Valkyrie Protocol Snippet #4

Theemile wrote:
I was thinking the same thing - either that or this is a Universe where the crappy ABC TV miniseries from the 80s "Amerika", where the US President sold the country to Russia actually came true.

...Even if Soviet Union won the Cold War & (somehow) took over America, it would not implement Cyrillic writing or impose Russian language. It just wasn't how Soviet Union operated, both in Soviet Republics and satellite nations.

Dilandu wrote:

Theemile wrote:
I was thinking the same thing - either that or this is a Universe where the crappy ABC TV miniseries from the 80s "Amerika", where the US President sold the country to Russia actually came true.

...Even if Soviet Union won the Cold War & (somehow) took over America, it would not implement Cyrillic writing or impose Russian language. It just wasn't how Soviet Union operated, both in Soviet Republics and satellite nations.

Of course it wasn't, at least in our timeline.

We didn't do a fully developed backstory for this universe, for several reasons — including the fact that we were never going to be wandering around in it — but my assumption was always that the United States never entered the First World War, that the war went on rather longer than in our universe, that the German collapse was much less of a "soft landing," and that the socialist elements within Germany (further radicalized by the horrendous cost in life and treasure) kicked off their own "Bolshevik Revolution" in about 1920 or so. The Allies (sans the United States) were far too exhausted to do much about it, and the radicals' revolution in Germany fared much better than the failed Spartakusbund, while Soviet Russia recovered/retained virtually all of the Russian territories lost following the war. No Whites supported by outside arms, no foreign troops on Russian soil, no Poland, no Czechoslovakia, etc.

After that, things could have gone a lot of ways, which is part of the "we didn't develop the backstory fully" bit above. Assuming that the World Depression hit earlier with Great Britain and France as hammered as they were, the various socialist ideologies would probably have made a lot more ground in Europe even than they did. Without the Western/capitalist efforts to strangle Bolshevism in its cradle, Russia might have ended up a lot more Leninist or at least Trotskyist than Stalinist, which, frankly, wouldn't have been a terrible thing. Of course, Europe also might have gone fascist (which is what -- largely --happened in our universe) even earlier than it did, although a socialist or even Marxist-Leninist Germany would most likely have been a bulwark against that rather than a driving force in favor of it. At any rate, at some point, a capitalistic Festung America found itself alone against a united socialist/communist Europe . . . and lost.

I have to agree with Dilandu that it's unlikely that the Cyrillic alphabet would have been forced upon North America, but it's not outright impossible, and our divergence point in this universe is a good 20 years earlier than in Benjamin 2's universe. That means that the Soviet version of Russia (dealing, as it would be, with primarily internal threats, rather than external ones) in this universe would probably have significantly different DNA and might have made significantly different choices going forward. At any rate, as a plot device, it clearly got all of you thinking (whether in favor or against the notion) in the direction we wanted: which is that the West didn't win this Cold War.

Dilandu wrote:

Theemile wrote:
I was thinking the same thing - either that or this is a Universe where the crappy ABC TV miniseries from the 80s "Amerika", where the US President sold the country to Russia actually came true.

...Even if Soviet Union won the Cold War & (somehow) took over America, it would not implement Cyrillic writing or impose Russian language. It just wasn't how Soviet Union operated, both in Soviet Republics and satellite nations.

Hated that series. Although, as one of my fellow SF writers remarked to me after the KGB blew up Congress, "At least it had a happy ending."

Which just goes to show that everyone's unhappiness with everyone else's congressperson/senator is scarcely a new phenomenon.

Unfortunately.

I want to make a large answer, but unfortunately, too tired to do that (currently working 10/7, and would at least 1-2 week more). Just say that it's a really interesting scenario, RFC! Have some issues with it (heh, of course I have ), but they are minor.