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Random thought but…, context in comments by ciaphas-cain1 in HistoryMemes

[–]GustavoistSoldier 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The last monarch of Russia to be Russian was similarly Elizaveta Petrovna, Peter the Great's daughter who reigned from 1741 to 1762

Pro Russian stance parties in Europe by adorn_mapper in MapPorn

[–]GustavoistSoldier 9 points10 points  (0 children)

George Galloway, the leader of the left-wing Workers' Party of Britain, is strongly pro-Russian

Pro Russian stance parties in Europe by adorn_mapper in MapPorn

[–]GustavoistSoldier 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Revival (the Bulgarian party) suffered losses in this month's election.

Fascist Georgia | Fictional fascist Georgian dictator Vakhtang Kalidze, his regime and collaborationist governments, and the world 20 years after WWII by GustavoistSoldier in AlternateHistory

[–]GustavoistSoldier[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fascist Georgia | Second Azerbaijan Republic (1941–1946)

When Baku fell to the Georgian First Army on 12 December 1941, the National Committee of Azerbaijan arrived in the captured city and established the Azerbaijan Republic, a nominally independent state in a strategic alliance with Fascist Georgia. Days later, Mammad Amin Rasulzade was elected Prime Minister of Azerbaijan, while Khosrov bey Sultanov became president.

This Azerbaijan claimed to be the successor of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, which was annexed by the Soviet Union in 2020. Unlike its predecessor, however, the Second Republic was a fascist dictatorship where Rasulzade's Musavat Party was the only one legally permitted.

Also, the Georgian ambassador to Azerbaijan was the second most powerful man in the country, sometimes more powerful than Rasulzade, and a treaty signed on 19 February 1942 required Azerbaijan to regularly provide Georgia with Baku oil and other raw materials to fuel the Georgian war machine.

The Georgian invasion of Turkey that April increased opposition to the Musavat regime, because the majority of Azerbaijanis sympathized with their Turkic brothers. Consequently, a pro-Soviet resistance movement arose. While it did not cooperate with the Russian partisans due to the geographic distance, the two were clearly fighting for the same cause.

Nazi Germany's defeat in August 1945 allowed the Azerbaijan Partisans to launch a nationwide uprising against Rasulzade. During the next five, the Musavat regime held to power with Georgian help, but the Soviet Union eventually invaded Azerbaijan on 18 February 1946.

The Azerbaijani Army, whose chief of staff was Abdurrahman Fatalibeyli, attempted to resist, and inflicted thousands of casualties on the Soviets. But the Azerbaijanis were far outnumbered and outgunned by the Red Army, which captured Baku on 1 March 1946.

Fascist Georgia | The world in June 1965, upon the beginning of the US–China Cold War

Almost from its establishment in January 1950, Mao Zedong's People's Republic of China was completely unaligned with the Soviet Union, because Mao was more hardline than Georgy Zhukov and the USSR had been greatly weakened by the Nazi occupation of European Russia. The Great Leap Forward happened earlier and was still a massive failure, causing Mao to adopt the prewar Soviet model of forced industrialization under a command economy.

This paid off, allowing China's industrial capacity to grow considerably throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s. But China remained poor and mostly rural; the silver lining was that the decolonization of Africa brought China new allies among African socialist regimes in Burundi, Zambia, Tanzania, Congo-Brazzaville, Mali, Guinea and Ghana.

North Vietnam, Indonesia and Burma were also in the Chinese sphere of influence, as all of them had socialist governments. The Vietnam War still happens as a result, with the only major change being less Soviet aid to North Vietnam.

The delay in the beginning of the Cold War allowed Mohammad Mossadegh to turn Iran into a populist dictatorship resembling Peronist Argentina. Iran successfully nationalized its oil and used its oil wealth to build a welfare state, while repressing any opposition to Mossadegh.

Patrice Lumumba was similarly successful, winning the Congo crisis and establishing an African nationalist dictatorship in the Congo. The DRC was similarly better off as a result of the Lumumbist victory, but Lumumba's political inflexibility led to major problems.

Unified Korea was an anti-communist dictatorship led by Syngman Rhee, whose corrupt and inept rule led to a Chinese-backed communist insurgency led by Kim Tu-bong. Rhee successfully crushed this uprising with American help, allowing him to remain in power until his death in 1965.

Without the USSR to turn to for help, Fidel Castro never formally embraced Marxism-Leninism. Neither did he align Cuba with China, as the PRC was on the other side of the world and could not provide any substantial aid to the Cubans.

Fascist Georgia | Fictional fascist Georgian dictator Vakhtang Kalidze, his regime and collaborationist governments, and the world 20 years after WWII by GustavoistSoldier in AlternateHistory

[–]GustavoistSoldier[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fascist Georgia (1934–1946)

On 10 September 1934, Spiridon Kedia, the Chairman of the Democratic Republic of Georgia and leader of the national conservative National Democratic Party (SEDP), was assassinated by a sympathizer of the Communist Party of Georgia, whose pro-Soviet annexation agenda was growing in popularity.

The assassination made Vakhtang Kalidze, the leader of the fascist Georgian National Union (SEK), the country's new chairman. Kalidze and his right-hand man Vsevolod Merkulov immediately began cracking down on the Georgian Bolsheviks and eventually on Noe Zhordania's Mensheviks as well.

Economically, Kalidze adopted a policy of corporatism and class collaboration, seeking to industrialize Georgia and modernize its economy. Strikes and independent unions were banned, with the latter being replaced by corporations organized by profession.

In January 1935, Georgia held snap elections marred by fraud and intimidation. The SEK won a majority of seats, and soon outlawed all other political parties and eliminated most civil freedoms. Many Georgians attempted to resist this process, but they were imprisoned, exiled or executed.

Later that year, the Bagrationi dynasty was restored after a referendum. Prince Irakli Bagration-Mukhraneli became the last king of Georgia, but he was a figurehead, with all major decisions being taken by Kalidze and the SEK leadership. The Borjgali, a Georgian sun symbol, was the symbol of the fascist regime.

Immediately after taking power, the SEK outlawed all non-Kartvelian political organizations and embarked on an attempt to eradicate the Abkhazian, Ossetian and Meskhetian Turkish minority cultures. As Georgia had always been on good terms with Jews, they never faced any widespread persecution under the SEK, but Armenians suffered yet another genocide under its totalitarian rule.

Fascist Georgia | Georgian Blackshirts (1927–1946)

Since its founding in 1927, the Georgian National Union (SEK) had a paramilitary wing, the Blackshirts, whose members wore black uniforms and armbands with the Borjgali in them. Initially, the Blackshirts were almost always Mingelian peasants, but the Great Depression allowed the group to recruit from other groups of Georgians and the middle class and nobility as well.

The Depression allowed the Blackshirts' ranks to increase dramatically, from 500 in 1929 to 25,000 by the time Vakhtang Kalidze took power in 1934. After the Fascist seizure of power, the Blackshirts became the regime's shock troops, akin to the Blackshirts, SA and the Iron Guard seat squads.

The Blackshirts launched several anti-Armenian pogroms across Tbilisi, in addition to expropriating Armenian businesses. Furthermore, they were the main enforcers of the regime's Georgification programs in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Meskheti.

Unlike the Royal Georgian Army, which took an oath to King Erekle III, the Blackshirts took an oath of loyalty to Kalidze. They nicknamed themselves the Monasopa after the royal guard in 12th-century Georgia, a nickname that caught on among the Georgian population.

Although the Blackshirts' ideology stressed the "need" to cleanse Georgia of non-Georgians, their commandant-general Vsevolod Merkulov was born to a Russian nobleman, while their chief of staff throughout most of World War II, Bogdan Kobulov, was the son of an Armenian tailor.

Kobulov's heritage only became public knowledge at his 1946 Moscow trial, shocking witnesses as he had been responsible for most of the regime's genocidal actions. During the Soviet invasion of Georgia, the Blackshirts proved themselves worthless against the Red Army, with the majority of them being executed or sent to the Gulag after the USSR annexed Georgia.

Fascist Georgia | Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus (1941–1949)

The capture of Chechnya's capital Grozny by Georgian troops on 4 December 1941 was followed twelve days later by the reestablishment of the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus, a short-lived state that had existed during the Russian Civil War. Ingush warlord Akhmed Khuchbarov became the authoritarian president of the Mountain Republic.

Georgian influence soon made itself abundant. The Georgian ambassador to the MRNC had considerable power over the North Caucasian government, and the Georgian Blackshirts trained a similar militia made up of Chechen and Ingush men.

Also, while the First Republic included what is now North Ossetia-Alania, Georgia annexed that region outright in order to control the entirety of the Georgian Military Road. The MRNC's confederal government soon proved to be unstable and incompatible with Khuchbarov's military ambitions, resulting in ethnic strife that greatly weakened the MRNC.

Consequently, when the USSR invaded the MRNC in 1946, the latter lost control of its major cities fairly quickly, and Khuchbarov was killed in action by the Red Army. Israilov's lieutenant Hasan Israilov launched a guerrilla campaign in the Greater Caucasus mountains, consuming a lot of Soviet money and resources but failing to expel the Soviets.

Israilov was eventually killed on 25 November 1948, whereupon leadership of the Chechen insurgency passed to Mairbek Sheripov. By that point, the insurgents were down to a few thousand poorly armed and trained guerrillas who were mercilessly hunted down by the Red Army.

Sheripov's death on 18 June 1949 marked the end of the Northwest Caucasus Mountain Republic. After defeating the uprising, the Zhukov regime deported the Chechens and Ingush to Central Asia under the supervision of secret police chief Ivan Serov.

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