Miss Teri
The Queen
- Location
- West
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There almost isn't, but forces conspire.
Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline
- Thread starter Aelita
- Start date
- Timeline Post-1900 Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- The left-wing of the impossible
It's arguably less onerous than what happened OTL with Germany and Japan. The Western Allies made genuflections that West Germany was fully sovereign in 1955, ten years after unconditional surrender, when they ended the occcupation, but they retained special rights to Germany and didn't resolve the final legal status of Germany until 1991 and 1994 respectively.
Arguably, Japan is still in a protectorate status given Article 9 of its constitution and the special relationship it has with the United States
A 10-20 year JDPON before resuming full, equal sovereignty seems harsh but it's not really any different in legal terms than what happened to the Axis Powers OTL. (Italy was a special case due to their mid-war defection, and even then they got pretty much forced into abolishing the monarchy).
Arthur Frayn
Fake God by Occupation, Magician by Inclination
- Location
- Land of Do As You Please
- Pronouns
- They/Him
Yeah, from what I understand the Comintern is made up of all of North and South America, Eastern Europe, and East Asia. The balance of power is overwhelmingly in their favor, and when you combine that with the UASR's canonical gung-ho attitude towards exporting the Revolution, and you end up with a situation where there's really no good in-universe reason why they haven't just let it rip and rolled the tanks to the Atlantic/launched a first strike, or at the very least just flooded the colonies with guns and money.
Like, if the UASR's leaders are the kind who'd look at the Cuban Missile Crisis and sneer "Pussies!", I'm kind've left scratching my head as to why they didn't jam their finger on the button the instant they thought the could get away with it.
Heh, you make it sound more intense than it actually is. In reality, militia training for the youth is more like summer camp with rifle drills. They're not expected to join the army or anything.
South America is half blue
Miss XTC
2 kawaii 2 live 2 sugoi 2 die
- Location
- HelLA.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Brazil, Venezuela, the FBU, the Caribbean, India (which includes Pakistan and Bangladesh), Australasia, Thailand, Arabia, Egypt, Nigeria, and Rhodesia would like to dispute this statement. Among others.
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- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- She/They
It's ridiculous to compare this to colonialism. Colonized nations didn't go on a rampage across the globe before being colonized.
Japanese society pretty much need to be rebuilt from the ground up to uproot the fascist strain that lead it there. Just look at OTL and how they still honor soldiers of WW2 and refuse to recognize their crimes in Korea if you want to see what happens if you don't.
Plus its socialist movement need time to get its shit together considering how long they've been underground.
In OTL the only significant communist nations were the USSR and China and they hated each other, yet there was still forty years of Cold War.
In TTL the weaker side has India, Brazil, Western Europe, and the associated colonies, and the major players cooperate. It's not surprising at all that a significantly stronger bloc can remain relevant for longer.
Also, everyone has nukes. So many nukes. Ain't nobody going to war with that kind of deterrence going on.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Don't get me wrong, the communist side ITTL has the sort of large scale economic advantage that I don't think the FBU can actually overcome in the long-term without a lot of luck and comical mistakes. But the long term might be quite a few generations.
Fleurs de Merde
horde captain dipshit
Not entirely true on point 3 - IOTL, the Japanese Communists actually came out of the war in an extremely strong position because they were the only group that had actually spent the entire Imperial period in prison and had made no concessions to the regime. And the Socialist Party, while more moderate, won the first elections. While the latter screwed the proverbial pooch upon gaining power and the former ended up a casualty of the rising cold war, they were really the major mass political forces in post-war Japan. It's similar to what happened with the Communists in Italy and France - marginalization, along with a popular economic line, made them immensely powerful. The Communists in Japan are still the world's largest communist party in a liberal democracy by membership.
As for the whole occupation thing more broadly, it's not too far off OTL. Consider that Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers under MacArthur and then Ridgeway ran Japan as an effective dictatorship from 1945 to 1952. In this role they unilaterally rewrote the entire constitution over the wishes of the Japanese elected government, making it one of the world's most unabashedly progressive. They read and censored every piece of mail, every book, every radio broadcast. The Americans re-isolated Japan, basically forbidding all foreign information and travel into and out of the country. It was forbidden to talk about SCAP. SCAP built a welfare state and planned the economy. It determined cultural policy. It overhauled the land system and effectively ended Japanese rural poverty - a revolutionary step by a lot of measures. It built a welfare state from nothing and imported American union practices. By a mixture of repression and reformism it restructured the economy and broke the momentum of the left. It - briefly - conducted a wholesale purge of the old elite. It preserved ththe Imperial house against real apathy among the masses and hostility among segments of the elite. And it did all of this with zero democratic consultation as an effective military dictatorship. Even after the abolition of SCAP, the America armed forces remained a key direct political actor in Japan through the 60s - some of the worst instincts of the Japanese establishment were born in the desire to preclude a mass American political crackdown. Regardless, I think people underestimate how wide-open Japan was in 1945 - pretty much all the basic facts of modern Japanese politics, from the continued existence of the Imperial house to the economic and social structure, were determined then.
So within this timeline, whatever Japan gets won't be much different than IOTL, except the VladPact will probably just be more likely to install the Communists, Socialists, or an American-style United Front thereof as their chosen party rather than the OTL conservative-reformist coalition - something that probably would get general popular assent.
The real kicker is that here we're presumably not getting a Korean War, so the impetus to end reforms, come to an understanding with elements of the old elite, and reindustrialize just wouldn't exist.
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Libertad
Interdimensional Traveler and Culture agent
- Location
- Culture orbital It's Fantastic For You To Be Here
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't know of the specifics decided but I would like to suggest that most likely, the specifics of JDPON administration in Nippon/Nihon Socialist Republic is going to be more consultative than OTL SCAP and that postwar Japan's exercise of its sovereignty wouldn't be so hamstrung as IOTL occupation.
It is most likely going to be a West Germany/West Berlin sovereignty arrangement minus the pretensions of full sovereignty but it doesn't mean that the postwar Republic can't send ambassadors and embassies and receive such embassies in return as well.
Along with maintenance of a legitimate national armed forces.
I also do not think that there will be a McArthur counterpart foreign Shogun that will emerge out of the situation and that the Vladivostok Compact is going to take over in a multilateral cooperation arrangement in an equivalent of the Far Eastern Commission and the Allied Council for Japan IOTL.
But I do think that there is going to be a gray area wherein there is more direct rule from JDPON issuing directives in specific concerns for reform occasionally until mid 1950s until more and more authority is being confidently left alone and ceded to the national government.
Then the final settlement will be happening in the 1960s with all of the former Axis countries.
Japan ITTL also got more industrialized in the prewar era and a lot of that industrial capacity will not be so thoroughly destroyed in the Home Islands by bombings thanks to a more different Comintern military strategy that is less focused on indiscriminate bombing campaigns.
And the Asian equivalent of a nearby war to aid Japanese reindustrialization like that of the Korean War IOTL is going to be the Philippine Civil War.
Not to mention the fact that ITTL, Japan will have access to the markets of East Asia and the Soviet Union in a way that didn't exist ITTL plus the North American and Pan-American markets in the New World, so the economic situation of occupied postwar Japan ITTL is arguably not going to be as bad compared IOTL. We are alsotalking about Japan gaining market and resource access to a huge chunk of Eurasia in a way that the right-wing ultranationalists IOTL and ITTL can only dream of.
It is most likely going to be a West Germany/West Berlin sovereignty arrangement minus the pretensions of full sovereignty but it doesn't mean that the postwar Republic can't send ambassadors and embassies and receive such embassies in return as well.
Along with maintenance of a legitimate national armed forces.
I also do not think that there will be a McArthur counterpart foreign Shogun that will emerge out of the situation and that the Vladivostok Compact is going to take over in a multilateral cooperation arrangement in an equivalent of the Far Eastern Commission and the Allied Council for Japan IOTL.
But I do think that there is going to be a gray area wherein there is more direct rule from JDPON issuing directives in specific concerns for reform occasionally until mid 1950s until more and more authority is being confidently left alone and ceded to the national government.
Then the final settlement will be happening in the 1960s with all of the former Axis countries.
Japan ITTL also got more industrialized in the prewar era and a lot of that industrial capacity will not be so thoroughly destroyed in the Home Islands by bombings thanks to a more different Comintern military strategy that is less focused on indiscriminate bombing campaigns.
And the Asian equivalent of a nearby war to aid Japanese reindustrialization like that of the Korean War IOTL is going to be the Philippine Civil War.
Not to mention the fact that ITTL, Japan will have access to the markets of East Asia and the Soviet Union in a way that didn't exist ITTL plus the North American and Pan-American markets in the New World, so the economic situation of occupied postwar Japan ITTL is arguably not going to be as bad compared IOTL. We are alsotalking about Japan gaining market and resource access to a huge chunk of Eurasia in a way that the right-wing ultranationalists IOTL and ITTL can only dream of.
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Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
Reminder that Hungary, Romania, East Germany, and Turkey are also put under similar occupation regimes.
Romania having the one that is regarded as the most controlling to completely dismantle the society that vomited out the Iron Guard and rebirth it as something better.
Romania having the one that is regarded as the most controlling to completely dismantle the society that vomited out the Iron Guard and rebirth it as something better.
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- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- She/They
Yeah this is probably the biggest thing. They don't reverse course half way due to cold war concerns because Japan isn't on the frontlines of it.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Love to hear it. Wonder what will become of Nicolae Ceaușescu here.
Isn't Japan divided?
Fleurs de Merde
horde captain dipshit
Would be quite interested about this - given that the UASR is in the equation here with a way less rigid perspective on Eastern Europe, might be that Ana Pauker might win the power struggles rather than Gheorge Gheorgiu-Dej. She was still an ardent follower of the Moscow line, but generally more moderate - beyond being a Jewish woman and the world's first female foreign minister, she was also broadly in favour of general amnesties, less draconian measures, and a greater role for the moderate socialist, peasant, and liberal bourgeois parties post-invasion. IOTL she didn't take up direct leadership of the party out of worries about her identity, lost on the power struggle, and eventually was marginalized during the period of maximum Stalinism on accusations of right-deviation and Zionism, with only Molotov's intervention saving her life.
With the UASR's model of Communist hegemony in a multi-party system, its better line on gender and national chauvinism, and the resources it could provide that would help the Eastern Bloc avoid its OTL need for developmental authoritarian policies, things might turn out differently. IIRC it's Gheorghiu-Dej's extremely hardline Stalinism that really creates the crisis of legitimacy that his successor Ceaucescu resolves by resorting to hardline nationalism.
I'd also imagine that Slansky and Gomulka would survive this period, and that Ulbricht might not have a crack at power in Germany.
- Location
- Back in the 90s (In a very famous TV show)
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Ve/Ver
Speaking of communist hegemony in a multi-party system, what happens when a non-communist party comes to power? Are there DFLP or DRP premiers, or do the LCP/CLP more or less hold onto power?
Miss Teri
The Queen
- Location
- West
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There was a minority government in an early draft, but I don't think that happens now. Have to check. (There are at least two DFLP vice Premiers, though)
And the SEU, once it becomes a thing
More than that, Rose Luxemburg lives long enough to influence policy in the FSRD.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
Reed tells Attlee to fuck himself, something reiterated by Elizabeth Flynn, when he asks for a British occupation zone in Japan and the Sino-American refusal to even consider the smallest FBU occupation zone of Japan is part of the deterioration of relations between Western Europe and the Communist bloc.
Largely irrelevant (misread it as Codreanu at first).
The Nihon Socialist Republic is not a disarmed one and the Nihon People's Revolutionary Army is considerably more offensively oriented than the JSDF. It is however, basically built from scratch by the Sino-Soviet-Latin-American occupational command and structured mostly off of the American military.
The Presidium has the authority to unilaterally dissolve a government deemed to be acting against the interests of the populace.
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- Location
- Back in the 90s (In a very famous TV show)
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Ve/Ver
Does that mean non-communist organizations don't have a realistic chance at holding onto the premiership?
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
No more than any communist party that actually won a government in a major liberal country would be able to avoid a coup or getting dissolved by executive authorities.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
The reason, from what I can guess, that they participate is because they can still have an effect on policy and serve as what they no doubt view as a "moderating influence."
Hence they can become Vice Premiers, have seats on the governing bodies, the equivalent of cabinet positions, be swing votes, etc, etc.
Hence they can become Vice Premiers, have seats on the governing bodies, the equivalent of cabinet positions, be swing votes, etc, etc.
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Miss Teri
The Queen
- Location
- West
- Pronouns
- She/Her
In the 30's and 40's, they form some coalition governments or are given seats as concession when they're not.
Asami
Chairwoman of the Imperial Governance Council
- Location
- Florida
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You mean like that one Thomas Norman chap? [thonk]
In all seriousness to your point, RiverDelta: Any institutional group that wins an election and tries to undo the revolution is going to be taken out behind the woodshed and shot. I don't see why we have to hold the communists to a double standard. They're going to defend their institutional power and what it represents by any means necessary.
Furthermore: At this point, any institution that backs anti-communism in the UASR is inevitably going to draw origins from overtly fascist backgrounds and therefore would be anathema to any form of liberal democracy as well. Liberal democracy is dead in this America, and I don't see Herr Hitler or Il Duce bringing it's shambling corpse back from the shallow grave it went.
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Miss XTC
2 kawaii 2 live 2 sugoi 2 die
- Location
- HelLA.
- Pronouns
- She/They
No, it's all red