What if Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova actually survives?

[Circle of Willis]

It's Orthodox Christmas according to the Julian Calendar, so it seems like a good time to pitch the following WI - what if Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, the fourth daughter & second-youngest child of Tsar Nicholas II (and only Anastasia) actually, indisputably survives the Romanov family massacre at Yekaterinburg and the Whites go on to win the Russian Civil War? ('She lives but then goes into exile & fades into obscurity' sounds rather boring.)

Let's say Yekaterinburg comes under attack by admiral Aleksandr Kolchak's Siberian forces a week early, and the Whites come close enough that the Bolshevik death squad neglect to finish her off (historically she survived the volleys which killed the rest of her family and was bayoneted after giving herself away by screaming) in favor of fleeing ahead of Kolchak's army, assuming she'd bleed out anyway, but of course she doesn't and is recovered while still alive & in a state where medical recovery is possible.

There's no longer an obvious Tsar to restore, and the Pauline Laws legally barred women from the imperial succession while there were still male Romanov relatives kicking about (and there are some still, though they're in exile and have their own problems - for example Grand Duke Cyril, Nicholas' cousin and closest male heir after the extermination of the immediate Romanov family, basically tried to pull a Philippe Egalite during the February Revolution). But Kolchak/Denikin/Wrangel/Yudenich/etc. do now have first a collection of martyred royals (a living Nicholas II would arguably have been more of an embarrassment to the White cause than a remotely inspiring figurehead), and next also a living pretty princess with one hell of a sob story to not only spur anti-Bolshevik outrage & rally support with, but also to consider a place for in the new Russian order...

 

[PsihoKekec]

Possibly there is Cossack detachment with the Czehs, who carry out a raid on Yekaterinburg ahead of the main advance and get contacted by monarchist sympathisers to Ypatiev house where execution squad quickly does the dead and panickly flees, leaving Anastasia wounded but alive.

Now, at the counter-bolshevik movement in this area is controlled by Komuch, which claims legacy of constitutional assembly and is mostly SRs, while military forces are controlled by monarchist officers who barely tolerate them and will replace them wih Kolchak once the situation turns sour.
Now chief of staff of Czehoslovak legion is Russian general Diterikhs who is a staunch monarchist and religious zealot. Before him are the bodies of martyred Tzar, Tzarevich, Tzarina and princesses along with miraculously survived princess. His Deus Vult levels will go over 9000. But fanaticism of one man will not turn tide, it will take actions of many and one of them just might be Vladimir Kappel. If he learns of location of Trotsky, his raid at Sviazhsk might go straight after him, giving him the chance to eliminate Trotsky, Vatsetis and Raskolnikov, so instead of Reds stabilising the frontline and retaking Kazan and Simbirsk, you have chaos and demoralisation again, allowing the whites to advance again despite their disintegrating logistics. With Reds sending all they can scratch together to the frontline, they'll find it hard to gather enough troops to crush workers revolts like the one in Tula.

Still, a lot has to go right for the Whites and wrong for reds to snuff out the bolshevik menace.

As the victory draws close we have a situation that is horribly chaotic. SRs still have a lot of pull with masses and want a constitutional assembly, not a return to monarchy, though Savinkov just might say ''Fuck all this chaos, lets get a new Tzar and be done with it'' and turn on them. Denkin sees himself as the supreme leader of the white movement, despises any competition and is monarchist. Yudenich has ego bigger than his moustache, but it is not backed by his abilities or power, also his subordinates would be only too glad to throw him under the train. Kolchak might not even be in the competition, his role taken by either Diterikhs or Grishin-Almazov. Then there are bunch of Cossack Atamans who have gone rogue and the Japanese who are taking over Siberia and will have to be dealt with.

Perhaps one possible compromise amongst monarchists would be that Anastasia marries a suitable noble young man (royalty, orthodox faith), is regent for the firstborn son (helped of course by the Vozhd), who after reaching majority will become the Tzar.

Whites victory might butterfly away the IIWW and the lack of reds victory might allow the Roman von Ungern-Sternberg to reach the levels of insanity that are incomprehensible to us mere mortals. Which in 70s would lead to movie about him by Werner Herzog, starring the only man who could do this role justice - Klaus Kinski.

 

[Circle of Willis]

Possibly there is Cossack detachment with the Czehs, who carry out a raid on Yekaterinburg ahead of the main advance and get contacted by monarchist sympathisers to Ypatiev house where execution squad quickly does the dead and panickly flees, leaving Anastasia wounded but alive.

Now, at the counter-bolshevik movement in this area is controlled by Komuch, which claims legacy of constitutional assembly and is mostly SRs, while military forces are controlled by monarchist officers who barely tolerate them and will replace them wih Kolchak once the situation turns sour.
Now chief of staff of Czehoslovak legion is Russian general Diterikhs who is a staunch monarchist and religious zealot. Before him are the bodies of martyred Tzar, Tzarevich, Tzarina and princesses along with miraculously survived princess. His Deus Vult levels will go over 9000. But fanaticism of one man will not turn tide, it will take actions of many and one of them just might be Vladimir Kappel. If he learns of location of Trotsky, his raid at Sviazhsk might go straight after him, giving him the chance to eliminate Trotsky, Vatsetis and Raskolnikov, so instead of Reds stabilising the frontline and retaking Kazan and Simbirsk, you have chaos and demoralisation again, allowing the whites to advance again despite their disintegrating logistics. With Reds sending all they can scratch together to the frontline, they'll find it hard to gather enough troops to crush workers revolts like the one in Tula.

Still, a lot has to go right for the Whites and wrong for reds to snuff out the bolshevik menace.

As the victory draws close we have a situation that is horribly chaotic. SRs still have a lot of pull with masses and want a constitutional assembly, not a return to monarchy, though Savinkov just might say ''Fuck all this chaos, lets get a new Tzar and be done with it'' and turn on them. Denkin sees himself as the supreme leader of the white movement, despises any competition and is monarchist. Yudenich has ego bigger than his moustache, but it is not backed by his abilities or power, also his subordinates would be only too glad to throw him under the train. Kolchak might not even be in the competition, his role taken by either Diterikhs or Grishin-Almazov. Then there are bunch of Cossack Atamans who have gone rogue and the Japanese who are taking over Siberia and will have to be dealt with.

Perhaps one possible compromise amongst monarchists would be that Anastasia marries a suitable noble young man (royalty, orthodox faith), is regent for the firstborn son (helped of course by the Vozhd), who after reaching majority will become the Tzar.

Whites victory might butterfly away the IIWW and the lack of reds victory might allow the Roman von Ungern-Sternberg to reach the levels of insanity that are incomprehensible to us mere mortals. Which in 70s would lead to movie about him by Werner Herzog, starring the only man who could do this role justice - Klaus Kinski.

I like it. Apparently Diterikhs favored a different candidate over the liberal and 'red'-tainted Cyril for the Russian throne - IRL he held the last Russian Zemsky Sobor to confer the crown upon Nicholas' more distant cousin, also named Nicholas (and evidently the most martially able of the Romanov princes of the early 1900s). It didn't amount to much IOTL because by then any Russian 'Empire' would've been reduced to Transamur (and Diterikhs couldn't hold it against the Reds anyway), but here...

Well. This would-be Nicholas III was childless, still married and much too old for Anastasia besides. However none of that is true of his nephew and eventual successor (had he become Tsar) Prince Roman, who's only a few years older than Anastasia and historically didn't marry until 1921. (Incidentally his father Peter, who I guess would briefly reign as Peter IV after Nicholas III dies, was the one responsible for introducing Rasputin to Anastasia's mother in the first place.) Seems like an ideal match for the last surviving mainline Romanov princess around 1919-1920 to me, I'm not sure about Orthodox rules on consanguinity but they seem sufficiently distantly related (despite both being Romanovs) that it's probably cool in the surviving Patriarch's books, and it would certainly further legitimize Nicholas Nikolaevich's branch of the dynasty skipping ahead of Cyril's.

As far as the interim White leadership goes, I think Kolchak might still get the job in order to maintain tenuous White unity. IIRC he was basically an apolitical (though fundamentally conservative and militaristic) individual with the prestige of being a naval hero & polar explorer who was only really irreconcilably hated by the SRs and Ungern-Sternberg's buddy Grigory Semyonov out of everyone on the White side (since he replaced the former in a coup while the latter kept stealing his supplies & generally disrespectin' his authoritah), already got Denikin among others to recognize him as 'Supreme Ruler' historically and used a generic 'One and Indivisible Russia' tagline rather than anything explicitly monarchist/republican to try to prevent the White coalition from fracturing too much. From all that I've read he really didn't like having to engage in civil governance and was terrible at it, so him being willing - even eager - to hand the reins off to a restored monarchy seems pretty plausible.

I could see the Admiral sticking around for a couple years to finish purging the SRs, then calling the Constituent Assembly as originally promised (and as those SRs wanted! Too bad they won't live to see it...) with the understanding that the delegates will vote to make Nicholas III Tsar (and that eventually, Anastasia will be the Tsarina at his nephew Roman's side) so he can finally go back to his ships in peace. Denikin can assume power at that point, I think around this time Wrangel still had a ways to go before his stature had grown to a point where he could contend with his boss.

As far as foreign policy for the victorious White regime goes, I can't really speculate on relations with Germany and a Russian role in any WW2 since as you say that's probably butterflied away, but for the short term - apparently the Soviets actually gave Ataturk a major boost historically. Since the Entente forced Kolchak to not go after Poland, Finland, etc. immediately among their demands in exchange for help against the Reds (well they also demanded he not restore the monarchy, but I think that one can be safely conveniently forgotten some years later, I can't really imagine France or Britain breaking ties with Russia just because a 'lawfully elected' Constituent Assembly votes to put the tragic last daughter of their former ally back in charge under the wing of her only useful relatives), perhaps they can offer to compensate Russia with the Wilsonian Armenian territories from Sèvres instead, and generally recognizing Armenia as part of Russia again (since the First Armenian Republic was too weak to survive against Turkey alone and bent the knee to the Soviets with hardly a fight IOTL for survival's sake anyway).

Maybe Kolchak can send Yudenich and/or Wrangel down there to crush Kazim Karabekir and take the lands of the 'Western Armenian' vilayets, IIRC Yudenich was the Russian commander in the Caucasus before the revolution & civil war to begin with. I'm not sure how the Russian Army will do on an offensive expedition abroad so soon after the civil war, but at least the Turks will be significantly weakened without Bolshevik aid and the Greeks are likely to do most of the heavy lifting on this front anyway. By helping to enforce Sèvres and carve Turkey up, the White Russians can claim they at least got something out of WW1, giving a boost to both their legitimacy & Russian nationalism in general.

 

[Skallagrim]

Real co-operation with the SRs seems doomed to me. Although Savinkov has been described as deeply cynical by this point, I don't think you can form a stable coalition. The only way to make a White victory stick is to make it a true victory for the reactionaries. (Obviously, these have factions amongst themselves, too. But they at least have some real common ground.)

I'd argue that with a martyred Tsar and his family, and the fight becoming a holy crusade in the name of Princess, the reactionaries at least have a good narrative.

For my part, I can see a quasi-stable alliance between Denikin, Kolchak and Diterikhs emerging. May-Mayevsky is still getting pushed out, making Wrangel the fourth name in this little cabal. I think they'll do whatever they can to side-line Yudenich, and eventually, he might have an "accident".

Some slightly less senior commanders might also rise to prominence. @PsihoKekec rightly mentions Kappel; and if he indeed plays a dedcisive role, his name is made. But others who stand out to me are Mikhail Drozdovsky and Alexander Kutepov.

As far as the succession goes, I think the obvious ploy is to make Nicholas Nikolaevich (who is childless) the Tsar, with the understanding that a future son of Anastasia is to become his heir. Since Nicholas will surely die before that future son reaches maturity, Anastasia (by that point older) can be regent in the meanwhile.

(To clarify: first in line of succession is actually Tsar Nicholas II's younger brother Michael, but he married morganatically and caused a scandal. It also means his children aren't officially "above board" as prospective heirs, and you don't want uncertainty like that. Next in line is Kirill, who will -- rightly -- be viewed as a fucking traitor by the reactionaries. The last candidate who's in line before Nicholas Nikolaevich is Kirill's younger brother Paul... who also married morganatically.)

This choice has the advantage that Nicholas Nikolaevich was experienced with actual military command, and is widely respected and even beloved. In OTL Denikin didn't invite Nicholas to take overall command of the White forces because he was convinced that they'd have to make common cause with the SRs. But here... let's say they go all-in on Restoration, and to hell with the leftist vermin.

Regarding a potential groom for Anastasia: maybe Prince Nicholas of Romania would do? He's two years younger than she is, but assuming the Russian Civil War still lasts several years, they could be married around 1925 or so.



...With a restored monarchy and a reactionary government, Russia is still going to be a basket-case for a while, with a lot of political in-fighting. But without the USSR, commies everywhere are serverely weakened. This has major effects on several countries, Germany certainly not least! The lack of soviet backiing for the German commies makes that danger less acute, which has ramifications for Nazism as a prospect.

 

[Skallagrim]

Well. This would-be Nicholas III was childless, still married and much too old for Anastasia besides. However none of that is true of his nephew and eventual successor (had he become Tsar) Prince Roman, who's only a few years older than Anastasia and historically didn't marry until 1921. (Incidentally his father Peter, who I guess would briefly reign as Peter IV after Nicholas III dies, was the one responsible for introducing Rasputin to Anastasia's mother in the first place.) Seems like an ideal match for the last surviving mainline Romanov princess around 1919-1920 to me, I'm not sure about Orthodox rules on consanguinity but they seem sufficiently distantly related (despite both being Romanovs) that it's probably cool in the surviving Patriarch's books, and it would certainly further legitimize Nicholas Nikolaevich's branch of the dynasty skipping ahead of Cyril's.

I doubt they'd go for Roman, precisely because Peter was despised by the reactionaries. His wife, too. Not only did they introduce Rasputin, they were known as the "black family", because they were actively and openly into occult shit.

If Roman's parents were dead, and uncle Nicholas came to act as his guardian... then maybe. Sure. But that wasn't the case, and there's no way the reactionaries would want Peter and his wife anywhere near the throne.

 

[Circle of Willis]

I doubt they'd go for Roman, precisely because Peter was despised by the reactionaries. His wife, too. Not only did they introduce Rasputin, they were known as the "black family", because they were actively and openly into occult shit.

If Roman's parents were dead, and uncle Nicholas came to act as his guardian... then maybe. Sure. But that wasn't the case, and there's no way the reactionaries would want Peter and his wife anywhere near the throne.

Yeah, on second thought I don't think anyone in a post-Rasputin Russia would be cool with his original sponsor taking the throne. I think having Peter die in an accident or something so that Nicholas can take Roman under his wing and give him some credibility as an heir in addition to his marrying Anastasia would be the best & most stable path forward for the Romanovs, that should tie up all major dynastic loose ends and produce a monarchy of indisputable legitimacy with no need for a long regency (though Denikin, or perhaps a monarchist-inclined civilian politician like Vasily Shulgin acting as his pawn, can still exercise power from a prime minister's office) or foreign princes getting mixed up in Russia's business.

As far as other overshadowed generals rising to prominence, would agree that most likely nobody's going to know or care for names like Tukhachevsky and Zhukov in this timeline. Kutepov & Drozdovsky do seem like effective generals who'd have big roles in shaping interwar Russian doctrine & directing the rebuilding of the Russian Army alongside Kappel, also Drozdovsky's division had pretty snappy uniforms - IMO the Volunteer Army was the best-dressed of all the major armies involved in the Russian Civil War. Of the Siberians meanwhile, other than Kappel, Kolchak also employed probably the only Jewish general on the White side (certainly the only one I know of), Innokenty Smolin - maybe he can send that guy to Ukraine & Southern Russia, both to extend his influence in those regions and to put a stop to the deadly pogroms which were also damaging the White Russians' image in the eyes of their Western allies.

 

[PsihoKekec]

Russia after the civil war certainly will be a basket case supreme. Manufacturing will be in the toilet, with much of the skilled workforce killed off by both sides. There will be insurgencies in number of places, worse peasants will be rebelling for years if there is no land reform, which the landowners oppose, combined with widespread devastation of countryside, I doubt Russia will resume the role of grain exporter any time soon. Number of Cossack groups have gone rogue and will have to be put down while there will have to be considerable concessions to keep the main hosts loyal.

Many monarchists will bristle at the independence of Finland, Poland and Baltics, but the government will need loans from abroad to make it through, so they will have to put up with their existence, though revanchism will be strong, however at short term there are Chechens, Azeris (Baku oil is a must) and Khazaks to vent at and keep the collection of looters, turncoats, mass murderers and dashing drunkards, that the higher ups had to tolerate during the dire times, gainfully occupied and hopefully killed. If Georgian Menshevik government continues supporting the Chechens, the situation might escalate to open war, despite British pressure, especially if pacification of Chechnia is entrusted to some of more volatile characters like Shkuro.

A silly thought, if our favourite lunatic of the RCW still goes off to liberate Mongolia, with lack of reds to fight afterwards, could his next move be to invade China?

 

[Skallagrim]

Denikin, or perhaps a monarchist-inclined civilian politician like Vasily Shulgin acting as his pawn, can still exercise power from a prime minister's office

Of the Siberians meanwhile, other than Kappel, Kolchak also employed probably the only Jewish general on the White side (certainly the only one I know of), Innokenty Smolin - maybe he can send that guy to Ukraine & Southern Russia, both to extend his influence in those regions and to put a stop to the deadly pogroms which were also damaging the White Russians' image in the eyes of their Western allies.

A silly thought, if our favourite lunatic of the RCW still goes off to liberate Mongolia, with lack of reds to fight afterwards, could his next move be to invade China?

If Nicholas Nikolaevich becomes Tsar Nicholas III, he'll almost certainly try to lead a pretty reactionary regime, but not one that's going for genocides. Purges of leftists, but I doubt he'd be on board with mass pogroms. Wrangel and Kolchak would feel the same. Denikin was himself a massive anti-Semite, but as OTL shows, he could be side-lined without too much fuss if necessary. (And otherwise, he might just put his personal opinions aside and walk the party line in exchange for a comfortable seat at the table.) A lot of Denikin's men, however, were explictly committed to "exterminating the Jewish plague". Foreign observers at the time were shocked at how universal that sentiment was among the ranks of Denikin's supporters.

This suggests that if the new Tsarist regime pushes to stop the pogroms, and Denikin either quietly goes along or resigns his position and retires, Denikin's men will flock to the one man who will never go quietly: Diterikhs. So we may see a new major rift resulting from this. Although that could end in countless ways, one possible outcome is that Diterikhs takes his forces on a massive exodus into Asiatic Russia. I'm pretty confident that the new Tsarist government would be unable to restore authority in the Far East on anything resembling short notice, so Ungern-Sternberg is presumably still running around there.

Which is to say: while the West of Russia consolidates under a half-way normal government, the East could become the rallying point for ultra-monarchists who see any concession to popular representation as treason, (mad) aristocrats who resent any semblance of (even minor) land reform, ultra-nationalists who view recognition of certain break-away nations as unforgivable, anti-Semites who believe Russia will only be safe once every Jew is dead, religious fanatics who basically want a Tsarist theocracy, paranoid zealots who believe that infinitely more (suspected) leftists should have been purged, and of course the usual cadre of disorganised lunatics and opportunist mercenaries.

That latter could become a chaotic patchwork of feuding warlords, or could end up united under one dominating figure. In the latter case, you could see a war (be it a cold one or a hot one) between the two Russias; with the ones in the East claiming to actually be fighting for Princess Anastasia, under the belief that she is actually being held captive by traitors to the cause & has been forcibly married off to the son of two key perpetrators of a Satanic Plot Against The Nation, The Throne And Christianity...

 

[Circle of Willis]

Russia after the civil war certainly will be a basket case supreme. Manufacturing will be in the toilet, with much of the skilled workforce killed off by both sides. There will be insurgencies in number of places, worse peasants will be rebelling for years if there is no land reform, which the landowners oppose, combined with widespread devastation of countryside, I doubt Russia will resume the role of grain exporter any time soon. Number of Cossack groups have gone rogue and will have to be put down while there will have to be considerable concessions to keep the main hosts loyal.

Many monarchists will bristle at the independence of Finland, Poland and Baltics, but the government will need loans from abroad to make it through, so they will have to put up with their existence, though revanchism will be strong, however at short term there are Chechens, Azeris (Baku oil is a must) and Khazaks to vent at and keep the collection of looters, turncoats, mass murderers and dashing drunkards, that the higher ups had to tolerate during the dire times, gainfully occupied and hopefully killed. If Georgian Menshevik government continues supporting the Chechens, the situation might escalate to open war, despite British pressure, especially if pacification of Chechnia is entrusted to some of more volatile characters like Shkuro.

A silly thought, if our favourite lunatic of the RCW still goes off to liberate Mongolia, with lack of reds to fight afterwards, could his next move be to invade China?

If Nicholas Nikolaevich becomes Tsar Nicholas III, he'll almost certainly try to lead a pretty reactionary regime, but not one that's going for genocides. Purges of leftists, but I doubt he'd be on board with mass pogroms. Wrangel and Kolchak would feel the same. Denikin was himself a massive anti-Semite, but as OTL shows, he could be side-lined without too much fuss if necessary. (And otherwise, he might just put his personal opinions aside and walk the party line in exchange for a comfortable seat at the table.) A lot of Denikin's men, however, were explictly committed to "exterminating the Jewish plague". Foreign observers at the time were shocked at how universal that sentiment was among the ranks of Denikin's supporters.

This suggests that if the new Tsarist regime pushes to stop the pogroms, and Denikin either quietly goes along or resigns his position and retires, Denikin's men will flock to the one man who will never go quietly: Diterikhs. So we may see a new major rift resulting from this. Although that could end in countless ways, one possible outcome is that Diterikhs takes his forces on a massive exodus into Asiatic Russia. I'm pretty confident that the new Tsarist government would be unable to restore authority in the Far East on anything resembling short notice, so Ungern-Sternberg is presumably still running around there.

Which is to say: while the West of Russia consolidates under a half-way normal government, the East could become the rallying point for ultra-monarchists who see any concession to popular representation as treason, (mad) aristocrats who resent any semblance of (even minor) land reform, ultra-nationalists who view recognition of certain break-away nations as unforgivable, anti-Semites who believe Russia will only be safe once every Jew is dead, religious fanatics who basically want a Tsarist theocracy, paranoid zealots who believe that infinitely more (suspected) leftists should have been purged, and of course the usual cadre of disorganised lunatics and opportunist mercenaries.

That latter could become a chaotic patchwork of feuding warlords, or could end up united under one dominating figure. In the latter case, you could see a war (be it a cold one or a hot one) between the two Russias; with the ones in the East claiming to actually be fighting for Princess Anastasia, under the belief that she is actually being held captive by traitors to the cause & has been forcibly married off to the son of two key perpetrators of a Satanic Plot Against The Nation, The Throne And Christianity...

I think the problem with any anti-new-government rebels hoping to use Siberia as their stronghold is that, much as Kolchak's forces found out historically, while it is certainly vast & easy to hide in it really doesn't have the manpower base/infrastructure/industrial capacity to stand up against an enemy based out of Western Russia. And not only that, but here it'd have the additional complication of being the now-victorious Admiral's own stomping grounds and the home of his own ardent loyalists, men like the Pepelyayev brothers (respectively Kolchak's security minister & later prime minister who died alongside him, and the last White general to hold out against the Reds historically - clearly neither brother lacked for persistence, based on their RL actions) who I'd imagine will be tasked with leading the charge against them.

However. Japan is the elephant in this room, and certainly has an interest in projecting their power as far as they possibly can into Siberia, I mean they tried doing just that IRL. Now I don't really see the IJA being able to march into Kolchak's old capital at Omsk, probably not even as far as Tomsk and Novosibirsk (or Novonikolaevsk as it'd surely still be called in honor of the martyred Nicholas II ITL) precisely due to Siberia's vastness now working against them, but shearing off much of the Russian Far East up to Transbaikal seems quite doable with the support of opportunists like Semyonov (who was already a Japanese collaborator IRL and will fear being put in front of a firing squad by Kolchak, now that the latter is in position to seek revenge for all those times Semyonov screwed him over during the RCW). Whatever ideology animates the rebels, be it belief that the new government is insufficiently autocratic & has sold out to Jews/foreigners or republicanism driven by SR and liberal refugees fleeing the purges, should matter less than just having a useful puppet around for Tokyo.

With a mix of Siberian loyalists & Western Russian resources I can picture A. Pepelyayev & company putting down most of the rogue Cossack atamans like Dutov and Annenkov and even if he doesn't kill them outright, then at least he can beat them back into line and turn them into autonomous subjects of the legitimate Russian gov't, like the Ma clan or Li Zongren & other pro-KMT Chinese warlords that Chiang still had to smack around from time to time IRL - Annenkov for example could be relegated to being a peripheral vassal of Russia in the Semirechye region where a lot of his Cossacks came from. But I don't think Pepelyayev could beat Japan (at least not closer to Vladivostok), the IJA is much stronger than an isolated rump Turkish army would be. So yeah, I believe we could see Semyonov or whoever heading up a Japanese puppet counter-government stretching from Primorye to Lake Baikal (would the more fanatical Diterikhs be as willing as he to sell out to Japan if his justification for rebellion is that the Western Whites & Kolchak have sold out?), which would certainly piss the Russians off but which they realistically can't do much about for some years at least.

As for Ungern-Sternberg, he was friends with Semyonov and my guess is that Japan will back him against Russia too. They're going to be sorely disappointed if they think he'll be a pliant puppet and his Mongolia will just be a greater Mengjiang though, the Mad Baron does not seem like a guy you could easily put a leash on. Maybe his volatility and difficulty to control will get Tokyo to try to kill him like another Zhang Zuolin, but if they fail...well I can't predict exactly what he'd do, but I would expect his reaction to be rather explosive, any injuries he incurs would probably make him madder still if that's even possible. Whatever he gets up to definitely won't make for a boring story, that's for sure.

 

[ATP]

So,ukrainians here would be put down just like in OTL,becouse they were really weak.
In OTL when Poland take Kiev for them,locals refused to go to ukrainian army,becouse simply do not considered themselves as ukrainians.

That aside - what about borders with Poland? the same like with soviets in 1921? better for Russia? France prefered Russia to Poland,after all.

And WW2 would simply do not happened - tsar would not ally with some madman,or any democratic leader.Unless germans keep Kaiser...then we could have Partitions 2.0,but still not WW2.

P.S according to what i read,two daughters survived schooting and were bayoneted,i think that second surviving was oldest one.
You could marry her to some foreign monarch...but which one?

 

[Skallagrim]

I think the problem with any anti-new-government rebels hoping to use Siberia as their stronghold is that, much as Kolchak's forces found out historically, while it is certainly vast & easy to hide in it really doesn't have the manpower base/infrastructure/industrial capacity to stand up against an enemy based out of Western Russia. And not only that, but here it'd have the additional complication of being the now-victorious Admiral's own stomping grounds and the home of his own ardent loyalists, men like the Pepelyayev brothers (respectively Kolchak's security minister & later prime minister who died alongside him, and the last White general to hold out against the Reds historically - clearly neither brother lacked for persistence, based on their RL actions) who I'd imagine will be tasked with leading the charge against them.

However. Japan is the elephant in this room, and certainly has an interest in projecting their power as far as they possibly can into Siberia, I mean they tried doing just that IRL. Now I don't really see the IJA being able to march into Kolchak's old capital at Omsk, probably not even as far as Tomsk and Novosibirsk (or Novonikolaevsk as it'd surely still be called in honor of the martyred Nicholas II ITL) precisely due to Siberia's vastness now working against them, but shearing off much of the Russian Far East up to Transbaikal seems quite doable with the support of opportunists like Semyonov (who was already a Japanese collaborator IRL and will fear being put in front of a firing squad by Kolchak, now that the latter is in position to seek revenge for all those times Semyonov screwed him over during the RCW). Whatever ideology animates the rebels, be it belief that the new government is insufficiently autocratic & has sold out to Jews/foreigners or republicanism driven by SR and liberal refugees fleeing the purges, should matter less than just having a useful puppet around for Tokyo.

With a mix of Siberian loyalists & Western Russian resources I can picture A. Pepelyayev & company putting down most of the rogue Cossack atamans like Dutov and Annenkov and even if he doesn't kill them outright, then at least he can beat them back into line and turn them into autonomous subjects of the legitimate Russian gov't, like the Ma clan or Li Zongren & other pro-KMT Chinese warlords that Chiang still had to smack around from time to time IRL - Annenkov for example could be relegated to being a peripheral vassal of Russia in the Semirechye region where a lot of his Cossacks came from. But I don't think Pepelyayev could beat Japan (at least not closer to Vladivostok), the IJA is much stronger than an isolated rump Turkish army would be. So yeah, I believe we could see Semyonov or whoever heading up a Japanese puppet counter-government stretching from Primorye to Lake Baikal (would the more fanatical Diterikhs be as willing as he to sell out to Japan if his justification for rebellion is that the Western Whites & Kolchak have sold out?), which would certainly piss the Russians off but which they realistically can't do much about for some years at least.

As for Ungern-Sternberg, he was friends with Semyonov and my guess is that Japan will back him against Russia too. They're going to be sorely disappointed if they think he'll be a pliant puppet and his Mongolia will just be a greater Mengjiang though, the Mad Baron does not seem like a guy you could easily put a leash on. Maybe his volatility and difficulty to control will get Tokyo to try to kill him like another Zhang Zuolin, but if they fail...well I can't predict exactly what he'd do, but I would expect his reaction to be rather explosive, any injuries he incurs would probably make him madder still if that's even possible. Whatever he gets up to definitely won't make for a boring story, that's for sure.

It's certainly true that in case of a divided Russia, the dissatisfied "ultras" (to use a catch-all term) won't be able to hold Western Siberia. But the vast expanse and overall emptiness of the Asiatic interior also work in their favour and renders many would-be expeditions of (re)conquest impractical. In any case, I do think that in the scenario I vaguely outlined -- although others scenarios are obviously possible -- the surviving SRs will have to flee to the West, becoming an ATL (left-leaning but non-communist) diaspora. The Far East, meanwhile, will then be the domain of the "ultras". In the most optimistic scenario for them, their Western frontier could be at the Yenisei-- thus giving them control of the Siberian Plateau, whereas the legitimate government controls the Siberian Plain. (Krasnoyarsk would be the leading "frontier post" of the legitimate government.)

Of course, that's only if the Ultras get their act together and use optimal tactics to exploit the realities of the logistical situation. That's a big "if", considering the sheer number of hopeless crazies in their ranks. It's at least just as likely, if not quite a bit more likely, that the frontier will be much further East.

If the Japanese promise Diterikhs reasonable autonomy and substantial support, he'll gladly accept their "help", no doubt, all the while telling himself that it's an alliance of "warrior races", and not some kind of... vassalage. The Japanese, under the circumstances, would be well-served by having as many Russians as possible die (which is demographically better for the Japanese overlords), while pushing the frontier as far West as possible (which is strategically ideal for Japan). So I could see them offering real support. Someone like Diterikhs could easily go for a "crusade of restoration" narrative. And that would almost certainly rid Japan of Ugern-Sternberg, too. After all, in OTL, the Baron was already prone to talk of erecting "a row of gallows from Vladivostok to Moscow" and hanging all the leftists and Jews and whatnot...

So Japan really could send the crazies off to die in an unwinnable war, while the more reasonable ultras could remain behind to administrate a Far Eastern state that proclaims itself "the true Russia", but which is in essence a useful Japanese protectorate & buffer zone.

 

[Circle of Willis]

So,ukrainians here would be put down just like in OTL,becouse they were really weak.
In OTL when Poland take Kiev for them,locals refused to go to ukrainian army,becouse simply do not considered themselves as ukrainians.

That aside - what about borders with Poland? the same like with soviets in 1921? better for Russia? France prefered Russia to Poland,after all.

And WW2 would simply do not happened - tsar would not ally with some madman,or any democratic leader.Unless germans keep Kaiser...then we could have Partitions 2.0,but still not WW2.

P.S according to what i read,two daughters survived schooting and were bayoneted,i think that second surviving was oldest one.
You could marry her to some foreign monarch...but which one?

Yeah, I don't see any way interwar Ukraine could survive in this White victory scenario. The bigwigs - Kolchak, Denikin, etc. - were staunch 'Great Russian' nationalists, as I said earlier Kolchak's slogan as Supreme Ruler of the Whites historically was literally 'One and Indivisible Russia', and Ukraine is the 'Little Russia' in 'All the (Indivisible) Russias'. Having to cede Poland, Finland et al. on paper must already have been as painful as pulling teeth for those guys, there's no way they'd relent on any of the actual 'Russias' in 'All the Russias' if they still had any strength (and hope for legitimacy). Also quite a few White officers and their families hailed from territories claimed by the UPR as well: Drozdovsky for example was born in Kiev, and Kolchak's own Romanian ancestors were from Bessarabia. Apparently Lavr Kornilov, the second great Southern White Russian chief between Alekseyev and Denikin, was an exception and the only major White commander willing to entertain the prospect of Ukrainian independence, but nobody else agreed with him and he's already been dead for ~6 months before the massacre at Ipatiev House anyway.

Meanwhile as you say, the Ukrainian People's Republic was really weak and unstable. I don't think the Ukrainian army actually won a single major battle on its own against any opponents in this period. Even Pavlo Skoropadsky, the pro-German hetman, was a Russophile first and only became a German collaborator because it looked like Russia was done for & a Bolshevik takeover seemed imminent; if the Whites are ascendant he'll almost certainly just rejoin them, he actually did try to work with the Volunteer Army around the end of WW1 after all. So they have the problem of sitting on land which is already mostly hard to defend geography-wise but is of enormous value, both practical (the Whites are going to need a breadbasket to allay the famines plaguing civil war-era Russia) and sentimental, to the White leadership while also being surrounded by enemies and not actually having the strength to defend their claims. That's a very bad spot for any would-be country to be in for sure.

As for Poland, I think the Western Entente and Russia will both insist on a Curzon Line border. The former twisted Kolchak's arm into acknowledging Polish independence IRL and I don't see any reason as to why they'd treat Nicholas III any differently, but they never said anything about where the border should be in that agreement to my knowledge. And while Poland might be lost to them in the short term, I can't really imagine die-hard Russian nationalists like Kolchak & Denikin not arguing for pushing the border as far west as they can & laying claim to Galicia-Volhynia as 'historical Ruthenian, and therefore Russian land'.

Demands like that might be easier to get through if Poland can get a more ethnonationalist mind like Roman Dmowski in charge; he seems to have been more willing to accept a smaller but more ethnically homogeneous Poland compared to Pilsudski's dream of a 'Promethean' Intermarium to replace the PLC, not to mention he actually supported Russia against Germany previously. Might be for the best for Polish-Russian relations in the long run, Russia will already be seething over both the territorial losses in the West and the probable loss of much or all of their Pacific coast to Japan, if Poland insists on the Treaty of Riga borders from OTL that's going to 1000% guarantee a future equivalent to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Anastasia's Russia and whoever takes power in Germany (as long as it's not the commies, but that doesn't seem all that likely with no USSR anyway) to kill Poland later.

The POD requires only Anastasia to survive, any of her older sisters also surviving would enormously reduce her importance as they'd come ahead of her in precedence. I think Maria (the third sister) was the one you're thinking of rather than Olga (the eldest), but she was probably the hemophilia-carrier out of the four which really doesn't bode well for her survival after being wounded, even if she isn't beaten to death by her executioners as happened historically. The second sister Tatiana (historically 100% killed by a bullet to the back of her head) apparently had a teenage crush on a young cavalry officer named Dmitry Malama who then went on to die fighting the Reds as part of the Volunteer Army in the south, so besides Diterikhs himself there's a good candidate to avenge the Romanovs personally by going after Yurovsky ITL at least.

It's certainly true that in case of a divided Russia, the dissatisfied "ultras" (to use a catch-all term) won't be able to hold Western Siberia. But the vast expanse and overall emptiness of the Asiatic interior also work in their favour and renders many would-be expeditions of (re)conquest impractical. In any case, I do think that in the scenario I vaguely outlined -- although others scenarios are obviously possible -- the surviving SRs will have to flee to the West, becoming an ATL (left-leaning but non-communist) diaspora. The Far East, meanwhile, will then be the domain of the "ultras". In the most optimistic scenario for them, their Western frontier could be at the Yenisei-- thus giving them control of the Siberian Plateau, whereas the legitimate government controls the Siberian Plain. (Krasnoyarsk would be the leading "frontier post" of the legitimate government.)

Of course, that's only if the Ultras get their act together and use optimal tactics to exploit the realities of the logistical situation. That's a big "if", considering the sheer number of hopeless crazies in their ranks. It's at least just as likely, if not quite a bit more likely, that the frontier will be much further East.

If the Japanese promise Diterikhs reasonable autonomy and substantial support, he'll gladly accept their "help", no doubt, all the while telling himself that it's an alliance of "warrior races", and not some kind of... vassalage. The Japanese, under the circumstances, would be well-served by having as many Russians as possible die (which is demographically better for the Japanese overlords), while pushing the frontier as far West as possible (which is strategically ideal for Japan). So I could see them offering real support. Someone like Diterikhs could easily go for a "crusade of restoration" narrative. And that would almost certainly rid Japan of Ugern-Sternberg, too. After all, in OTL, the Baron was already prone to talk of erecting "a row of gallows from Vladivostok to Moscow" and hanging all the leftists and Jews and whatnot...

So Japan really could send the crazies off to die in an unwinnable war, while the more reasonable ultras could remain behind to administrate a Far Eastern state that proclaims itself "the true Russia", but which is in essence a useful Japanese protectorate & buffer zone.

I'm inclined towards pessimism re: the ability of the 'Ultras' as you call them to seize a Yenisei border, tbh. None of them really strike me as great or even particularly good generals - Diterikhs to my knowledge certainly had great aggression and zeal, but not much in the way of tactical or strategic finesse, and Semyonov was basically a bandit chief whose army was the most exploitative & prone to marauding even in friendly areas out of all the forces gathered under Kolchak's banner historically (yet another reason why the latter hated him, he tanked civilian support for the Supreme Ruler everywhere he went). Ungern-Sternberg more or less had both their problems with extra insanity on top, and of course we know none of them lasted very long against the Reds after Kolchak's downfall IOTL. The greatest advantage enjoyed by the Pepelyayev brothers or whoever else is sent to fight them ITL may not even be the resources from European Russia being transported on increasingly long & painful trips past the Urals, but the promise of a relatively sane & predictable administration that might well seem downright benevolent compared to the 'eccentric' and/or overly pillage-happy trainwrecks these guys are likely to preside over.

So yeah, Diterikhs & Ungern-Sternberg being sent off to die gloriously against the other Whites seems reasonable enough. I guess Semyonov, as the most rational of the bunch and a historical longtime Japanese collaborator, would be Tokyo's preferred & most reliable candidate to actually rule the protectorate they'd impose on the Russian Far East (I'm guessing at a border around or east of Lake Baikal, which was where Semyonov had his fiefdom IOTL). Based on how he 'ruled' Transbaikalia historically I can't see him being a particularly efficient or corruption-free warlord, but it's pretty telling that a mafia state based out of Vladivostok might well unironically be the best the citizens of that region can hope for compared to how Semyonov's buddies would have ruled.

One other interesting development to consider in the east might be the flight of some Reds to China, which would make for a neat mirror to the surprisingly substantial White Russian exile community at Harbin (as well as White Russian troops fighting for Chinese warlords like Jin Shuren & Zhang Zongchang) IOTL. The Soviets sent help to Sun Yat-sen historically and were originally close to the KMT (Chiang Kai-shek even trained in Moscow in 1923 and his eldest son married a Soviet woman), maybe Mikhail Borodin et al. could flee through anarchic and sparsely-populated Turkestan to join the KMT in this timeline instead. Of course Sun was never a commie himself, but maybe a greater Red diaspora in China could prop the left-wing of the KMT (Wang Jingwei, Sun's widow Soong Qingling, etc.) up enough to gain an advantage over the right-wing represented by Chiang and others, which would have big butterfly effects on not just China's future internal dynamics but potentially the broader geopolitical situation with Anastasia's Russia & Japan.

 

[ATP]

Yeah, I don't see any way interwar Ukraine could survive in this White victory scenario. The bigwigs - Kolchak, Denikin, etc. - were staunch 'Great Russian' nationalists, as I said earlier Kolchak's slogan as Supreme Ruler of the Whites historically was literally 'One and Indivisible Russia', and Ukraine is the 'Little Russia' in 'All the (Indivisible) Russias'. Having to cede Poland, Finland et al. on paper must already have been as painful as pulling teeth for those guys, there's no way they'd relent on any of the actual 'Russias' in 'All the Russias' if they still had any strength (and hope for legitimacy). Also quite a few White officers and their families hailed from territories claimed by the UPR as well: Drozdovsky for example was born in Kiev, and Kolchak's own Romanian ancestors were from Bessarabia. Apparently Lavr Kornilov, the second great Southern White Russian chief between Alekseyev and Denikin, was an exception and the only major White commander willing to entertain the prospect of Ukrainian independence, but nobody else agreed with him and he's already been dead for ~6 months before the massacre at Ipatiev House anyway.

Meanwhile as you say, the Ukrainian People's Republic was really weak and unstable. I don't think the Ukrainian army actually won a single major battle on its own against any opponents in this period. Even Pavlo Skoropadsky, the pro-German hetman, was a Russophile first and only became a German collaborator because it looked like Russia was done for & a Bolshevik takeover seemed imminent; if the Whites are ascendant he'll almost certainly just rejoin them, he actually did try to work with the Volunteer Army around the end of WW1 after all. So they have the problem of sitting on land which is already mostly hard to defend geography-wise but is of enormous value, both practical (the Whites are going to need a breadbasket to allay the famines plaguing civil war-era Russia) and sentimental, to the White leadership while also being surrounded by enemies and not actually having the strength to defend their claims. That's a very bad spot for any would-be country to be in for sure.

As for Poland, I think the Western Entente and Russia will both insist on a Curzon Line border. The former twisted Kolchak's arm into acknowledging Polish independence IRL and I don't see any reason as to why they'd treat Nicholas III any differently, but they never said anything about where the border should be in that agreement to my knowledge. And while Poland might be lost to them in the short term, I can't really imagine die-hard Russian nationalists like Kolchak & Denikin not arguing for pushing the border as far west as they can & laying claim to Galicia-Volhynia as 'historical Ruthenian, and therefore Russian land'.

Demands like that might be easier to get through if Poland can get a more ethnonationalist mind like Roman Dmowski in charge; he seems to have been more willing to accept a smaller but more ethnically homogeneous Poland compared to Pilsudski's dream of a 'Promethean' Intermarium to replace the PLC, not to mention he actually supported Russia against Germany previously. Might be for the best for Polish-Russian relations in the long run, Russia will already be seething over both the territorial losses in the West and the probable loss of much or all of their Pacific coast to Japan, if Poland insists on the Treaty of Riga borders from OTL that's going to 1000% guarantee a future equivalent to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Anastasia's Russia and whoever takes power in Germany (as long as it's not the commies, but that doesn't seem all that likely with no USSR anyway) to kill Poland later.

The POD requires only Anastasia to survive, any of her older sisters also surviving would enormously reduce her importance as they'd come ahead of her in precedence. I think Maria (the third sister) was the one you're thinking of rather than Olga (the eldest), but she was probably the hemophilia-carrier out of the four which really doesn't bode well for her survival after being wounded, even if she isn't beaten to death by her executioners as happened historically. The second sister Tatiana (historically 100% killed by a bullet to the back of her head) apparently had a teenage crush on a young cavalry officer named Dmitry Malama who then went on to die fighting the Reds as part of the Volunteer Army in the south, so besides Diterikhs himself there's a good candidate to avenge the Romanovs personally by going after Yurovsky ITL at least.

I'm inclined towards pessimism re: the ability of the 'Ultras' as you call them to seize a Yenisei border, tbh. None of them really strike me as great or even particularly good generals - Diterikhs to my knowledge certainly had great aggression and zeal, but not much in the way of tactical or strategic finesse, and Semyonov was basically a bandit chief whose army was the most exploitative & prone to marauding even in friendly areas out of all the forces gathered under Kolchak's banner historically (yet another reason why the latter hated him, he tanked civilian support for the Supreme Ruler everywhere he went). Ungern-Sternberg more or less had both their problems with extra insanity on top, and of course we know none of them lasted very long against the Reds after Kolchak's downfall IOTL. The greatest advantage enjoyed by the Pepelyayev brothers or whoever else is sent to fight them ITL may not even be the resources from European Russia being transported on increasingly long & painful trips past the Urals, but the promise of a relatively sane & predictable administration that might well seem downright benevolent compared to the 'eccentric' and/or overly pillage-happy trainwrecks these guys are likely to preside over.

So yeah, Diterikhs & Ungern-Sternberg being sent off to die gloriously against the other Whites seems reasonable enough. I guess Semyonov, as the most rational of the bunch and a historical longtime Japanese collaborator, would be Tokyo's preferred & most reliable candidate to actually rule the protectorate they'd impose on the Russian Far East (I'm guessing at a border around or east of Lake Baikal, which was where Semyonov had his fiefdom IOTL). Based on how he 'ruled' Transbaikalia historically I can't see him being a particularly efficient or corruption-free warlord, but it's pretty telling that a mafia state based out of Vladivostok might well unironically be the best the citizens of that region can hope for compared to how Semyonov's buddies would have ruled.

One other interesting development to consider in the east might be the flight of some Reds to China, which would make for a neat mirror to the surprisingly substantial White Russian exile community at Harbin (as well as White Russian troops fighting for Chinese warlords like Jin Shuren & Zhang Zongchang) IOTL. The Soviets sent help to Sun Yat-sen historically and were originally close to the KMT (Chiang Kai-shek even trained in Moscow in 1923 and his eldest son married a Soviet woman), maybe Mikhail Borodin et al. could flee through anarchic and sparsely-populated Turkestan to join the KMT in this timeline instead. Of course Sun was never a commie himself, but maybe a greater Red diaspora in China could prop the left-wing of the KMT (Wang Jingwei, Sun's widow Soong Qingling, etc.) up enough to gain an advantage over the right-wing represented by Chiang and others, which would have big butterfly effects on not just China's future internal dynamics but potentially the broader geopolitical situation with Anastasia's Russia & Japan.

Mostly agree,with two different things - Wilno was polish city in 1920,just likeLwów,and Galicia never belonged to tsars,so they could not claim it.

 

[Skallagrim]

I'm inclined towards pessimism re: the ability of the 'Ultras' as you call them to seize a Yenisei border, tbh. None of them really strike me as great or even particularly good generals - Diterikhs to my knowledge certainly had great aggression and zeal, but not much in the way of tactical or strategic finesse, and Semyonov was basically a bandit chief whose army was the most exploitative & prone to marauding even in friendly areas out of all the forces gathered under Kolchak's banner historically (yet another reason why the latter hated him, he tanked civilian support for the Supreme Ruler everywhere he went). Ungern-Sternberg more or less had both their problems with extra insanity on top, and of course we know none of them lasted very long against the Reds after Kolchak's downfall IOTL. The greatest advantage enjoyed by the Pepelyayev brothers or whoever else is sent to fight them ITL may not even be the resources from European Russia being transported on increasingly long & painful trips past the Urals, but the promise of a relatively sane & predictable administration that might well seem downright benevolent compared to the 'eccentric' and/or overly pillage-happy trainwrecks these guys are likely to preside over.

Whatever the 'Ultras' manage would be due not so much to any great degree of competence on their part, but due to the fact that the legitimate government is fighting both the commies and the SRs. The Ultras over in the Far East are unlikely to be prioritised, and once European Russia has been brought to something resembling order, declaring peace and getting the civilian economy running again may be seen as more crucial than re-conquering Bumfucknowhere, Siberia.

(After all, the true potential of the natural resources over there is not yet understood, and besides: not doing it now doesn't mean that you can't still do it later.)

So yeah, Diterikhs & Ungern-Sternberg being sent off to die gloriously against the other Whites seems reasonable enough. I guess Semyonov, as the most rational of the bunch and a historical longtime Japanese collaborator, would be Tokyo's preferred & most reliable candidate to actually rule the protectorate they'd impose on the Russian Far East (I'm guessing at a border around or east of Lake Baikal, which was where Semyonov had his fiefdom IOTL). Based on how he 'ruled' Transbaikalia historically I can't see him being a particularly efficient or corruption-free warlord, but it's pretty telling that a mafia state based out of Vladivostok might well unironically be the best the citizens of that region can hope for compared to how Semyonov's buddies would have ruled.

Yes, exactly. The fanatics get sent off to die, and the corrupt robber-warlords get to run the show.

Potential longer-term effect: these robber-warlords are s incompetent that their actual fighting forces deteriorate hard, and they get so hated that Japan can eventually march in just directly annex the whole region. While being cheered on by the populace!

allaccordingtoplan.jpg

Which has the even more distant effect that the Japanese army has the superior arguments for getting priority in.... everything. The navy gets more side-lined, Japan goes of a continental strategy instead of an oceanic one, and a geo-political clash with the USA may even be wholly averted.

One other interesting development to consider in the east might be the flight of some Reds to China, which would make for a neat mirror to the surprisingly substantial White Russian exile community at Harbin (as well as White Russian troops fighting for Chinese warlords like Jin Shuren & Zhang Zongchang) IOTL. The Soviets sent help to Sun Yat-sen historically and were originally close to the KMT (Chiang Kai-shek even trained in Moscow in 1923 and his eldest son married a Soviet woman), maybe Mikhail Borodin et al. could flee through anarchic and sparsely-populated Turkestan to join the KMT in this timeline instead. Of course Sun was never a commie himself, but maybe a greater Red diaspora in China could prop the left-wing of the KMT (Wang Jingwei, Sun's widow Soong Qingling, etc.) up enough to gain an advantage over the right-wing represented by Chiang and others, which would have big butterfly effects on not just China's future internal dynamics but potentially the broader geopolitical situation with Anastasia's Russia & Japan.

Regardless of whether, and if so how many, commies may end up in China-- extensive commitments to the North might well alter Japan's strategy in regards to China. They may opt to consolidate their interests in the North, forcing China to recognise Japanese rule over all Manchuria and all Mongolia (not to mention everything more Northerly still), but declining to invade China proper.

In OTL, the Japanese intervention in Siberia during the Russian civil war was something of a failure because the Soviets won. But here, it would be the launching pad for a much earlier consolidation of ATL Manchukuo, and more significant direct influence over Mongolia and the Russian Far East-- with perspectives for direct annexation later. That starting position would make a "Northern pivot" in the Japanese geo-political approach quite realistic.

(And then ten-to-twenty years later, they're somehow simultaneously at war with reactionary monarchist Russia and left-nationalist republican China. )

 

[ATP]

Well,soviets actually never won,USA made japaneese troops widraw using economy.
And gave soviets their part of Siberia,including Wladivostok.
Another proof,that USA supported soviets from the start.