Recent content by Aleks

Try this Tsarevich Nicholas is killed during his 1891 tour of Japan by a Japanese nationalist (who used a wooden sword IOTL). His younger brother Georgiy becomes Tsar on the death of Alexander III in 1894, but dies of TB in 1900 (1899 IOTL). His younger brother Mikhail becomes Tsar Mikhail...

Read this Read "Resurrection Day" by Brendan DuBois and Robert L. O'Connell's "The Cuban Missile Crisis: Second Holocaust" in "What Ifs of American History" for two good treatments of an early 1960s nuclear war. As above, the US rides it out, a lot worse for the wear, while the Soviets...

Judah Benjamin? What about President Judah Benjamin in a successful CSA? He was the "brains of the confederacy," after all...however, social attitudes in the South towards Jews would be a huge barrier. Still...interesting to think about? I like the Lieberman succeeding a Gore killed in 9/11...

The Russian view Hey everyone, you might be interested in my translation of a recent post from a Russian LiveJournal political blog. It was written by a former big shot in the Soviet Defense Ministry and touches on just this issue. Personally, I think his suggestions that we would use "dirty...

Zhirik As a long-time student of Russian politics, I can tell you that Zhirinovsky has not been a serious contender for the Kremlin since the early 1990s. He and his party were initially created by the KGB to draw support away from the real democrats in the late Gorby era. He became a phenom...

Alyaska If the Russian Empire had kept Alaska, it could have survived as a frozen White Russian redoubt during and after the Russian Civil War thanks to the Monroe Doctrine. Given the sharp reaction to the Bolsheviks in the US at the time, there was no way any US administration would allow...

Tsarist Russia I agree, there is no way in HECK the Tsars would allow Ukraine and Central Asia to become independent. The Tsars didn't even acknowledge any such entity as Ukraine, they always called it 'Little Russia'...Also agree that we can't expect the Nazis to come to power absent the...

Marshall Plan and Stalin We did offer the Marshall Plan to Eastern Europe and they were interested, especially the Czechs. Stalin and his goons said no. Stalin was 100% against East Bloc participation because he feared Western influence entering along with Western aid (esp. considering how...

Peshawar Lancers redux If it was significantly bigger, we could have a Peshawar Lancers scenario, but in 1908. "Nuclear winter" leads to collapse of advanced civilization around the world...I doubt the ability of governments at the time to relocate to tropical climates, given the panic and...

How do you make these awesome maps?!? I love maps, and would love to make some global maps of my own...please help me figure out how you all do it.

Bye bye Bohemia? The Germans were on the record as planning to settle Bohemia intensively with Volksdeutsch. Assuming a German victory, the Czechs would have gotten the Slav treatment - one third expelled, one third worked/starved to death, one third kept as de facto serfs and slaves...the...

Carter's role We can blame Carter for not allowing the Iranian military to crush the clerics in 1979-1980. They were itching to do it, but our moralist in chief refused to support this. Had they done it, we probably would have gotten a military-ruled Iran for a few years, and then a return to...

From "Foreign Policy" 1979: The Great Backlash What do Ayatollah Khomeini, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and Deng Xiaoping all have in common? BY CHRISTIAN CARYL | JUNE 22, 2009 If you want to understand the surge of politicized religion...

Read Poul Anderson Read Poul Anderson's Time Patrol story "The Only Game In Town" to find out...also many others, search "Uchronia"...Chinese exploration and settlement of the Americas starting in the early 15th century could have been encouraged by the collapse of the Yuan dynasty in the 14th...

Iran so far If the Shah never fell, the Iran-Iraq war would never have happened. Saddam only attacked Iran because it was in the midst of revolutionary upheaval and he thought it would be a walk-over...Iran's armed forces under the Shah were quite strong and Saddam would not have dared attack...