Post by MarshalBraginsky on Jul 10, 2017 21:07:02 GMT
Chapter One: Great Butterfly, What is Your Wisdom?
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Excerpts from “History of Russia: From the Soviet Period to the Russo-American Brotherhood Period”
by: Boris Nemtsov
Far Eastern Federal University Printing Press
Chapter Four: The Masherov Era
Few would have predicted that the history of the Soviet Union will turn in a completely different direction as an event that occurred on October 4, 1980. While being escorted under police guard, the produce truck nearly struck his car while driving back home from a meeting. Pyotr Masherov, an inspiring regional Communist Party boss from Byelorussia, had faced death and survived from it. In any case, few would have also predicted that this very same lucky man who came close to death would eventually succeed Brezhnev as the premier of the Soviet Union.
The later years of the Brezhnev era was marked with the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, where the local communist government there requested for Soviet assistance against the anti-communist movements that dominated the region. Although the era of the Mujahideen didn't yet exist, many powerful figures in the West saw this opportunity to weaken the Soviets through the war of attrition, much like how the United States was gradually weakened in the Vietnam War.
It was not surprising that on March 28th, 1981, after finally battling with a series of illnesses, Brezhnev finally succumbed to his illness and died. There was a state funeral in his honor, and many other Soviet leaders now grew worried as to who will succeed him. Masherov boldly put his candidacy forward, citing his close call with death as one good reason why the Soviet Union needed a healthier leader who wouldn't die within a few months of his regime. In fact, many people within the Soviet government had considered him to be the natural successor to Brezhnev, and in the end Masherov became the next head of the USSR.
In just three months, Masherov would begin his work of refining the Byelorussian bureaucracy to his satisfaction. The question of the Kaliningrad Oblast (a part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) became apparent, and inspired by Khrushchev's act of re-attaching the Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR, he decided to re-attach not only Kaliningrad Oblast to the Byelorussian SSR, but to force the Lithuanian SSR to cede its lands on the left side of the Neman River to the Byelorussian SSR. This controversial move continues to be the sore point between Russo-Lithuanian relations.
The Solidarity protests in Poland continued on well into 1981, but Masherov felt that since the Soviets were already bogged down in Afghanistan, an intervention in Poland would be far more costly and will result in a worsening of tensions between the Soviet Union and the West. Besides, Masherov had inadvertently kicked off a Baltic-wide anti-Soviet dissidence movement with the loss of its land west of the Neman River, and a prominent Lithuanian activist named Irena Andriukaitiene emerged as the leader of the Lithuanian dissidence movement.
Masherov's response to the growing Baltic dissidence movement was to increase the KGB's crackdown on them, as well as arresting not only Andriukaitiene, but several other Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian activists who were in league with the Lithuanian ringleader. Acting on his crypto-nationalist tendencies, Masherov also declared that the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was cheated of its other strips of territory obtained as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (namely the strips of border territories and the city of Vilnius). He even made plans to resettle around 20,000 Byelorussians in Ukraine to the disputed regions, claiming that the border changes were internal.
Unfortunately, Masherov couldn't solve the economic issues that continued to plague the Soviet Union until the Yekaterinberg Revolution of 1991 when certain officers from the Soviet 106th Airborne Division mutinied against their leaders and openly sided with civilian protesters.
---
KEMP CONFIRMED AS REAGAN'S RUNNING MATE
Washington Post
July 17, 1980
Detroit, Michigan – In a move that stunned most Republican supporters, Jack Kemp was selected by Presidential hopeful Ronald Reagan as his VP running mate, passing over other potential candidates like Paul Laxhalt and George H.W. Bush in the Republican Convention.
“I believe that Kemp might have some ideas on how to solve our economic woes, as his good alliance with the unions will come in handy,” Michigan steel industry worker Oliver Peterson said when asked about the election chances for the Reagan-Kemp ticket. “We're in a union too, and I believe that once Jack Kemp becomes the Vice President of the United States, he'll push hard for American jobs to be kept within the United States and not send it offshore to Third World countries.”
Speaking in front of hundreds of supporters in Michigan, Reagan delivered a standing ovation when he made a promise to 'make America great once again'. Although there were some critics who voiced their concerns about the selection of Kemp as Reagan's running mate, others felt that the times are changing and that the era of unparalleled liberalism in American politics has come to an end.
“Mark my words, the Democrats will be unseated in a few months because of their poor track record in foreign policy and indecisiveness on part of President Carter,” Republican National Committee deputy chief legal counsel Michael A. Hess says when asked about Reagan's foreign policies. “We also have some domestic solutions that Mr. Reagan has come up with as a result of some poor domestic policies that were carried out during the Carter administration.”
George H.W. Bush, another Vice President hopeful who felt disappointed in Reagan's selection of Kemp, offered his congratulations to the chosen candidate and even threw his support behind him in a show of sportsmanship.
"The main important thing is, we've got to prepare for the next Vice Presidential campaign in 1984. Hopefully the lessons we've learned from this experience will be of great help to us in the next campaign," says Patrick Jennings, one of the minor officials working on the George H.W. Bush vice presidential campaign tour. "We don't know how Jack Kemp will be of great help to Mr. Reagan, but with Kemp's recommendation on selecting Hess as Reagan's Press Secretary, it could go either way."
---
Excerpts from "East Asia in Focus - Episode 3: Korea"
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Filmed by Peter Ambleside on August 10, 2007
Ambleside: For the last fifteen years, the reunited Korean Peninsula has seen steady growth in its economy as a result of the decisive conclusion of the Second Korean War, in which the former North Korean regime had been overthrown by a combination of internal instability and a foolhardy mistake committed by the North Koreans when one of their rockets had accidentally hit a Russian ship, killing all crew members in what became known as the Nakhodka Trawler Disaster. The sight of Russian soldiers fighting alongside American, South Korean, Chilean, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander, Ukrainian and Byelorussian troops. The Ukrainian and Byelorussian forces that accompanied the Russian Far Eastern military forces also played a key role in preventing the North Korean leadership from fleeing into China.
(scenes of Russian artillery firing and Russian warplanes conducting an airstrike, followed by American paratroopers landing in Wonsan)
Ambleside: Since the fall of the former North Korean regime, the UN has appointed the United States and Russia as temporary custodians over the former North Korea, while South Korea has appointed Chung Ju-yung as the interim Governor of the Recovered Northern Territories. The reconstruction of the former North Korean state was painstakingly difficult, with most of its industries laid to ruins as a result of American and Russian bombing efforts at degrading the ex-KPA war machine.
(scenes shifted to pictures of ruined factories and wandering starving people)
Enrique Laguardia (Professor of Economics at the University of Saskatchewan)*: We've seen the South Koreans having to build everything from scratch because they didn't have the necessary tools to build the foundation of their economy, where as the former North Korean state had a leg up on its economic development due to the Japanese colonial period where most of the industries were built in the north, to keep it out of reach of US Air Force bombers during WWII.
Ambleside: With the former North Korean economy in ruins, South Korea burdened itself with the difficult task of rebuilding its northern neighbor. In addition, there was also a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions when a famine had struck the ex-North Korean population. The United States, Japan and Australia invested $61,000,000,000 in total on the reconstruction of the ex-North Korean infrastructure so they can use it to deliver food supplies to the starving population. While families that were separated by the Korean War were finally reunited, former KPA soldiers that were demobilized found it difficult to adjust to a new regime administered by the South Koreans.
Shim Young-choi* (former South Korean blogger): I remember my own family being sent up to Wonsan in order to oversee the delivery of certain supplies to the starving North Koreans there. However, what really stunned me was an incident that I witnessed where a former North Korean secret police agent was mobbed by the starving population and practically lynched. They hung him upside down and proceeded to beat him senselessly. Even after they were done, I threw up after seeing his mutilated and beaten corpse.
Ambleside: In 1994, Russian troops on patrol in the border between Russia and North Korea had captured Hwang Jang-yop while attempting to flee into the People's Republic of China. His capture turned out to be a godsend for the Americans as the Russian FSB had turned over to the CIA, thousands of captured North Korean documents, incriminating the Kim regime for various deeds. Kim Jong-il, the last dictator of North Korea, was also captured by Canadian soldiers on patrol in the North Korean-Chinese border, posing as a railway worker in his attempt to enter China. A year later, the International Tribunal for the Former Democratic People's Republic of Korea began with the war crimes trial of Hwang Jang-yop and former North Korean Defense Minister Ri Yong-gil, followed by various minor echleons of the North Korean regime.
Laguardia: This was marked by the beginning of what the Americans and the South Koreans refer to as "de-Juchefication", or the purging of the Juche ideology from the former North Korean state. It followed a similar pattern to how the Free Russian Army that consisted of the mutineers of the 106th Airborne Regiment had began to purge the Russian state of its communist past. Alexander Solzhenitsyn became the founder of the Eurasian Road to Freedom society, and his past role as the dissident in the former Soviet Union enabled him to play a leading role in the "de-Juchefication" process.
---
*Fictional name
Note: This TL is reposted from otherhistory.
---
Excerpts from “History of Russia: From the Soviet Period to the Russo-American Brotherhood Period”
by: Boris Nemtsov
Far Eastern Federal University Printing Press
Chapter Four: The Masherov Era
Few would have predicted that the history of the Soviet Union will turn in a completely different direction as an event that occurred on October 4, 1980. While being escorted under police guard, the produce truck nearly struck his car while driving back home from a meeting. Pyotr Masherov, an inspiring regional Communist Party boss from Byelorussia, had faced death and survived from it. In any case, few would have also predicted that this very same lucky man who came close to death would eventually succeed Brezhnev as the premier of the Soviet Union.
The later years of the Brezhnev era was marked with the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, where the local communist government there requested for Soviet assistance against the anti-communist movements that dominated the region. Although the era of the Mujahideen didn't yet exist, many powerful figures in the West saw this opportunity to weaken the Soviets through the war of attrition, much like how the United States was gradually weakened in the Vietnam War.
It was not surprising that on March 28th, 1981, after finally battling with a series of illnesses, Brezhnev finally succumbed to his illness and died. There was a state funeral in his honor, and many other Soviet leaders now grew worried as to who will succeed him. Masherov boldly put his candidacy forward, citing his close call with death as one good reason why the Soviet Union needed a healthier leader who wouldn't die within a few months of his regime. In fact, many people within the Soviet government had considered him to be the natural successor to Brezhnev, and in the end Masherov became the next head of the USSR.
In just three months, Masherov would begin his work of refining the Byelorussian bureaucracy to his satisfaction. The question of the Kaliningrad Oblast (a part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) became apparent, and inspired by Khrushchev's act of re-attaching the Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR, he decided to re-attach not only Kaliningrad Oblast to the Byelorussian SSR, but to force the Lithuanian SSR to cede its lands on the left side of the Neman River to the Byelorussian SSR. This controversial move continues to be the sore point between Russo-Lithuanian relations.
The Solidarity protests in Poland continued on well into 1981, but Masherov felt that since the Soviets were already bogged down in Afghanistan, an intervention in Poland would be far more costly and will result in a worsening of tensions between the Soviet Union and the West. Besides, Masherov had inadvertently kicked off a Baltic-wide anti-Soviet dissidence movement with the loss of its land west of the Neman River, and a prominent Lithuanian activist named Irena Andriukaitiene emerged as the leader of the Lithuanian dissidence movement.
Masherov's response to the growing Baltic dissidence movement was to increase the KGB's crackdown on them, as well as arresting not only Andriukaitiene, but several other Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian activists who were in league with the Lithuanian ringleader. Acting on his crypto-nationalist tendencies, Masherov also declared that the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was cheated of its other strips of territory obtained as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (namely the strips of border territories and the city of Vilnius). He even made plans to resettle around 20,000 Byelorussians in Ukraine to the disputed regions, claiming that the border changes were internal.
Unfortunately, Masherov couldn't solve the economic issues that continued to plague the Soviet Union until the Yekaterinberg Revolution of 1991 when certain officers from the Soviet 106th Airborne Division mutinied against their leaders and openly sided with civilian protesters.
---
KEMP CONFIRMED AS REAGAN'S RUNNING MATE
Washington Post
July 17, 1980
Detroit, Michigan – In a move that stunned most Republican supporters, Jack Kemp was selected by Presidential hopeful Ronald Reagan as his VP running mate, passing over other potential candidates like Paul Laxhalt and George H.W. Bush in the Republican Convention.
“I believe that Kemp might have some ideas on how to solve our economic woes, as his good alliance with the unions will come in handy,” Michigan steel industry worker Oliver Peterson said when asked about the election chances for the Reagan-Kemp ticket. “We're in a union too, and I believe that once Jack Kemp becomes the Vice President of the United States, he'll push hard for American jobs to be kept within the United States and not send it offshore to Third World countries.”
Speaking in front of hundreds of supporters in Michigan, Reagan delivered a standing ovation when he made a promise to 'make America great once again'. Although there were some critics who voiced their concerns about the selection of Kemp as Reagan's running mate, others felt that the times are changing and that the era of unparalleled liberalism in American politics has come to an end.
“Mark my words, the Democrats will be unseated in a few months because of their poor track record in foreign policy and indecisiveness on part of President Carter,” Republican National Committee deputy chief legal counsel Michael A. Hess says when asked about Reagan's foreign policies. “We also have some domestic solutions that Mr. Reagan has come up with as a result of some poor domestic policies that were carried out during the Carter administration.”
George H.W. Bush, another Vice President hopeful who felt disappointed in Reagan's selection of Kemp, offered his congratulations to the chosen candidate and even threw his support behind him in a show of sportsmanship.
"The main important thing is, we've got to prepare for the next Vice Presidential campaign in 1984. Hopefully the lessons we've learned from this experience will be of great help to us in the next campaign," says Patrick Jennings, one of the minor officials working on the George H.W. Bush vice presidential campaign tour. "We don't know how Jack Kemp will be of great help to Mr. Reagan, but with Kemp's recommendation on selecting Hess as Reagan's Press Secretary, it could go either way."
---
Excerpts from "East Asia in Focus - Episode 3: Korea"
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Filmed by Peter Ambleside on August 10, 2007
Ambleside: For the last fifteen years, the reunited Korean Peninsula has seen steady growth in its economy as a result of the decisive conclusion of the Second Korean War, in which the former North Korean regime had been overthrown by a combination of internal instability and a foolhardy mistake committed by the North Koreans when one of their rockets had accidentally hit a Russian ship, killing all crew members in what became known as the Nakhodka Trawler Disaster. The sight of Russian soldiers fighting alongside American, South Korean, Chilean, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander, Ukrainian and Byelorussian troops. The Ukrainian and Byelorussian forces that accompanied the Russian Far Eastern military forces also played a key role in preventing the North Korean leadership from fleeing into China.
(scenes of Russian artillery firing and Russian warplanes conducting an airstrike, followed by American paratroopers landing in Wonsan)
Ambleside: Since the fall of the former North Korean regime, the UN has appointed the United States and Russia as temporary custodians over the former North Korea, while South Korea has appointed Chung Ju-yung as the interim Governor of the Recovered Northern Territories. The reconstruction of the former North Korean state was painstakingly difficult, with most of its industries laid to ruins as a result of American and Russian bombing efforts at degrading the ex-KPA war machine.
(scenes shifted to pictures of ruined factories and wandering starving people)
Enrique Laguardia (Professor of Economics at the University of Saskatchewan)*: We've seen the South Koreans having to build everything from scratch because they didn't have the necessary tools to build the foundation of their economy, where as the former North Korean state had a leg up on its economic development due to the Japanese colonial period where most of the industries were built in the north, to keep it out of reach of US Air Force bombers during WWII.
Ambleside: With the former North Korean economy in ruins, South Korea burdened itself with the difficult task of rebuilding its northern neighbor. In addition, there was also a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions when a famine had struck the ex-North Korean population. The United States, Japan and Australia invested $61,000,000,000 in total on the reconstruction of the ex-North Korean infrastructure so they can use it to deliver food supplies to the starving population. While families that were separated by the Korean War were finally reunited, former KPA soldiers that were demobilized found it difficult to adjust to a new regime administered by the South Koreans.
Shim Young-choi* (former South Korean blogger): I remember my own family being sent up to Wonsan in order to oversee the delivery of certain supplies to the starving North Koreans there. However, what really stunned me was an incident that I witnessed where a former North Korean secret police agent was mobbed by the starving population and practically lynched. They hung him upside down and proceeded to beat him senselessly. Even after they were done, I threw up after seeing his mutilated and beaten corpse.
Ambleside: In 1994, Russian troops on patrol in the border between Russia and North Korea had captured Hwang Jang-yop while attempting to flee into the People's Republic of China. His capture turned out to be a godsend for the Americans as the Russian FSB had turned over to the CIA, thousands of captured North Korean documents, incriminating the Kim regime for various deeds. Kim Jong-il, the last dictator of North Korea, was also captured by Canadian soldiers on patrol in the North Korean-Chinese border, posing as a railway worker in his attempt to enter China. A year later, the International Tribunal for the Former Democratic People's Republic of Korea began with the war crimes trial of Hwang Jang-yop and former North Korean Defense Minister Ri Yong-gil, followed by various minor echleons of the North Korean regime.
Laguardia: This was marked by the beginning of what the Americans and the South Koreans refer to as "de-Juchefication", or the purging of the Juche ideology from the former North Korean state. It followed a similar pattern to how the Free Russian Army that consisted of the mutineers of the 106th Airborne Regiment had began to purge the Russian state of its communist past. Alexander Solzhenitsyn became the founder of the Eurasian Road to Freedom society, and his past role as the dissident in the former Soviet Union enabled him to play a leading role in the "de-Juchefication" process.
---
*Fictional name
Note: This TL is reposted from otherhistory.