Many of you may be familiar with an earlier post "Different Successors to Suleiman the Magnificent" from The Marshal's Blogpost. However, this section here will be dedicated to anything, from alternate history to recent political discussion. So it's quite fitting that I will also be discussion alternate history in this first post.
NOTE: This blog discusses alternate history, which is a work of fiction and does not reflect the real life events that have occured.
How We Define Paradise or Desolation is my last timeline that I started on alternatehistory.com before I was banned due to my hostility towards certain members. It's basically about Josef Stalin dying much earlier on October of 1945. IOTL, Stalin had a heart attack three months after V-E Day, but in this timeline, it's much more fatal. Stalin's early death has led to a power struggle between Vyacheslav Molotov, Lavrenti Beria and surprisingly enough, Anastas Mikoyan. Why Mikoyan won in this case was because Beria was paranoid enough to take Molotov out of the competition but underestimated Mikoyan's capability to garner support from the Leningrad faction and the Moscow faction. Among the inner circle members of Mikoyan's faction were Alexander Shelepin and Aleksei Kosygin, and the latter is well known as the guy who tried to reform the USSR in the same manner as China.
This timeline also tries to cover certain topics which I will try to address: the attempted Finlandization of Turkey and Persia, a different kind of Soviet-Yugoslav split and World War Three. Yes, World War Three. You heard it right.
1) Finlandization of Turkey and Persia: Actually, under Mikoyan's rule there was a sensitive issue of unresolved issues with regards to Soviet relations with Turkey. OTL had Stalin demanding the provinces of Kars back as well as control of the Dardanelles Straits. Here in this timeline, Mikoyan ditches those goals in order to get on Turkey's good side. Unfortunately, he initially angers the Azeris by attaching the Nagorno-Karabagh ASSR from the Azeri SSR to the Armenian SSR. There is also a personal reason for Mikoyan's decision to normalize relations with Turkey: he wanted to take care of the sensitive issues with regards to the Armenian Massacre (Armenian Genocide if you're in a country that actually recognizes it). Mikoyan's attempt at a truth and reconciliation goes more than just mere healing: Turkey is also offered the Nakhichevan territory inhabited by the Azeris, which they accept. However, the Greek Civil War is much worse in this timeline because both the Greek communists and royalists delighted themselves in killing what remains of the Turkish population.
Given the animosity between the Greeks and the Turks, a Finlandized Turkey could only work if Greece was fiercely anti-communist. In a sense, Mikoyan is offering so much and only wanted Turkish neutrality. Of course, it will make the situation in Cyprus even more delicate. That is, if the Soviet Union was going to last, but there is something else.
2) A Different Soviet-Yugoslav Split: Mikoyan tries to intervene in Yugoslavia and somehow finds a legitimate excuse: Vladimir Dapcevic is killed by the Yugoslav border guards while fleeing to Hungary, giving not only Mikoyan the excuse he needed, but also it angers the Hungarians. It is also one of the causes of World War Three, hence why Mikoyan should be labeled as the poster boy for epic fail, because his attempted intervention had triggered World War Three, along with a couple of incidents involving Otto Ernst Remer.
3) World War Three: Yes, this very issue is the big crux of the timeline. In this case, the Western Allies are getting more support from the Eastern Europeans who lived under the three year Soviet occupation. The Polish Home Army plays a vital role in aiding the Western Allies liberate Eastern Europe, and there's also an insurgency in East Prussia (here, the Germans are not being expelled en masse because Mikoyan wanted to make use of the Prussian Germans in the region in case German reunification is successful, he could fall back on using East Prussia as a German socialist state). In addition, both the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Russian Liberation Army not only get a major role in this timeline, but there is a mention of the two wartime quisling factions fighting each other! On top of that, General Douglas MacArthur becomes the commander of the European Theater while Patton is relegated to working in the Pacific.
And here is the great kicker: while Mikoyan tries his luck at making his version of Khrushchev's Secret Speech, someone shoots him in the chest. Kaganovich gets pissed off at Mikoyan due to his handling of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. While Stalin would immediately try to get the Jews to his side, Mikoyan actually sided with the Arab Palestinians because he faces a dilemma between angering the influential Jews and the numerically superior Muslims. Plus there are portions of Muslim populations in the Soviet Union and they might be receptive to jihad should Mikoyan screws things up. Even though the USSR is supposedly atheist, there might be people who would still worship God in secret.
Finally, Mikoyan meets his death when the Russian Liberation Army is given its own bomber planes and what do they do to enjoy their new toys? Kill the Soviet leader while he is resting from hospital due to a gunshot wound caused by Aaron Katz, the Jewish Red Army leader who shot him. When confronted with death, here is what he had to say: "How we define paradise or desolation depends on the actions we take and the consequences that results from it, and I’m sure that future generations will…will…study our actions with a close sense of dedication."
Although this timeline is not yet complete, it is still ongoing. I don't know where this timeline will go but hopefully it will be optimistic.
To read the timeline, please go to the following link: http://www.counter-factual.net/upload/showthread.php?t=25318
