Raznoglasiye-1

(Also referred to as “Red Army Blues”, “The Second October Revolution” and “Hammer & Sickle Pickle”)

Current Year: November of 1941

The erratic and questionable actions of Joseph Stalin before and during the Soviet Union’s involvement in WWII reap disastrous consequences, coming to a climax in October of 1941. Stalin’s mismanagement of the Red Army, resulting in excessive casualties for Soviet forces in a chain of losses like the Minsk Tragedy, culminates one month prior in the First Battle of Kiev. The city was lost to the invading Wehrmacht, becoming the single costliest loss for the Allies in terms of troop and civilian causalities in the entirety of WWII. Between Stalin’s blatant strategic incompetence, his public disregard for the value of the lives of his soldiers and civilians and his oppressive policies that have been sowing public resentment for more than a decade, an outright rebellion occurs in the Soviet Union in both the military and civilian populations at one of the most critical junctures of the Second World War.

Military rebellion and infighting between rebels and Soviet loyalists breaks out in nearly every deployment of the Red Army between Bryansk and Moscow. This not only breaks what ability the Soviet military had to impede the advancing Nazi forces, but threatens Stalin’s rule with a possible incoming coup d’état. Open revolt in the civilian population throws the war-industry into chaos and starts a chain of economic collapse. The city of Chernigov is left undefended in the face of the advancing Wehrmacht and the citizens for the most part peacefully surrender. Field Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt, the leader of the tank division arriving to take the city, uses this as an opportunity for propaganda by granting complete and total asylum to any Soviet civilians that surrender, even commanding that German military rations and supplies be shared with the largely starving populace. When news of this apparently merciful treatment by the enemy reaches places like Moscow, the impetus for loyalty to the Union in the face of a greater enemy is shattered, and the rebellion becomes even more galvanized.

After a series of rapidly escalating riots in Moscow that the NKVD fails to put down, the Kremlin is stormed by a mob of Russian citizens and military generals on October 27th, 1941. Stalin and a group of his most loyal supporters narrowly escape just prior and proceed to go into hiding. The Soviet Union undergoes a complete collapse a full 50 years earlier than it did in our own Timeline. Red Army platoons and tank divisions, whether in rebellion or not, are trapped in distant territories with a rapidly advancing German army falling upon them, knowing that reinforcements and resupplies will not be coming. The ultimate fate of the former Soviet Union remains to be seen, as a rapid effort to reorganize the nation and its war-effort is underway by the victorious Anti-Stalinist revolutionary movement, racing against the approach of Nazi Germany that threatens to conquer the single largest nation in the world at its most vulnerable moment.