Russia

The Russian Federation is a semi-presidential republic extending over much of northern Eurasia (Europe and Asia together). It comprises 83 federal subjects, and is the largest country in the world in terms of geographical borders.

After a period of rule under various smaller kingdoms, the 18th Century saw the rise of the unified Russian Empire as the center of a substantial land-empire under the absolute rule of the tsar. However, after its disastrous defeat in World War I, Russia fell into revolution in 1917, and then a civil war that raged into the 1920s that saw the fall of the monarchy and the rise of a communist state. In short order Russia became the leading constituent of the Soviet Union, which emerged from World War II as one of two global superpowers, and was locked in a Cold War with the United States and its allies.

The Soviet Union fell in 1991. Russia became the center of a (more or less) democratic federation, and re-emerged as a major economic power on the world stage throughout the beginning of the 21st Century.

Russia in Atlantis
In the mid 18th century, Russia was on the losing side of the global conflict which included the French and Spanish War.

In the mid 19th century, the Russian government perpetrated massacres of the Jews. Russian propaganda demonized the Jews by accusing them of practicing ritual murder. British detective Athelstan Helms looked into this matter and found all such assertions to be completely baseless.

Russia in Crosstime Traffic
In the home timeline, Russia was more or less functional, but was rather out of step with the rest of the world. In 2097, it released a tailored virus into Chechnya, but didn't properly immunize enough people in the bordering areas to keep it from spreading. It also wasn't above arresting people for political crimes, but that wasn't something it did much.

Crosstime Traffic was aware of an alternate in which the Spanish Armada conquered England in 1588 and Spain created an empire that bordered Russia. Footage taken in this alternate was shown to Jeremy Solters and his fellow students in US history class.

Russia in Curious Notions
Russia and its allies Britain and France were defeated by Germany in the brief war of 1914. Russia was the key factor, as it was slow to mobilise, allowing the Schlieffen Plan to work. France and Britain went to war with Germany in the late 1930s, but were again defeated, which cleared the way for Germany to take full control of Europe. Russia, which had been in a perpetual state of civil war since 1914, did not participate in that war.

In the late 21st Century, Siberia, now fully under German control, was used by the Feldgendarmerie for one of their harsh "penal colonies."

Russia in The Disunited States of America
The Russian Empire was one of the world's great powers. Nonetheless, it was still sufficiently "backward" enough to still use land lines at the end of the 21st century. In 2096, Russia still owned Alaska.

Russia in Gunpowder Empire
Agents of Crosstime Traffic who secretly explored the Agrippan Rome alternate found that the western parts of what corresponded to Russia were here part of Lietuva, with the Slavic population considerably Lithunaised in language, culture and religion. Further east, most of the vast territory corresponding to the rest of Russia was a poor land belonging to no empire. Neither Lietuva nor Persia or China - all of which bordered on this region - considered it worth the trouble of conquering and garrisoning.

Russia in A Different Flesh
The Russo-Prussian War produced horrifying images of emaciated concentration camp survivors which became iconic the world over.

Russia in The Guns of the South
Russia was the only major power in North America that had stayed neutral during the Second American Revolution and the ensuing conflicts. However, after the US Army defeated the British in Canada, and captured Vancouver and Winnipeg, the Russian government became alarmed. Realising that they would never be able to defend their Alaska territory if it was invaded, they chose instead to sell it to the US.

One of the supplies provided to the Confederate Army by the Rivington Men bore the Russian writing CCCP. This translated as "the SSSR," which was incomprehensible to all Confederates.

Russia in Joe Steele
People from the Russian Empire, before it became the Soviet Union, had a considerable effect on American politics during the 20th century, as many of America's most powerful men were either children of immigrants from the defunct Empire, or immigrants themselves. These included Joe Steele, Vince Scriabin, Stas Mikoian, and Andy Wyszynski

Russia in "The More it Changes"
By the 1770s, the Sabbateans had a toe-hold in Russia.

Russia in "Occupation Duty"
Novgorod was a vast land in northern Eurasia. Among their exports were well made assault rifles popular with terrorists around the world. Moabites used these Novgorodian rifles in their ongoing insurrection against their Philistinian occupiers.

Literary comment
The reference to "Novgorodian rifles" and their description is an allusion to the AK-47.

Russia in Southern Victory
During the War of Secession, Russia was the only major European power to favour the United States. After the war, the United States attempted to buy Alaska from Russia, but the price of $7 million was too high for the U.S.'s depressed economy.

In later times, Russia became a member of the Quadruple Entente, which made it an ally of the Confederate States, and an enemy of the US - this, however, was a side-effect of Russian policies mainly dictated by power relations in Europe. Tsar Nicholas II entered the Great War by pledging to protect Serbia when that country refused Austria-Hungary's ultimata relating to the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

However, Russia proved poorly prepared for such a war militarily. Although the country did not lack for manpower, it did lack for adequate supplies. Consequently, when Russia clashed with Germany, Russian troops suffered horrendous casualties. The lack of support for the war in Russia combined with German gains lead to a revolution and the country's withdrawal from the War in 1917. Germany carved the Kingdoms of Poland and Ukraine out of former Russian territory. Russia's withdrawal presaged the eventual collapse of the Entente war effort.

For nearly a decade, Russia was embroiled in a bitter civil war between socialists and Tsarists. Eventually, the Tsarists won in 1926, defeating the last socialist holdouts at Tsaritsyn, killing the general known as "The Man of Steel" and his second-in-command, "The Hammer". Tsar Nicholas II died in the early 1930s and was succeeded by his brother Mikhail II. Mikhail's revanchism was a good match for his Entente allies, as Britain slid towards absolutism, France itself restored its monarchy under King Charles XI, and in the Confederate States Jake Featherston was elected president.

Mikhail rejoined the Entente upon consolidating his own power, which included renewed persecution of the Jews. When German Kaiser Wilhelm II died in 1941, Russia joined the Entente in pressing Germany for the return of their lost territory. When the new Kaiser, Wilhelm III, refused, Russia followed its allies into the Second Great War.

Despite some initial gains in Poland and Ukraine, where the populations were split in support of Germany and Russia, the Germans defeated Russia in the Ukraine. Russian factories and railroads in Petrograd, Minsk, and Smolensk were heavily damaged by German bombers. The remaining Reds from the Russian Civil war adopted the Mormon people bombing tactic against the Tsar's government by 1943.

Early in 1944, Germany warned Russia to withdraw from the war with a vague but hyperbolic threat of destruction. When Russia did not withdraw, Germany destroyed Petrograd, the national capital, with the first superbomb used in war. The Tsar's government survived, and retreated to Moscow.

While initially defiant, Russia's ability to prosecute the war was badly hampered by the loss of Petrograd. It sued for peace shortly after Petrograd was destroyed. Almost immediately, Russia's one time ally Japan began making territorial demands in Siberia.

Throughout the war, the Russians refrained from opening a war front on the border of Alaska with US-occupied Canada. Such an offensive, if launched in conjunction with the initial Confederate offensive deep into US territory in 1941, would have created a difficult situation for the Americans. However, potential territorial gains in the frozen north of Canada in no way tempted the Russians into diverting forces from their main enemy, Germany. By the same token, in later parts of the war the US did not feel that a potential conquest of Alaska would justify diverting forces from their front with the Confederacy. In effect, Russia and the US tacitly agreed to treat the Second Great War as two separate wars - an Eurasian one and a North American one - and not to link them up.

It was only after the end of the Second Great War when Russia undertook its own superbomb project that the US started to seriously regard Russia as a potential threat. Germany was, naturally, far more frightened by this course of events, but the US also felt uncomfortable with the prospect of the Russians gaining such weapons. One reason the U.S. decided to liquidate Confederate superbomb expert Henderson V. FitzBelmont was the apprehension that the Russians would get their hands on him and his bomb-making knowledge.

Russia in Supervolcano
Some six years after the eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, Russia, suffering from harsh winters and a complete failure of agriculture, invaded both Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which were somewhat better off. The Russians used the fact that both countries had historically been under Russian rule as a thin casus belli. Both countries reached out to NATO, but the response was limited at best. The U.S. Secretary of State expressed disapproval of the invasion. Russia effectively told the USA that the invasion was none of its business.

The invasion did not go as hoped. In addition to the cost on the ground, Kazakh special forces were able to infiltrate Russia and blow-up two nuclear power plants. While the explosions did not cause a meltdown on the level of Chernobyl, they did raise the background radiation. Russia was very vague about its agricultural production numbers, and began buying grain on the world market, paying for it with oil. Within time, the war became bogged down.

The war and the terrible weather also benefited Chechen rebels, who stepped up their guerrilla war.

Russia in The Two Georges
The Russian Empire, along with the British Empire and the Franco-Spanish Holy Alliance, were the three major powers in the mid-1990s. The Russian Empire bordered on the German States and the Austrian Empire to the east and spread across Eastern Europe and Asia north of the Ottoman Empire, India and China to the Pacific Ocean (excluding the Empire of Japan) and included Alaska on the North American continent, bordering the North American Union. During the 19th Century, the British Empire offered to buy Alaska from Russia but the Tsar refused. In the 1990s, Russia sought to dominate the Germanies.

Russia's feared secret police were called the Okhrana.

Russia in "Uncle Alf"
Russia made brief territorial gains against Germany in the brief war which took place in 1914, but once Germany had defeated France, Russia was quickly beaten. In 1916, Kaiser Wilhelm II helped his cousin and former enemy Tsar Nicholas II put down a communist revolution.

In 1929, Feldwebel Adolf Hitler of the German Feldgendarmerie told his niece Geli Raubal that the Tsar "was and is a woolly headed fool of a Russian" for not hanging more revolutionaries in the prior rebellion of 1905.

Russia in "Vilcabamba"
Some time after the Krolp arrived and subjugated Earth, Russia joined China and the United States in a massively organized, but futile, uprising.