History Literature / TheDeathOfRussia

* EatTheDog: [[spoiler:In a village he comes across during his return to Russia, Alexander Lebed comes across a weeping old man, begging him to save Russia and end the madness, who was forced to eat his pet dog, with the write-up saying that said pet dog was his only true companion]].

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Not even in his worse nightmares could Pavel Grachev had known what siding against Yeltsin would've entailed for Russia...

* WarIsHell: Atrocities, famine, war crimes, child soldiers, Russia's got all that and more once the civil war kicks off, complete with unspeakable crimes that outdo even the worse Yugoslavia or Rwanda had to offer. In fact, it would not be hyperbole to say that the very worse of humanity is on display in Russia.

** Expressed during a "One Soldier’s War in Russia" segment, where a nameless old veteran of the Eastern Front is captured while trying to desert from the Red Army. The old man cries to Babchenko's commissar that after surviving World War II and years of praise he got from it, he simply can't bring himself to shoot at fellow Russians even if they are fascists.

* ArmiesAreEvil: Zigzagged. The NSF and later Communist and Fascist Russian armies in the Chechen and Second Russian Civil Wars committed many terrible atrocities and are led by either psychopathic or incompetent generals in the front or pushed forward by ruthless cold-blooded commissars in the back. However, many of the soldiers were also depicted as hapless conscripts who didn't want to fight and became victimised by both their commanders and fellow soldiers.
* AwesomeButImpractical: Ukraine's nuclear arsenal in 1994 (inherited from the Soviets) is a hell of a saving grace they won't be able to use immediately if it came down to it. The missiles they had were made in mind for America, meaning if they were turned east it'd be more likely to hit somewhere near Mongolia rather than Moscow, in addition to needing 12-18 months to take full operational control of the missiles, time they do not have in order to keep Russia from taking Crimea. They eventually do secure Western help in rewiring their nukes (a deal also reached with a democratic Belarus), but only after Crimea is taken.

* NostalgiaFilter: {{Deconstructed}} to the point where the CentralTheme of the timeline could very well be "Leave the past where it belongs".

** Anton Krasovsky, in our world a mere television presenter and journalist for Creator/RussiaToday who promoted genocide against Ukrainians as the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian war went on, is able to act out on his claims, becoming a commandant of Camp Dagda, a "Women and Children Holding Centre" who is called "Monster" by both prisoners and guards.

* {{Bookends}}: [[spoiler:Republicanism in Russia begins and ends on November 25th. It started with the Red October in November 1917 and ended in November 1997 with the coronation of Prince Nicholas Romanov exactly eighty years after the Bolsheviks first took power]].

** Slobodan Milošević's Serbia falls to protests from democratic dissidents and Russian refugees horrified by [[spoiler:4/10 and Milošević's open support of Petrograd]]. Democracy takes hold following a brief revolution although thanks to Milošević taking in Bosnia's entire Serb population, Kosovo and Montenegro remain a part of Serbia.

** UsefulNotes/MuammarGaddafi threw in his lot with Anpilov, later abolishing his WMD program following the beatdown Pakistan got and is now desperate to hold off demands for him to step down after dissidents smelled blood in the water. Over in neighboring Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, hoping a military victory against Libya would save his own dictatorship like [[UsefulNotes/TheFalklandsWar the Argentines before him]] in the face of the implosion of the tourism sector, by declaring war on Libya and overthrowing his regime with Western backing.[[spoiler: Gaddafi dies via firing squad, the victory only buys Mubarak a few more years and Libya's future is defined by a merry-go-round of coups driven by oil money]].

* BittersweetEnding: While the minorities of the Russian Caucasus are able to achieve their independence, [[spoiler:the Dagestani Islamists are on the run, and Kalmykia is finally freed from the shackles of Communist rule, many more ethnic separatists are not so lucky. The Altai Republic and Khakassia were put down before the civil war really began, Buryatia was partitioned between Siberia and the Far East with the natives kicked over the border to Mongolia, the Tuvans end up annexed by Mongolia, and the native Uralic and Komi peoples are nearly exterminated after the 4/10 exchange killed millions of their brethren and turned their homelands into an irradiated mess]].

** The end result of both the Petrograd and Stalingrad governments, representing the worse traits of Russia's traditionalist/monarchist and far-left pasts who are noted to have an obsession with bringing back the past? The civil war that starts between them lasts from 1993 to 1996 and ends [[spoiler:in a limited nuclear exchange which kills millions of their own countrymen and practically the very idea of a unified Russian state]]. Their attempts to bring back Russia's glory days and past greatness was AllForNothing in the worsr possible way.

** The failure of post-Soviet Russia and its democracy allows for the NSF, the standard bearers of Russia's [[EvilReactionary Imperial/White Army]] and [[DirtyCommunists communist]] past, to attain actual political power and try to restore Russia to its glory days. The NSF trying to reverse Russia's decline only leads to them throwing away any good relations with the West, instead choosing to exert itself against the Western democracies and the former [=SSR=]s, turning most of Europe barring Serbia against them and does nothing for the average Russian, with their country's economy in the toilet thanks to sanctions against the NSF government and a growing lack of food thanks to being cut off from most outside markets.
** Both the Petrograd and Stalingrad governments are noted to be "so obsessed with bringing back the past that they destroyed the present and future" during the course of 1993-1996 through a civil war that [[spoiler:ends in a limited nuclear exchange which kills millions of their own countrymen and practically the very idea of a unified Russian state]].
** Babchenko's commissar Vladimir is loyal to Russia as a superpower, whether it be communist or nationalist. However, he has clear disdain for Russia as it was under Yeltsin and Gaidar, because they made Russia a mere "supporting character", valuing trying to relive the past rather than deal with the new reality and leave for Kaliningrad.
** The remnant Russian Federation [[spoiler:restoring the Romanovs to power as ceremonial monarchs]] is a desperate attempt to celebrate Russia's past and giving them ''something or anything'' to rally around after [[spoiler:the 4/10 nuclear exchange destroyed most of Russia's cultural centers and monuments]]. At least for the rest of the 1990s, [[spoiler:the returned monarchy is one of the only few cultural icons they have left and remaining Russians in the Federation have little reason to hope for the future after everything that's happened]].

* CentralTheme: "Leave the past where it belongs":
** The failure of post-Soviet Russia and its democracy allows for the NSF, the standard bearers of Russia's [[EvilReactionary Imperial/White Army]] and [[DirtyCommunists communist]] past, to attain actual political power and try to restore Russia to its glory days. Both the Petrograd and Stalingrad governments were "so obsessed with bringing back the past that they destroyed the present and future" during the course of 1993-1996 through a civil war that [[spoiler:ends in a limited nuclear exchange which kills millions of their own countrymen and practically the very idea of a Russian state]].
** Babchenko's commissar Vladimir is loyal to Russia as a superpower, whether it be communist or nationalist. However, he has clear disdain for Russia as it was under Yeltsin and Gaidar, because they made Russia a mere "supporting character", valuing trying to relive the past rather than deal with the new reality and leave for Kaliningrad.

* ChangeMyMindKid: In one of the more heroic moments of the Second Russian Civil War, the Russian Pacific Fleet turned back to save Vladivostok and the Far Eastern Republic from the invading North Koreans after the sailors mutinied and threw their corrupt and uncaring admiral overboard, turning the tide using their ships' firepower with Western intelligence feeding them targets.

** Dugin, Barkashov, Nevzorov, Shafarevich and Dobrovolsky, surviving members of the Petrograd Nashist regime and [[spoiler:co-instigator of the April 10 nuclear exchange and nuclear-genocidal 'Plan Zass']], ended up [[spoiler:having their plane shot down by a NATO jet as they fled the nuclear destruction of European Russia and their remains so thoroughly incinerated in the flaming wreckage that only a hand identified as belonging to Nevzorov was ever found, just like the tens of millions to had consigned to nuclear fire]].

** After German Ugryumov [[spoiler:abandons Vladivostok to their fate because they couldn't pay him a good bribe, his sailors turn on him and toss him overboard out of disgust]].

** The failure of post-Soviet Russia and its democracy allows for the NSF, the standard bearers of Russia's [[EvilReactionary Imperial/White Army]] and [[DirtyCommunists communist]] past, to attain actual political power and try to restore Russia to its glory days. Both the Petrograd and Stalingrad governments were "so obsessed with bringing back the past that they destroyed the present and future" during the course of 1993-1996 through a civil war that [[spoiler:kills millions of their own countrymen and the idea of a Russian state]].

* DeathByIrony: Ramzan Kadyrov [[spoiler:was killed twenty miles behind the front lines by a Tomahawk missile while filming a propaganda video pretending he was shooting American soldiers]].

* ZeroPercentApprovalRating: Admiral Ugryumov, [[spoiler:even before his death in a mutiny, is hated universally across Russia for abandoning the city of Vladivostok to a North Korean invasion with even the Stalinist regime he was nominally loyal to condemning him for "failing to negotiate Vladivostok's surrender" while the Petrograd Government decried him as a symbol of how the Communists "sold out Russia" and Lebed seeing his action as the "most cowardly in Russian history"]]. Suffice to say, no one missed him when [[spoiler:his sailors mutinied and threw him overboard before turning the fleet back to save Vladivostok from the North Koreans]].

* ApocalypseHow: By late 1994, Russia is at a Class 0. Famine runs rampant across the nation, the NSF has turned on each other and are tearing European Russia apart in a violent ground war, ethnic conflicts have spiraled out of control, and the loss of the Trans-Siberian railroad to Uralic partisans sees anarchy spread in Siberia and the Far East thanks to a lack of supplies coming in. The world economy has taken a hit as well thanks to the sudden loss of Siberian resources.

* SpaceFillingEmpire: [[spoiler:Alexander Lebed seeks to "conquer the most territory of any man that had ever lived" during his Siberian campaign as part of his goals]].

* ZeroPercentApprovalRating: Admiral Ugryumov, [[spoiler:even before his death in a mutiny, is hated universally across Russia for abandoning the city of Vladivostok to a North Korean invasion with even the Stalinist regime he was nominally loyal to condemning him for "failing to negotiate Vladivostok's surrender" while the Petrograd Government decried him as a symbol of how the Communists "sold out Russia" and Lebed seeing his action as the "most cowardly in Russian history"]].

* DisasterDominoes: Al-Qaeda [[spoiler:nuking Tehran]] ends up unleashing this onto most of the world's remaining dictatorships.

** Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, undergoing a calamitous drought and an imploding economy in 1996 and scapegoating White farmers, is overthrown by South Africa. Although Nelson Mandela [[SadisticChoice was given the choice of either overthrowing his old friend himself or having Executive Outcomes, mercenaries connected to the old apartheid regimes, do it and give him bad PR]].
** [[spoiler:Iran itself falls into a civil war between the Islamist government and Iranian dissidents lead by army mutineers, the conflict not ending until January 1999 in a defeat for the Islamists]].
** Hafez al-Assad dying of a heart attack on the same day [[spoiler:Tehran blew up]] lead to his son Bassar ascending to power, only to eventually cave to democratic reforms. The Muslim Brotherhood win Syria's first elections, only to get in a conflict with Lebanese Christians and secularists in occupied Lebanon due to fears of imposed Sharia law, the conflict paving the way for a military coup in 1999 and being unable to impose Islamism in Syria would discredit the Brotherhood in other Middle Eastern countries]].
** A failed assassination of UsefulNotes/SaddamHussein in April 1997 lead to a Kurdish uprising in northern Iraq. After the USAF annihilates the Iraqi Army sent to "[[FinalSolution finishing what [they] started in 1988]]", a Shiite uprising occurs and turns the ensuing Iraqi civil war into a religious war after Saddam fanned the flame of sectarianism.[[spoiler: Iraq's civil war ends in a ceasefire in 2000 after about three years in a stalemate, with a Shiite south, a rump Saddam regime in the north, and Iraqi Kurdistan getting its independence only to be occupied by Turkey until they withdrew over a decade later]].
** Gaddafi's Libya, which threw in their lot with Anpilov and abolished his WMD program following Pakistan's beatdown and is now desperate to hold off demands for him to step down, is overthrown by Hosni Mubarak's Egypt, hoping a military victory would save his own dictatorship in the face of the implosion of the tourism sector.[[spoiler: Gaddafi dies via firing squad, the victory only buys Mubarak a few more years and Libya's future is defined by a merry-go-round of coups driven by oil money]].

* PointOfNoReturn: The Vendo Massacre committed by the Russians was the line in the sand for Russia's Muslim population, realizing now that the NSF would either keep them in line through force or put them all in mass graves.

* DownerEnding: The timeline lives up to its name as [[spoiler:38 million people are left dead by the end of the civil war, the nuclear exchange between the Nationalists and Communists that extended to the rest of the world saw Russia take the brunt of the damage, which was further aggravated by the Fascists within the Nationalist government having usurped power near the end to implement a genocidal plan against minorities that involved using nukes on civilian centers. Over 25 million Russians fled the country and many refused to return to either Siberia or the Far Eastern Kingdom. Russia as a culture lives on in some shape or form, but is gone forever as a nation, with many of its landmarks and artifacts burning in nuclear fire]].

* EmptyQuiver: [[spoiler: The [[ApocalypseCult Aum Shinrikyo]] were stopped from getting their hands on a Russian nuke, but not UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden and Al-Qaeda, making off with at least four of them by paying a Red Army colonel with heroin. One went off in Stalingrad, kick starting 4/10, and two others go off in Almaty, Kazakhstan and Tehran in 1997; the fourth, meant for Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, is a dud and fails to detonate]].
* EndOfAnAge: [[spoiler:After the civil war, Russia goes from a continent spanning nation at the forefront of history and culture for centuries, to a bombed out wreck that will never reach its old heights again. Russia's story as a united and influential power is over, though her people and culture live on.]]