Talk: Soviet Union

I think we should create a category to address citizens of the Soviet Union, rather similar to the Category:People Born in Austria-Hungary. They are quite common in the works of HT. So let's start brainstorming on category names. TR 17:51, November 25, 2009 (UTC)

Do you want Soviet citizens or people born in the Soviet Union? If the one, let's just call it "Soviet Citizens." If the other, well, if we're modeling it on "People Born in Austria-Hungary". . . . Turtle Fan 19:25, November 25, 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking Soviet Citizens, actually. That get us Uncle Joe and the boys too. TR 19:52, November 25, 2009 (UTC)

And here I've jumped the gun on you.

Well, how about "Soviet Citizens" for those who either lived their whole lives (or as much of their lives as we saw in their stories) there, or who were born elsewhere but died as Soviet citizens; and "People Born in the Soviet Union" for those born there but who gave up their citizenship? That's what the "People Born in Defunct Countries" idea originally entailed anyway, wasn't it? Turtle Fan 20:05, November 25, 2009 (UTC)

That's fine. Or maybe "People who died as Soviet Citizens" for parallelism's sake? TR 20:06, November 25, 2009 (UTC)

But what about those who were still alive and still Soviet as of their last appearance in Turtledove's canon?

Also, parallelism would be "People who died in the Soviet Union," not "People who died as Soviet citizens." That would include Ussmak and all the Nazis and Lizards who were KIA and all sorts of others who never wanted anything to do with the USSR except get through it as quickly as possible. Turtle Fan 20:13, November 25, 2009 (UTC)

On another note, is a Soviet supercategory going up any time soon? Turtle Fan 20:13, November 25, 2009 (UTC)

Sure. Trying to decide if we need "Soviet Cities" as a category or not. TR 20:21, November 25, 2009 (UTC)

Well, a lot of cities that are the setting of HT stories provide that setting under the hammer and sickle. Turtle Fan 20:22, November 25, 2009 (UTC)

We may consider a similar approach with Britain, actually. Right now, we've categorized by their constituant countries, but "Citizens of the UK" or some equivilent categories may save a few headaches. TR 21:09, November 25, 2009 (UTC)

Well the UK is an empire. (Come to think of it, so is the USSR.) So we may expose ourselves to headaches since there are several classes of legal status which "citizen" glosses over. Was Michael Collins, for instance, a citizen of the UK? You could easily argue both sides of that case. Turtle Fan 21:11, November 25, 2009 (UTC)

I think the answer to your question is that Michael Collins was a British Citizen until he wasn't anymore. That's a purely legal reading, of course. Ireland was part of the UK, he was a citizen of Ireland, and thus one of the UK. When Ireland escaped the UK, so did Collins. But yes, if we do go down this particular route, let us be as specific as we possibly can. TR 21:21, November 25, 2009 (UTC)

Ah, but citizenship is defined certain rights and responsibilities of the individual in relation to the government, and they're often expressed quite inconsistently in imperial situations. So specificity becomes problematic--We need to argue over who was a citizen, who was a subject, and who was anything else we can think of.

In the case of the British, we can sidestep the controversy by describing everyone as a subject of the crown. That would apply across the board. Now the King of the UK and the King of Canada are the same person, but he wears two different crowns, so we'll be spared the difficulty of having to decide whether we're firced to throw Canadians into the mix, unless they're pre-Dominion Day Canadians, and I believe we have but one of those, Laura Secord. American colonial leaders--not sure what we'd do there.

But let's give the countries supercategories first, shall we? Turtle Fan 21:49, November 25, 2009 (UTC)

Breakup of USSR

It's interesting that several futuristic novels written as late as 1990 visualize the USSR as existing strong for decades or centuries to come, e.g. HT's own "The Emperor's Return". I guess the breakup of the USSR, when it came in late 1991, must have happened literally overnight.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 21:32, September 24, 2016 (UTC)

I've seen it described as a textbook example of devotion to the status quo blinding forecasters. The signs were there in retrospect, but everyone misread them because their implications were so unlike the narrative observers were used to that they were subconsciously discounted. Turtle Fan (talk) 01:35, September 25, 2016 (UTC)

Indeed. At the time it was a series of crazy shit happening in 1990 to 1991 (the coup, the Baltics saying we're outta here, announced reforms in the system that didn't seem to be working the way Gorbachev wanted them to) and then one day, no USSR.

On another note, Jonathan is much younger than I thought he was. TR (talk) 15:21, September 25, 2016 (UTC)

I just remember that the globe used to have a big country labeled USSR, and I'd see news pictures of Reagan and Gorbachev talking friendly to each other, and adults would tell me that the USSR was scary but becoming less so because of this funny-looking Gorbachev, but it all went over my head. Then someone made new globes, and I was surprised because it looked so different, with lots of new countries where the USSR used to be, and this was all confusing to me.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 05:11, September 26, 2016 (UTC)

Soviet Union in In This Season

Does the Soviet Union play any role in In This Season? All I know is that the story takes place at the beginning of World War II when both it and Nazi Germany are dividing Poland all to themselves. Is the country mentioned at all in the story? --JCC the Alternate Historian (talk) 18:20, October 30, 2019 (UTC)

Just the quick reference to their role in the partition. TR (talk) 19:25, October 30, 2019 (UTC)

A yes or a no when it possibly come to adding a In This Season section TR? BTW, Happy Halloween! :) --JCC the Alternate Historian (talk) 16:00, October 31, 2019 (UTC)

No section needed. It's just a reference to OTL. TR (talk) 17:53, October 31, 2019 (UTC)

Alright TR. It was just worth asking. --JCC the Alternate Historian (talk) 21:50, November 2, 2019 (UTC)

Breaking out articles

MBS suggested breaking out the THW and JS sections into articles as we've done with some United States of America pages.

While his decision to bring this up on the talk pages of redirects is irritating, the actual issue is worth discussing. The THW and JS USSR sections are both long and represent sufficiently different versions of the USSR (Worldwar section is different, but not yet long enough, IMHO).

Thoughts? TR (talk) 04:33, February 12, 2020 (UTC)

I'm pretty indifferent to the question, beyond my irritation that he put repetitive comments in multiple places. Turtle Fan (talk) 15:18, February 12, 2020 (UTC)

I don't have strong feelings on breaking out the two USSR sub-sections into separate articles. ML4E (talk) 19:11, February 13, 2020 (UTC)

This may be worthy to bring up again, now that the Germany page is in certain talks.Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 03:15, 19 February 2023 (UTC)