to intervene. The Swedes managed to capture Reval in Estonia before May ended and marched towards Riga. They captured that city on June 1, but the main force of the communist army was now free to move. The Battle of Kaunas was short, but it changed the course of the war. The main Baltic army was almost completely destroyed, although its remnants managed to withdraw to Warsaw. There, they began to debate their next action.

That moment was what initiated the true war. The Baltic rebels decided to attempt to seize control of Ukraine and meet up with their fellow communists in Kiev. From there, they would crush the Swedes and then move east.

The Duma had their chance to win the civil war in the months immediately after the true Western Front opened up. They opted to remain in Siberia, and that was probably the greatest mistake any single faction made during the course of the war.

 

[HistoryDude]

With the Duma refusing to act, the war in the west became a traditional war between the communist rebels and Tsar Konstantin’s new democratic regime. Initially, things didn’t appear great for the tsar - the Baltic rebels quickly managed to reach Kiev and united with their ideological allies. From there, they began to plan an offensive against the political center of Russia - an attack upon Moscow itself.

That was definitely planned, but events conspired differently. Sweden and Finland met with Tsar Konstantin at Tallinn to discuss the war. Both countries wanted concessions in exchange for their continued aid against the communist rebels. Neither wanted a successful communist regime to emerge, but Sweden was relatively sure that it would inevitably collapse under its own weight, and Finland wanted more concessions from the Tsar. Their meeting - the Conference of Tallinn - ensured foreign support or neutrality, which favored the Tsar. The Conference was finished by the time that the two rebel armies united in Kiev on February 4, 1887.

It determined that the Swedish advance would continue, but Tsar Konstantin was forced to grant Sweden free use of Russia’s Baltic ports in exchange for aid. Finland, for their part, secured a recognition of their complete independence from Russia - Konstantin would be crowned Grand Duke of Finland, but the Finnish Parliament reserved the right to reject granting future Russian Tsars the title and instead elect their own rulers. In addition, all three nations would sign a perpetual alliance.

This allowed a joint Finnish-Russian army - led by the Tsar himself - to march to Moscow. This force wouldn’t arrive in time to stop a prolonged Siege of Moscow, but it did manage to destroy the communist rebel army and to send them fleeing back to Kiev. That allowed the joint force to move towards Crimea, hoping to liberate it.

Meanwhile, the Swedish army met up with General Chibisov’s force and continued besieging the Baltic coast. In October 1888, they finally managed to force the rebels into a battle at Vilnius, and Chibisov got his revenge. The Swedo-Russian army crushed the rebel army, and Chibisov personally killed Pavlov. Most of the army dispersed, becoming raiders of the countryside, which destroyed their public approval and massively increased Tsar Konstantin’s approval rating. A few stragglers did manage to reach Kiev.

The majority ended up going to Warsaw, which truly earned its name. There, they raided the supplies of the citizens and forced them to pay tribute. Things got so bad that a letter reached Chibisov in August 1889, and it outright told him where the communist army was and requested that they kill him - and that he execute all of the traitors in the city.

The Battle of Warsaw ultimately occurred in March 1890, shortly after the Siberian Campaign concluded. Chibisov annihilated the ramshackle “communist” forces - around a quarter of which were only even there under duress. He required an oath of loyalty to the Tsar from the denizens of Warsaw, but he was extremely merciful, allowing even former communist soldiers who gave this oath of allegiance to live and even help him defend Warsaw.

 

[HistoryDude]

As it turned out, this was the end of most of the communist resistance. The communist remained, but their ability to make war was heavily reduced - for the rest of the war, all they could do was launch the occasional raid on loyalist forces. This was an annoyance, but it barely affected the army.

That left Chibisov open to deal with the Duma. The Mongolian situation was far from resolved, and the ability of the communists to prevent a loyalist advance into Siberia was removed. Still, Chibisov remained paranoid, fearing another outbreak of revolutionary violence. In order to contain such an outbreak, he left large portions of his army to defend Poland and the Baltic, and he waited until June 1890 to leave for Siberia.

He arrived at the Urals in September, and he immediately met a large army loyal to the Duma. The Battle of the Urals was quick and decisive - Chibisov captured the enemy commanders alive and forced them to surrender, and most of the army was killed. The remainder scattered to the winds.

This left Chibisov a pathway through Siberia - and it immediately divided the Duma. The treasonous Duma had voted to allow the formation of the army, but the ease of its destruction caused concerns, which encouraged a few members of the Duma to seek a settlement. It also encouraged many of the local supporters of that regime to consider surrender in exchange for amnesty. A few resolved to fight to the bitter end, and a couple even believed that a victory was still possible.

All who agreed to fight formed a new army in Vladivostok. This also resolved the Mongolian situation in favor of the Tsarist duke, as it required seizing control over the armies of the Mongolian Oblast to add to the Vladivostok army.

Tsar Konstantin, for his part, refused to offer amnesty to any member of the Duma, but he did tell Chibisov to accept reasonable terms from the smaller city and oblast governments. This stopped a lot of bloodshed, and it probably shortened the length of the war. Most of the city governments wanted to surrender, and a lot of the oblast governments weren’t happy at the Duma abandoning them to defend Vladivostok. Most of Siberia was occupied without a fight.

However, this also left the conciliatory members of the Duma in a bind. They could join their peers in Vladivostok and be destroyed, and they could surrender unconditionally and probably be executed. It was a hard choice, and a few members decided that suicide was preferable over making it. Most of the remainder resolved to join the Defense of Vladivostok. Those who agreed to surrender unconditionally seized control of Omsk and did so. Chibisov rewarded them for their mercy by promising to talk to the Tsar and plead for mercy on their behalf.

For a last stand, the Battle of Vladivostok was both uneventful and anticlimactic. This is perhaps unsurprising, as the Duma’s forces were disorganized, demoralized, and angry. They were more of a mob than an army, which made them easy to defeat. After the Battle, Chibisov led his army into Vladivostok, where they moved on to the hastily constructed Assembly Hall where the Duma was meeting. They arrested all of its members and demanded their unconditional surrender. Most did, but a couple were more brave than that. They insisted on attempting an escape - a few did manage to escape into exile, but most of them were simply killed defending their ideals.

 

[HistoryDude]

After Vladivostok, the power of the Duma was almost completely broken. A few members of the Duma escaped and attempted to set up a new government in Mongolia, but the new Duke of Mongolia quickly captured them and sent them to the Tsar.

With all of the Duma’s members as prisoners, Tsar Konstantin could dictate terms as he liked. His terms were extremely harsh - he demanded that the Duma surrender their authority and acknowledge the legitimacy of his new Duma that allowed members of all parties to run. In addition, all of the Anarcho-Liberal Duma’s members were banned from running for office in Russia ever again. Around half of its members were exiled, and another eighth were killed for treason. For all intents and purposes, the Anarcho-Liberal regime was finished.

That allowed Tsar Konstantin to turn his attention to crushing the last remnants of the Communist rebels. He knew that it would take a while for Chibisov and his army to reach Kiev and the Ukraine, so he decided to use his loyalist forces to finish off the rebels.

He began by moving through the Ukraine and eliminating their bases that they had been using to conduct guerrilla warfare. After a few months of that, the Kievan government ordered all of the guerrilla bases evacuated, and anyone who was in them to return to Kiev itself.

In February 1894, Tsar Konstantin’s forces finally began to approach Kiev. They were immediately met by a small communist force, which was utterly destroyed in only a few hours. However, it served a purpose - when the Tsar’s loyal army approached Kiev, they found that it was heavily defended. It seemed like the small force had been a delaying tactic, as the communists had heavily expanded Kiev’s walls, which were also now very well defended.

Still, the new fortifications were easily knocked down. It turned out that the men defending them were not very skilled. They were also extremely disorganized. When Tsar Konstantin entered the city, he found it almost abandoned. It was then that one of his men discovered the massive fleet that was on the Dnieper. It was filled with men…

Tsar Konstantin demanded that this fleet avoid resisting his new inspectors. The captains of the ships - which were, naturally, the remaining leaders of the Communist Insurgency - refused. In retaliation, the Tsar ordered his men to fire at the fleet - and especially at their engines. Large portions of the fleet were sunk, but most of the insurgents managed to leave their sinking ships and reenter Kiev. Immediately, they began firing at the advancing Tsarist army, shouting, “for the dead innocents!”.

They fought fanatically for their cause, but they were a mere mob. Most of their command had sunk along with their emergency escape ships. Still, even mobs can do damage, and this one proved that. They found the Tsar and managed to kill him.

Unfortunately for the rebels, even the death of their hated foe couldn’t save them. Their army and their civilian leadership were both completely destroyed at Kiev.

Tsar Konstantin’s successor was his son, Tsar Nicholas. He confirmed the terms of the Duma’s Surrender and began a program to resettle Kiev. He also confirmed that the more democratic Duma would rule regardless of who the Tsar was, summoning it for a constitutional convention. This meeting is generally agreed to be the start of the Russian Golden Age.

 

[HistoryDude]

The first constitutional convention didn’t achieve anything. The Duma decided that doing anything that might annoy the Tsar was a bad idea, especially given how that had ended for their legal predecessors. As such, their constitution granted a lot of power to Tsar Nicholas - he and his successors could overrule the Duma whenever they wanted, and they could even veto the election of certain members of the Duma.

While this worried the Tsar because he was worried about one of his successors becoming a tyrant, he reluctantly accepted their constitution. He hoped to rule for a long time, and he hoped that the Duma would eventually amend the constitution during his reign.

Before he could make any serious moves with his new Duma, however, he needed to ensure that Russia could maintain peace with the rest of the world. He reluctantly confirmed the concessions that his father had granted to Sweden and Finland in exchange for a permanent alliance with Sweden and a coronation in Finland.

He also started reforming his military. He had been raised during the First World War and its grim aftermath, which meant that he had almost never known peace. Having secured his northern border and internal peace, he then got to work on ensuring that his other borders were secure. The first thing that he did was summon Chibisov and ask him to lead a standing army on the western border. Chibisov agreed, and Tsar Nicholas recruited many of the Russians that lived near the Baltic to serve in his army. He also allowed retirement from his new army, which was a novel idea in Russia.

He then made diplomatic overtures to Britain and the Qing Dynasty in China, asking to discuss their borders. The Qing Dynasty, which was facing both serious internal conflict and encroachment from European colonizers, agreed as soon as they got the message. Britain took a lot longer to respond.

The Meeting at Beijing between Tsar Nicholas and the Qing Emperor was a complete success. The Qing Emperor agreed to drop all claims on Mongolia and to recognize the border in Siberia as the Argun and Amur Rivers. Russia would also receive all islands along the border. This stabilized the Siberian border. It also gave the Qing room to deal with their other problems. Qing soldiers were also allowed to move through Russian territory to attack their enemies, although neither nation signed a formal alliance.

Britain, meanwhile, agreed to meet with the Tsar and a few members of the Duma in Stockholm to discuss both the border and “other issues”. The Tsar didn’t agree outright, instead handing the Duma the letter and telling them to vote on it.

They voted to accept, as many shared the Tsar’s concerns about the border. A lot of the Duma’s delegates also saw Britain as their largest threat. They voted to send a few of their leaders as their representatives, and they empowered these men to “act in their name”, which meant that a majority vote of these people at the Meeting counted as the approval of the entire Duma. In April 1898, they left for Stockholm and a meeting that would change Russo-British relations forever…

 

[HistoryDude]

Britain’s continuous concern about Russia was that they planned to overturn the European balance of power and go on a conquering spree across all of Eurasia. Many of their politicians shared a common fear - the “Eurasian Empire” or even just a “European Confederacy”. Any moves towards the unity of the European continent was something to be fought at all costs.

Tsar Nicholas quickly reassured Britain that he had no plans to expand past the Prussian border in central Europe. However, he noted the new alliance between France and Italy, and he theorized that Germany might not be opposed to joining it or to use it to conquer Austria-Hungary… a prudent move that played on British fears of a unified Europe. It would also prove to be prescient.

The actual border itself was far more contentious within the Duma, as was the situation in the Balkans and the Caucasus. The Tsar had no opinion about either of these “southern borders”, but many within the Duma did. A few members of the Duma favored a subjugation of the entire Near East, and they evolved from the shattered remnants of the militarists and the conservatives. They were an extreme minority in the Duma, and there was only one person within the delegation at the Stockholm Meeting that espoused this view.

Anti-Ottoman sentiment was far more prevalent, however - for both religious and political reasons. The idea of Russia as the Third Rome and the legitimate successor to the Byzantine Empire was extremely prominent, and it had many supporters among the delegation. These supporters would enter into their own negotiations with the British representatives over the Balkans, and they would form the nucleus of the later Roman Party.

Those negotiations would eventually lead to the Treaty of Stockholm, which settled a partition of the former Ottoman Empire into both British and Russian spheres of influence. Russia would drive the Ottomans from Europe and most of Anatolia in an alliance with Bulgaria and without interference from Britain in exchange for a promise that Russia wouldn’t interfere with a British occupation or even conquest of the Near East. This would enable a few of Russia’s later treaties with the Ottomans.

Meanwhile, the Tsar himself and the rest of the Duma’s representatives, which represented a broad coalition of political views but agreed on the need for stable foreign relations, were negotiating an alliance with Britain. This alliance agreed on the border between Russian Central Asia and British India - the Hindu Kush and the Pamir Mountains. That agreement effectively allowed Russia to peacefully vassalize and potentially annex Kokand, Bukhara, and Afghanistan. Persia was left as a neutral nation that neither power would attempt to influence or conquer.

The settlement of the Russo-British border in Asia and the situation in the Balkans removed all obstacles to an outright alliance between Russia and Britain. Tsar Nicholas, King Karl X of Sweden, and Queen Victoria personally signed the Stockholm Accords on behalf of Britain, Sweden, Russia, and Finland. These Accords agreed to the formation of an alliance and a defensive pact between their participatory nations. At Britain’s insistence, they were left open-ended, so that other nations would be allowed to join.

A small faction in the Duma bitterly opposed the Stockholm Accords, and, in the election of 1900, they formed the first opposition party. Their “Russophile Party” lost most of their seats to the momentary alliance between the other delegates (including the members of the Roman Party), who called themselves the “Loyalist Coalition” and insisted on the continuation of the Stockholm Accords.

 

[HistoryDude]

The Loyalist Coalition won the elections of 1900, but they quickly collapsed as a unified force. Lacking a common enemy within the halls of government, they had a thousand different, often mutually contradictory, ideas for how the Duma should run and what policies it should pursue. From 1900 to 1905, this situation remained, effectively locking Russia into a static and unchanging state... for a while.

In 1905, Tsar Nicholas got tired of the stalemate, and he realized one major thing that he had forgotten to bring up at the constitutional convention - how long delegates would serve in the Duma. An election had occurred in 1900, but that was only because there had been an enemy party that most delegates wanted to remove from power. As things stood, another election would never be called - far too many delegates feared losing their power and weren’t confident that they would be reelected. Tsar Nicholas knew of only one way to achieve a functioning government once more - order them to call new elections for every seat in the Duma.

He did that in 1905, and the result was simple - delegates organized themselves into parties with specific policies. The delegates who refused to join a party almost always lost reelection. The few who remained in the Duma became known as “independents” and were treated as wild cards to convince to support legislation. The first thing that this new Duma did was pass the “Elections Bill”, which mandated new elections every five years. This was even enshrined in the new Russian Constitution!

The new majority party was the Modernist Party, which supported the Tsar’s policy of raising standard armies and insisted on hiring other Europeans to train these new armies in order to ensure that they were an effective fighting force.

The majority of the Modernist Party lasted a total of five years, but they achieved their entire platform. Tsar Nicholas agreed to support their “Serfdom Bill” in 1907, which abolished serfdom across the entirety of Russia and even gave the serfs control over some of the land that they had worked. It also gave serfs voting rights. A few members of the Traditionalist Party accused the Modernists of “packing the electorate” to ensure that they reigned forever, but this fear proved unfounded.

Additionally, the power of the governors was massively reduced. The Modernist Party and Tsar Nicholas agreed on this, blaming their increased power on the Russian Age of Chaos. In order to reduce it, the few remaining hereditary oblasts were abolished, and all governors now had to be appointed by the Tsar and approved by the Duma. They also wouldn’t get complete power over their oblast even once this was done - the Duma voted to establish local assemblies that could veto any act of the governor in an oblast with a simple majority.

The last great reform of the Modernist Party was the “Nobility Act”, which stipulated that hereditary royal titles were reserved for the royal family. Anyone who wanted a royal title had to ask the Tsar to grant it, and anyone who wanted a royal title with any actual power had to gain the Duma’s approval. Most historians agree that this was targeted at the Duke of Mongolia, as it meant that his family would lose their authority on his death. The Duke himself clearly understood this since he briefly considered revolting before remembering that there was a standing army in his duchy that would almost immediately crush him.

The Modernist Party’s rule is known as the Great Modernization, and it ended in 1910. The Modernists quickly split over what to do, dividing on what to “modernize” next. The resultant split ensured that nobody got a majority in the Election of 1910.

This forced the formation of a coalition between the Roman Party, the new Socialist Party, and the Peace Party. The result is generally known as the Socialist Regime, and their tenure over the Empire was remembered with nostalgia for decades afterwards.

 

[HistoryDude]

The new socialist government immediately began to focus on improving the lives of ordinary citizens. A key target of these initiatives was the former serfs, who had helped elect them in the first place. In order to placate them, the new government passed a law that stated that an owner had to sell land that a former serf was “renting” and working on if the now freedman wanted to own the land. This immediately worried former serfholders, but the final law satisfied them by including a clause that prevented a deal from being completed without the consent of both parties involved.

Very few serfs actually bought land from their former overseers. Instead, they bought abandoned land from the rebellious nobles who had once made up the Duma. Since this land had belonged to traitors, it was officially the property of the Russian state, but they hadn’t done anything with it since the beginning of the Age of Peace. The socialists directly sold it to former serfs in order to keep their support without alienating their landowning supporters.

The new regime also passed laws that regulated health. The Modernists had hired many foreign businesses - especially from Britain and the United States - to help modernize the country, but this was making many Russians work in factories. The Socialist Regime solved this by creating a set workday (11am to 8pm) and ordering businesses to provide mandatory vacation. “It would not do to change the serfs from being bound to the landowners to being bound to foreign businesses,” the socialist representative from Moscow wrote as a justification for the new law.

Unfortunately, this quickly proved problematic. The businesses that now operated in Russia commanded a great degree of influence on the United States, and they heavily disapproved of this new policy. The United States even threatened to go to war with Russia over the issue, which worried the people. The Election of 1922 reflected that worry, as the socialists lost a few seats. They decided to threaten the United States, accusing them of being a plutocracy and reminding them about Russia’s new pact with Britain, which could invade from Canada. The United States backed down, but it would be the beginning of an enduring rivalry.

The Socialist Regime’s other foreign policy was staunchly anti-communist. This was meant to further distance themselves from the rebellious and violent communists across the world. They aided Britain in crushing an attempted communist uprising in 1923, and they launched an invasion of Persia that overthrew that country’s communist regime in 1926.

In 1930, however, this policy began to start being problematic. 1930 was when the governments of Spain, France, Italy, and the Netherlands were overthrown by communist revolutions. The new governments of these countries then formed the United Marxist Republics of Europe, or UMRE. Russia was officially allied with Spain, and they aided the Spanish Kingdom in establishing a government in exile in Cuba and Puerto Rico.

In 1936, the UMRE invaded Belgium and Luxembourg, and Russia and Britain both threatened to intervene. The UMRE refused to back down but offered to negotiate with the “reactionaries”. The resulting Treaty of Venice allowed the UMRE to annex Wallonia and Luxembourg but left Flanders independent. The UMRE invaded Flanders in 1937 anyway, and Russia declared war. Britain, Spain-in-exile, Portugal, and even Germany followed suit within a year. The Second World War had begun.

 

[HistoryDude]

Belgium and Luxembourg fell within days. The UMRE had a weapon that they had stolen from the Germans - tanks. They made invasions quick, but the UMRE had spent years preparing for a war - years preparing to conquer Russia and every nation between them and it. The allies had only known about the war for mere months.

Peace had made Russia complacent. The speed with which Belgium and Luxembourg fell had shocked them, as it shocked their allies, especially Germany. The Germans were the UMRE’s next target, and they knew it.

Unfortunately for the allies, that didn’t matter. The Rhine had been crossed with almost no resistance by 1938. The people of Germany, for all that they were descended from the militaristic Prussians, had been exhausted by their wars of unification and their wars against Russia. They needed far more time than they had.

Marxist revolutions within Germany didn’t help. The Bavarian monarch was overthrown by them, and Bavaria allied with the UMRE, although they refused to join. Mecklenburg fell to a combined communist revolt and attack, and the Marxists advanced along the Baltic. Their target was Russia - many French and Italians were still annoyed about the failure of their unprovoked attack and longed for revenge.

A great German army with tanks finally managed to mobilize in July 1939 on the western banks of the Elbe River, and the first great battle of the Second World War was fought.

The Battle on the Elbe was a bloody affair that took two long and cruel months. The German tanks were united with the great Russian western standard army, and the advance was stopped. Russian cannons fired across the river and killed many men on both sides for around a month, and the German tanks fought against the communist ones in a glorious combat. Even despite this, though, the UMRE’s forces had expected and prepared for resistance - most of their army was engaged at the Elbe. The Germans were fighting valiantly, but they were losing.

Thankfully, Tsar Nicholas, who was commanding the Russians on the Elbe’s eastern banks, realized this. He ordered a war council with his allies, and they determined the major advantage that the Western Europeans had. They were quick and could conquer territory in a short amount of time. Tsar Nicholas knew that the easiest way to fight that was to force them into giving up time. He also knew that their need for vengeance outweighed everything else.

At the Eastern Elbe Conference, the Germans and Russians agreed on a common strategy - let the Germans advance across the Elbe. Let them attack and plunder Russian settlements. Give them their revenge and then rip them apart.

It was cold and cruel, and the Tsar despised it, but it was pragmatic. It would ensure a quick victory in this war and prevent the suffering of millions of people on both sides. Even so, Tsar Nicholas’s war journal survived him, and it tells us of how he felt about the strategy - “it is the kindest option… so why does it taste like ash?”.

Meanwhile, the British landed in Brittany and Galicia, hoping to open up a second front. They encountered little resistance - most of the UMRE’s army cared nothing for their ideology or for their leadership’s dreams of world conquest. Most of their army had joined up for revenge for their defeat in the War of Western Aggression, and that could only be achieved in the east. Even their leaders’s council agreed with this plan.

Perhaps they could have ensured their nation and their ideology’s survival if they had been more pragmatic. Still, as October 1939 dawned, the UMRE looked to be on the verge of subjugating all of Europe from Spain to Russia.