Russian Empire

After the Great War, the **Russian Empire** is but a shadow of its former self, controlling only the northwestern part of Russia proper.

## History

### Stolypin’s Reform

After the pyrrhic victory in the Russo-Japanese War from 1904 to 1905, Russia re-established its position as one of the major players in the international community: it consolidated its influence in Asia with the cost of more than half of its navy; it became more assertive in Balkan and Central Asian conflicts with Austria-Hungary and Britain; internally it saved the image of the Tsarist regime from the terror of the "Bloody Sunday", when soldiers opened fire on the crowd petitioning for peace in St. Petersburg, killing hundreds. However, Russia was still far from peace: soviets (councils of workers) appeared in most cities as the legacy of 1905 revolution, the economy was backward compared to other European powers, and the concession of Tsar Nicholas II in October 1905 was still not satisfying for many Russian people, causing chaos in the newly-formed Duma.

When Minister of Interior Pyotr Stolypin was appointed as Prime Minister by the Tsar, he was facing many tough problems. In response to the revolutionary unrest and discontent was widespread among the population, Stolypin implemented iron-fisted methods to pacify the rebellion, convicted and executed thousands in mere three years. To reduce peasant radicalism and boost agricultural production, Stolypin, albeit a staunch conservative, sought to eliminate the traditional rural communes known as “mir” by tying the peasants to their own private lands to create profit-minded farmers that supports the establishment. He also took various measures to promote economic cooperation. In order to successfully push forward his reforms despite political obstacles from both the left and the right, he dissolved the new Duma twice, ignorant of the opposition of its radical members, to facilitate government cooperation.

His measures were not welcomed by both the left and the right: the left was angered by his authoritarian rule, and the right disliked his attempts to empower the peasants and the capitalists to weaken the power of the old order. As a result, he soon became the target of various assassins. Among all 13 attempts to kill him, the most dangerous one was on 14 September 1911 in a theater in Kiev. Stolypin, just resigned from his first tenure, luckily avoided the shots fired by assassin Dmitry Bogrov that eventually killed Tsar Nicholas II. The sympathy for the monarchy and the popularity of right-wing parties increased drastically as the authorities confirmed that the assassin Dmitry Bogrov was in fact a leftist revolutionary, paving the way to Stolypin’s second tenure.

After the death of the Tsar, his son Alexei ascended to the Russian throne at the regency of Prince Mikhail, Nicholas’ brother. Stolypin’s retains the position of the Prime Minister and continued his reforms. In 1912, the Pro-Stolypin coalition of “Union of October 17” and moderate nationalist party “All-Russian National Union” won the election of the 4th State Duma convocation. The coalition united with Constitutional Democrats and Progressivists, created a “government of confidence” under Stolypin’s leadership.

During Stolypin's administration, Russian economy enjoyed a period of astounding growth. In 1912, Russia became world’s largest agricultural producer, with grain exports exceeded by 30 percent those of Argentina, the United States and Canada combined. By 1914 Russian was already the fourth largest economy in the world, with industrial production equaled that of France, and one of the highest economic growth rates in the world. The percentage of external debt in gross national product declined. Stolypin also reformed the Russian military as well as created a more sophisticated military-industrial complex, although faced oppositions from more conservative generals.

### The War Starts

The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand lead to an international crisis involving all major European powers. Despite Stolypin’s diplomatic attempts to prevent Russia from being drawn into a war with the central powers, Russia still entered the war under the public pressure.

At the outbreak of the war, Grand Duke Nicholas was appointed as the commander in chief of the Russian armies by the regent and the prime minister. The Grand Duke, a cousin of the tsar, was competent than his predecessors and was given high autonomy in strategy formulation and commander appointment. The initial conscription was well organized and peaceful-by Russian standard and far outrun the German prediction in the Schlieffen Plan-and the early phase of Russia's military buildup indicated the rapid progress of Russian military since 1905.

In the initial phase of the war, Russia's offensives into East Prussia drew enough German troops from the western front to allow the Western Entente members to stop the German advance, with the cost of one of Russia's two invading armies in the battle of Tannenberg. On the southern front, the Russians resisted Austrian offensive and advanced into eastern Galicia, the northeastern region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

After stopping a combined German-Austrian winter counteroffensive into Russian Poland and pushed into Galicia deeper in early 1915, a German-Austrian counter offensive drove the Russians out of Galicia and Poland and caused severe Russian casualties, called “the Great Retreat” by Russian public.

After the Great Retreat, the general Mikhail Alekseev responsible for the Galician offensive was considered incompetent in Russian public opinion, and was recalled from the front to the General Staff, where he proved himself to be a more adaptable and flexible head of the staff, aided by the new and effective political system introduced in the recent years. Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich remained commander-in-chief. Despite the retreat, the prestige of the monarchy as a result remained at a high level.

### Brusilov Offensive

Under the terms of the Chantilly Agreement of December 1915, Russia, France, Britain and Italy committed to simultaneous attacks against the Central Powers in the summer of 1916, when the Germans planned to drive France out of the war with a large-scale attack in the Verdun area and concentrated its resources there. Seeing this valuable opportunity, Alexei Brusilov, the newly-appointed commander of the Southwest Front and the successor of Alekseyev, launched the offensive against the Austro-Hungarian forces in Galicia in summer 1916.

Preluded by a brief but accurate interdiction fire, Russian forces under the command of Brusilov initiated world’s first large-front offensive simultaneously on the entire Galician front. His techniques was highly successful, as Russian forces captured Lutsk and Kovel within a few weeks, and Southwest Front advanced an average of more than 40 kilometers along a front of more than 400 kilometers (250 mi), taking 400,000 Austro-Hungarian prisoners in three months. The planned supporting attack from West Front to Brusilov's north was delivered on time, allowing him to progress deeper into Galicia. As Germany was on the critical stage during the battle of Verdun, it was only able to transfer 6 divisions from Western Front to halt the Russian advance.

Despite German warning, Austrian chief of staff Konrad von Hoetzendoff attempted to reinforce Galicia by moving troops from the Isonzo Front, which caused a disaster. As Austro-Hungarian troops surrendered en masse to Russian forces, The Galician front collapsed before the promised assistance arrived. Toward the end of 1916, Russia assisted Romania, which had just entered the war, rendered its own offensive in Transylvania successful.

### The Protracted Total War

Seeing Vienna demonstrated the will of signing an armistice with the Entente to quit the war, German troops after the victory in Verdun were deployed to the eastern front against the Russian Army, which had already passed the Carpathian Mountains. The German Army restored order in Cisleithania and western Hungary, eliminated the short-lived Republic of Hungary and forced the remains of Habsburg Empire Austria-Hungary to return to the war. Their offensive drove the Russians and the Romanians from Hungary and central Pannonia.

These actions left both major fronts stable and both Russia and Germany despairing of victory—Russia because of exhaustion, Germany because of its opponents' superior resources.

Germany launched an offensive in the Baltic governorates in Autumn, with the aim of forcing Russia to exit the war with one blow but Russia managed to resist the offensive by deploying more reserve divisions to the front and apply flanking, infiltration and breakthrough tactics utilized in Brusilov offensive. Due to the coming winter, both sides were forced to pause military operations.

With the collapse of the Ottomans by British forces, Russia was able to receive vital aid from most of its foreign supplies and potential markets, especially Italy and the UK. Despite that, relatively backward war preparation and economy hurt Russia both financially and militarily. Inflation became a serious problem. Because of inadequate material support for military operations, military and civilian officials quarreled, Duma openly criticized the war bureaucracy and the Stolypin government, and center and center-left parties including the Social Revolutionaries and the Constitutional Democrats eventually formed the Progressive Bloc,

Form late 1916 to early 1917, deteriorating rail transport and wartime economy caused acute food and fuel shortages, which resulted in riots and strikes in February 1917 that forced Stolypin to resign. The new progressive cabinet led by Georg Lvov refused any attempt of peace negotiation and initiated a new wave of offensives in June that was known as the Lvov offensive, which pushed into the former Congress Poland and reached the rim of East Prussia but failed to expand its gains.

In the following moths, the Eastern front went into near stagnation as Germany and Russia grounded flesh and steel to dust in East Prussia and Central Poland. Both Russian and German authorities watched the civil turmoil in France with great concern, fearing for a total mutiny and Syndicalist uprising like that happened in France recurring.

### Treaty of Danzig

As famine broke out in Germany, whose food relies heavily on import before the war, German socialists rallied against scarcity on its streets. The Russian public was agitating for peace as well.

In the following spring, the leaders of the remaining Entente and Germany gathered in the Winter Palace of Petrograd to conclude a peace treaty, as the battles still raged on. The London peace treaty was signed and Germany lost Posen, Memel, Upper Silesia and southern part of Eastern Prussia with Polish-speaking majority. Jutland and North-Schleswig was returned to Denmark. However, the peace conference was interrupted by the astonishing news from Berlin: The German Revolution had begun!

Russian troops invaded East Prussia and threatened to capture Berlin and impose its own regime in late 1918. The KPD wanted to cut a deal with Russia but was unable to get approval from the council until late February, when Poland was restored and East Prussia fallen under Russian hands.

The German Socialist Republic signed the Treaty of Danzig with Russia, losing East Prussia and Poznan to Russia while promising to stop supporting communist insurgencies and ethnic rebellions in Russia, in exchange for Russian non-interventionist attitude in German civil war. According to the treaty articles, The Milyukov cabinet agreed the Polish request for greater autonomy.

### Civil War

Severe economic crisis struck Russia after VVI, industrial and agricultural sector was desolated due to war damage and lack of solutions. The liberal-corporatist economic policy of the Constitutional Democrats failed to deal with rising inflation and extreme scarcity. Worker-soldiers Soviets began to organize in factories with the inspiration of German revolution, while a large proportion of rural population supported the Social Revolutionary Party.

As a result of severe drought and post-war devastation in the south of Russia, famine began. For the years of 1921-1922, several million people were affected by the famine. Major anti-Russian rebellions erupted in Ukraine, Belarus and Russian Central Asia. The death of the Tsar in late 1921 due to hemophilia lead to the Russian Succession Crisis as Alexei did not have any heir. Many Bolsheviks sought to grab this opportunity, and incited more chaos and discontent.

In late 1922, underpaid VVI veterans and starving housewives gathered on the red square, protesting for bread and demonstrating dissatisfaction for the extravagant state funeral. General Kornilov’s Turkmenistan division opened fire on them. Meanwhile, the various urban Soviets, whose activities went silent after the Russo-German compromise, ordered an uprising nationwide. During the chaos, Regent Grand Duke Mikhail was forced to abandon title of Regent by the revolutionaries in Petrograd.

Political turmoil stormed the country as peasants rebelled against their landlords. A lengthy struggle broke out between the communist revolutionaries and its opponents, which included the Tsarist establishment, the parliamentarians, and even the Socialist Revolutionaries. At the same time, the Entente sent several expeditionary armies to intervene the Russian civil war.

The remaining imperial family were evacuated to Omsk, where they disappeared en route to Tyumen. Many believed that the Bolsheviks had secretly executed the imperial family, including the Grand Dukes Mikhail and Kirill, Empress Dowager Alexandra and the four elder sisters of Tsar Alexei.

Seeing the possibility, the Constituent Assembly formed by the parliamentarians rejected the proposal of reestablishing monarchy due to pressures from Social Revolutionary Party, the most powerful faction of the Duma with the most supporters. During the chaos, President Viktor Chernov asked former admiral and war hero Alexander Kolchak to be the Minister of War in the new government and take command of the counter-revolutionary forces.

With the leadership of Kolchak and the support of peasants against Bolsheviks, the uneasy anti-communist alliance defeated the communist rebels despite their control of the most vital industrial regions in Russia. By 1926, Russian white forces had defeated its internal enemies and brought most of Russian lands under control, but suffered multiple defeats from Ukrainian independence forces, Sweden-Norway backed Finnish Army, The Imperial Japanese Army in the far east, and British-backed central Asian insurgencies.

The Bolsheviks were finally quelled In Russia, but at the cost of the complete destruction of Russian economy, the loss of Ukraine, Belarus, Finland, Poland, Baltic States and Central Asia. Since Alexei passed away without a heir, and the authority of the monarch was severely deteriorated in the war, the question of the existence of the monarchy in Russia itself was still to be decided by the Constitutional Assembly, the de-facto organ of supreme power in post-war Russia that was controlled by the Social Revolutionary Party.

### Kolchak Putsch

Shortly before the first election since the end of the civil war, the Social Revolutionary Party set as their goal to adopt a new constitution to declare Russia a republic. Disclosing the goals of the socialists in the press led to outrage among the conservatives, aristocracy, capitalists and ultranationalists who tried to address regent Mikhail with a request for martial law, but he refused in the fear of another civil war. Therefore, the rightists, in secret connections with the radical paramilitary corps such as the Black Hundreds, began to prepare a military coup that should prevent the election of the leftist Duma, establish order in the country and, if necessary, force Grand Duke Mikhail to abandon the title of regent in favor of the right-wing supporter - Alexander Kolchak, commander of the Baltic Sea Fleet at the time, who was convinced by the rightists about the need to coup to maintain law and order in the country.

On the morning of March 25, a bomb exploded in the Tauride Palace in Petrograd. The police found the culprit - a member of the Social Revolutionaries. On the same day, the party was banned, its Duma faction was arrested, and most of its cells were discovered and closed. The same was waiting for the rest of the left factions, most notably the Mensheviks. Some army detachments that were loyal to the rightist conspirators, members of the veteran organizations and combat squads of the nationalist unions and parties, most notably the Black Hundreds, maintained order in the capital and suppressed the resistance of socialists.

The elections were postponed from April to August. For this period, a new cabinet of ministers was appointed under the chairmanship of the famous admiral Alexander Kolchak, now the new Supreme Ruler of Russia. As a new wave of White Terror continued, the majority of socialists and democratic sympathizers were either killed or arrested, although a few plotters, leftist leaders and Jewish businessmen suppressed by Kolchak regime, managed to escape to the far east as the last bastion of Democratic Russia.

Since Kolchak’s coup, his junta has enforced its grip on the country and struggled to improve the economy devastated by the decades of conflict. For the past ten years, Kolchak has maintained an uneasy coalition with the reactionary ultranationalists and monarchists supported by the old ruling class, consolidating his power through manipulation of media, the lack of serious political opposition and suppression of “underground Zheltorossiyan and German proxies”. However, the economic crisis that knocked Russia down once again had led to an aggravation of the political situation. In many cities, demonstrations took place demanding the democratization of the country but they were brutally suppressed by right-wing organizations and the police. If Kolchak wants his throne safe and sound, he need to take actions in a very limited time, as the storm is gathering above Europe…

## Politics

The Russian Empire is an unstable Right wing dictatorship under the weak leadership of Alexander Kolchak who has been ruling the Russian Empire since the death of Tsar Alexei, as there were no clear successors for the Imperial throne.

Regional governors exercise a huge amount of authority in exchange for giving a facade of unity to the government in Petrograd.

## Foreign Relations

relations with the Birkenaid are strained. while it recognises Prussia as the legitimate government of Germany, its never dropped its claims on the Aland islands.