ITT: North America is colonized by the russians

/tg - traditional games

>As if the state has no interest in precious metals.
Gold has only value when leveraging commerce. We're talking about a self-sufficient communist country here. Yeah, It would probably never happen in real life, but still I want to assume that this communists would be more interested in the potential uses of uranium and petrol than in shiny yellow rock

Wouldn't they want to trade it with other countries for materials they need or does communism have a problem with that?

>Gold has only value when leveraging commerce.

I could see the motherland requiring tithes to trade with the other powers back home. Just because the state itself is self sufficient doesn't mean you don't want to trade goods that speed up your development. Let the english have their useless gold and pay us in grand machines of steel and steam in exchange that our engineers can reverse engineer, for the glory of the motherland!

>/tg - traditional games
It is for a game. Actually my main concern here would be searching for sources of conflict on a setting like this (once you remove money from the equation, is hard to find them. Ain't it curious, comrade?)

I think that this setting would work better by adding non-human monsters into it.

Well, for one, all the other colonizing empires and their agents trying to disrupt your glorious communist utopia. Relations turning sore with Russia itself. China and Japan wanting a piece of the pie (either by distupting colonies or piracy). Natives... would actually be quite on board with communism, no? I mean, the idealised versions you see in popular media anyway. Still conflicts over resources (buffalos) could exist.

Also, bandits and outlaws and shit would still be everywhere.

Pretty shiny has always been prized.
And the ussr failed because they tried to beat the rest of the world at the capitalist game.
>Saddam owed billions
>Assad does too
>why do you think house saud is allowed to continue?

>if the free market and all its trappings had never flourished on the new continent
You're the guy from yesterday that moved communism some 2-300 years back in time, right?

>or does communism have a problem with that?
well, i don't know. Maybe not. But I guess it wouldn't be top priority
Yeah, that's a nice view to put it.

>And the ussr failed because they tried to beat the rest of the world at the capitalist game.
that's the flaw. Thats why you leave gold where it is.

Heck, if the "economists" of the communist america were on top of their game, they'd understand that they are essentially ruining the economies of everyone else with their huge influx of gold that they are handing over relatively cheaply. I'm pretty sure this actually happened with portugal/spain.

Not only are we getting valuable tech from our enemies, their economy also breaks apart as the value of gold plummets; and they can do nothing to stop it because the free market is moved by predatory greed faster than the ruling class can react.

Wow, this is actually pretty interesting! Not exactly what I'd want to focus a setting into, but interesting nonetheless. Taking it to the extreme consequences for the sake of making an interesting setting, we could be talking about an economic collapse of as much countries we need.

No you have an abundance. And your horde it like the Chinese are doing with the US dollar.

What you don't do is base your internal economy on it - since communist, this should be easy to avoid.

Silver dollar. Guinea. Pound.
All based on actual precious metals. If your stocks of metals aren't leveraged against the currency/economy you can use your gold to make glorious quality conductive circuitry and fast forward your electronics Age. With the objective of superconductor age before anyone else.
>for the hive mind.

>Also, bandits and outlaws and shit would still be everywhere.

Not only that, but corrupting traitors/rebels that could be plotting against the state. Be them real or imagined.

>With the objective of superconductor age before anyone else.

Wait... What if they actually win the space age before there is even a competitor to race with?

That is not only awesome but also gives us more plot hooks. Things found on space.

>If the Tzars are never overthrown, communism never flourishes. The very concept of communism, at least as you know it, doesn't exist. Another philosopher besides Marx may write something similar, but in general the hamfisted stalinist communism you're trying to describe never happens.

Okay, what if Catherine the Great does it?

She was pen-pals with a lot of the philosophers/writers, the igniters behind the revolutions that sweeped through Europe like a wildfire.

What if she decides, that instead of turning her back on the humanitarian ideals that led to the revolution (and the subsequent bloodbaths) in France, she attempts to, and succeeds in doing it relatively bloodless, The army and the people were eating out of her hands, the churches and the nobles vying for power were always a thorn in her side, so she just decapitates the opposition in one fell swoop and establishes a people's republic of Russia... with her at the helm of course, for now.

Considering she was justifiably too scared to do far less (like abolish rather than simply slightly soften serfdom) despite actively wanting to...

The nobility was extremely strong and the army was in their hands more than it was in hers. "The people" didn't exist. The church was a non-entity under government control... and the government again was made of nobles. There was no one she could actually use as a base for something like this. Maybe Peter the Great could've done it since he DID have an army that was loyal to him first, but he did the exact opposite instead and all his successors did not have such favourable circumstances.

In all honesty, why use communism? Just make it a hardcore Stenka Razin-style latter day Spartan military collectivist utopia instead.

Marx is a German that later emigrate to France then England, he has nothing to do with the Tzars. But yeah, he came too late.
Leninism and Stalinism wouldn't have existed at all though. Unless you use a timeshifted Lenin as a hopeful colonist of the new world, building his dreamed commune.
Even earlier proto-socialist thinkers tend to came after the French revolution (Charles Fourier, Saint-Simon, Cabet, Owen, all those considered as "utopist" by Marx, as in the literary genre). Before that you have too stretch it even more to get some religious people (like the Franciscans, Jean Huss or Thomas Müntzer) and maybe some pirate maybe myths like Libertalia.

For a Russian inspiration, you could look up the Mir or Obshchina, which are kinda like a commune or a cooperative, I guess.

I could see a still statist communism build on the original Russian colonial administration and a "wild east" with some sort of Homestead Acts given not to individuals but to communities to found their commune. In the east, things can go from local dictatorship to direct democracies, be oppressively conformist or not.
Maybe get a few orthodox not-mormons too because why the fuck no.

On the other hand, it would have some popular support from all over the world. Which in turn may anger even more various powers.

>Russians used to own Alaska. Instead of selling it for a pittance, they'd buy a little land from the British.

Of course it was sold precisely to avoid it being captured by the British. It was a liability.

I suppose you could just remove all other colonisers and then just wait for the Russian push eastwards to continue forever unabated. I think that's plausible-ish. And leads to Cossack Utopia.

There was some wit who said that Russian colonisation of Siberia was driven by people trying to run away from the government and the government playing catch-up. So a Euro-free America would be a pretty plausible place for this tendency to continue and perhaps eventually result in a Hardcore Cossack Utopia breaking off. None of this Jewish communism though please. Only good old fashioned Russian peasant collectivism multiplied by Cossack territoriality and martial tradition.

By "Orthodox" I assume you mean all those weird little sects that flourished from 17th century onwards? Like the Molokane who the Quakers thought sounded suspiciously familiar...

Maybe get some outside help from Frederick? They were on pretty good terms, as far as world powers can be on good terms.

Frederick would have benefited from Russia turning inwards for a few decades to sort this shit out, leaving him in prime position to keep gaining territories in Europe and the middle east.

You don't have to make a monolithic country, this discussion maybe an in-universe debate. Some will argue that it's needed to develop the country, some have the additional motive to destabilise other countries, some argue against because it may destabilise other countries, some argue against because it's not commie enough.

While I'm sure Fritz would've loved an invitation to invade and destroy Russia, considering it was a bigger long-term threat to him than any other except Austria, I don't quite see why Katya would've extended the offer. Or how long she would've lasted if she did.

The thing is, remember how she came to power? This is also how she would've lost it the moment the nobles found her no longer amusing. She actually did a lot more than most could in terms of reforms, but she was only able to do so because they tolerated her. If they did not, she'd be gone in a moment. And if she tried to return on top of Prussian bayonets, the rest of Europe would've swatted Fritz like the mosquito that he was. They waged a world war against him for far less.

If I were you, I'd look at Pugachev instead. At least that guy had an army and freedom of maneuver. Or better yet - would leave Russia be and think about how Amerika could turn out if left entirely to the Slavs. Eventually it would've been impossible to hold on to and then who knows what'd happen.

To be honest I don't know much about it beside that they had some weird sects going on so I left it vague. Just that they would came from orthodox... heterodoxy so to speak rather than Protestantism branches.

I'd look at North Caucasus (and areas immediately north of that) plus the Russian Far East for Slaverica inspirations. Cossack hosts, lots of small weird ethnic and religious enclaves, perpetual warfare against AND intermarriage with the Injuns. And frontier paranoia.

Plot hooks and factions. YES!!!

Just to clarify, I'm not OP, and I'm also terrible at history, but I find the idea of Russia succeeding where France failed (i.e. making a republic) to be intriguing.

Catherine is a good candidate not because of historical accuracy, but because of how competent and driven she is often portrayed (not without any basis, considering the trajectory of her life).

Catherine seems like entirely the wrong pick for this though. She was a true believer in enlightened despotism. A peasant republic is neither enlightened nor despotic. It would be entirely out of character as well as difficult for her to implement.

On the other hand the Cossacks (and assorted other groups sometimes) did try, time and again, to found a collectivistic peasant republic. They never succeeded for very long since the military calculus was tilted against them in the long run, but, dammit, they tried and often with some degree of ingenuity and success. So they seem like a more promising avenue.

If on the other hand we're talking French-style republic, then we have the Decembrist conspiracy and the likes of Pestel, a complete bastard but certainly ruthless and brilliant enough to pull it off if he had better luck. But in Catherine's time there was no body of opinion among the nobles that actually wanted a republic.

Why didn't you link to the last thread

For laffs I suppose there is also Peter, who was mad enough to do anything and skilled enough to sort of succeed.

For extra laffs, how about this? The Commonwealth in England survives and thrives, Peter or functional equivalent still visits to learn what's new, then comes back and instead of artificially copying Swedish absolutist institutions artificially copies the institutions of a Puritan theocratic republic. No less plausible than the stuff he actually did, and like I said, he had the troops and the chops to do it.

Mind you, I think it would've been a complete disaster for the country. It would've sunken into anarchy and slaughter very quickly after his death. But...

>when you don't have anything to contribute but you still feel entitled to post

cause it had 4 replies and is totally negligible

Russia already had a claim in the Americas stretching from Alaska to Northern California. Only Alaska really mattered, but it plants that claim in the time frame of the Napoleonic Wars. If France hadn't sold Louisiana to the Americans, the Russians could have, for the sake of this scenario, annexed that land in a treaty with France. All that would be left after that is a war with Mexico giving the South West to Russia and two-thirds of the US is now Russian.

When the Irish get there, they're thrilled to find a people who've managed to turn potatoes into alcohol.

Actually, there is a real question behind that joke.
If all the western Europeans that colonised America didn't actually colonised America, were did they go?
> Join anyway, America is still the new world after all. But how considering America opened by the East?
> Stayed, which should change the situation of those country (Ireland famine would have been much worse if all Irish stayed there for example)
> Go elsewhere, which also change the geopolitical situation.
> They didn't exist in the first place, this is one of the divergent point of this alternative reality

I feel like the Poles would end up being this America's version of Irish.
What interests me is what the world, especially post-WW2 Europe would look like split between Russia and the United States of New Russia.

ITT: Americans showing they don't understand left or even centrist politics. At all.

Пoхyй, пляшeм
Ostap Bender claimed to have a recipe for distilling stools into alcohol.

The Russians *did* colonize America that way. Read a history book.

enlighten us, then, comrade