History Literature / TheDeathOfRussia

* DifferentWorldDifferentMovies: While no doubt the horrific collapse of Russia would deeply impact 1990s pop culture, what ''is'' known is:

* ScrapbookStory: The timeline is told mainly through passages from historical texts and Babchenko's memoirs, with the occasional interview (namely Creator/KentaroMiura, Creator/EiichiroOda and Creator/HideakiAnno discussing how the Second Russian Civil War affected their respective works) spliced in.

** [[spoiler: The efforts of the freedom fighters of the Free Nations Alliance[[note]]An alliance of the ethnic republics of Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Chuvashia, Udmurtia, and Mari El.[[/note]] in addition to the native people of the Komi Republic are not rendered all for naught, by the 4/10 nuclear exchange, but the ethnic groups are ''nearly extirminated'' thanks to the Zass Plan, the Nationalist contingency of using nuclear weapons to extirminate non-Russians within Russia. Their homelands are considered irradiated zones and many are forced to settle in nations such as Finland]].

** By the end of the civil war only eight nations are left standing: [[spoiler:the rump Russian Federation in Kaliningrad, Ichkeria, Dagestan, Ossetia, Circassia, Siberia and the Far Eastern Kingdom. Tuva ended up annexed into Mongolia thanks to Shoigu's monumentally bad military leadership, Buryatia ended up split between Siberia and the Far East, and Yakutia was (largely) peacefully reincorporated into Siberia. Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Chuvashia, Udmurtia, Mari El and the Komi Republic all meet their tragic ends following the 4/10 nuclear exchange while European Russia is a UN Mandate nominally under Kaliningrad's rule]].

* WorldWarIII: [[spoiler:After Al-Qaeda sets off a stolen Russian nuke during the Battle of Stalingrad, the Communists and the Fascists let the nukes fly across nearly all of Russia, with the West getting involved not long after due to the Fascists openly using nuclear weapons to extirtiminate minorities. A handful of Russian nukes are able to strike targets in Europe, North America and the Middle East but the vast majority of the damage has been done to Russia]].

* 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]].

* NonIndicativeName: The "Honorary Russian Battalions" are units where people of non-Russian backgrounds are used as cannon fodder.

** Kaliningrad is stated to have been renamed [[Creator/AlexanderPushkin Pushkin]]grad some years later in the update discussing how Gaidar fled to the city after the NSF takes over the rest of the country.

* VestigialEmpire: Even before the civil war is said and done, Gaidar's rump government is a shadow of the Russian Federation that emerged from the ashes of the USSR. Gaidar and his government only controls the Kaliningrad Oblast (with said control being maintained at the barrel of a gun), has no support in mainland Russia thanks to Yeltsin's popularity being in the toilet after the 1993 coup, and the Baltic Fleet only aligned with him because he met their price tag. The Kaliningrad Government, similarly to UsefulNotes/ChiangKaiShek's government in Taiwan before them, only have their United Nations seat only due to inertia and the author quips that Gaidar will "fight for it till his last breath".

** By the end of the civil war only eight nations are left standing: [[spoiler:the rump Russian Federation in Kaliningrad, Ichkeria, Dagestan, Ossetia, Circassia, Siberia and the Far Eastern Kingdom. Tuva ended up annexed into Mongolia thanks to Shoigu's monumentally bad military leadership, Buryatia ended up split between Siberia and the Far East, and Yakutia was (largely) peacefully reincorporated into Siberia. Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Chuvashia, Udmurtia, Mari El and the Komi Republic all meet their tragic ends following the 4/10 nuclear exchange]].

* BigDamnHeroes: The Russian Pacific Fleet [[spoiler:return to Vladivostok to save the city from the North Koreans after a mutiny at the high seas has Ugryumov tossed overboard]].

** Nevzorov, [[spoiler:towards the end of the civil war, ends up "losing his place as Petrograd's decision maker" as more radical elements of the government around Dugin, Barkashov, and Dugin push through Plan Zass against his will]].

* BalkanizeMe: With a name like "''The Death of Russia''", this was pretty much a ForegoneConclusion, so much so that the story is more about ''how severely'' Russia breaks apart instead of who puts it all back together by the end. Various ethnic minorities break off thanks to the hardline rule of the NSF and hints within the text already imply that the dissolution remains well into the 2020s. [[spoiler: By late 1994, Primorsky Krai, Tuva, Yakutia, Komi, Chechnya, a revitalized Circassia, the rest of the former Russian Caucasus, and a Gaidar-ruled Kaliningrad have all broken away while Alexander Lebed sets up a "Provisional Siberian Government" at the start of 1995]].

* ShootTheShaggyDog: The timeline is essentially a worse case scenario for Gorbachev and Yeltsin's efforts to introduce reform and democracy being all for naught.

* WhyWeAreBummedCommunismFell: An event Arkady Babchenko recalls in his memoirs involves the commissar telling how tragic Russia's fall has been for him, a lifelong KGB man that once worked in Dresden and saw nothing but the best of the USSR thanks to him owning a dacha on the Black Sea and the Americans, British and French having to combine their strength to equal them. He says this to sorry band of scared conscripts he's assigned to, while they're taking cover from Fascist artillery in a basement somewhere in Moscow. Needless to say, Babchenko sees it differently.

Unsurprising for an alliance between the far-left and the far-right only united in reversing Russia's decline they blame on both UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev and Yeltsin, the National Salvation Front eventually comes to an explosive end, and unleashes the unraveling of Russia onto a horrified world, including a [[spoiler:nuclear holocaust]].

Unsurprising for an alliance between the far-left and the far-right only united in reversing Russia's decline they blame on both UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev and Yeltsin, the National Salvation Front eventually comes to an explosive end, and unleashes the unraveling of Russia onto a horrified world.

* FinalSolution: As the war drags on, both the Communists and the Nationalists take the opportunity to purge ethnic and religious minorities (namely remaining Jews) from their shares of Russia, with the former utilizing a combination of camps and CannonFodder duties while the latter merely draft them into the Red Army.

* MinimalistCast: PlayedWith. The timeline is told in a ScrapbookStory format in the form of passages from historical texts with the occasional interview (namely Creator/KentaroMiura, Creator/EiichiroOda and Creator/HideakiAnno discussing how the Second Russian Civil War affected their respective works). In the "[[ShowWithinAShow One Soldier’s War in Russia]]" extracts, the only named characters of note are Arkady Babchenko (who documents his time as a Red Army conscript and Fascist [=POW=] in a memoir) and his sociopath commissar Vladimir (ironically, the only other survivor from Arkady's original unit).

* NeverFoundTheBody: [[spoiler:United Nations excavators are unable to find Lenin's body anywhere in the remains of Moscow after an official excavation project began in 1997. Turns out it wasn't destroyed during the battle, but Lenin's corpse likely is gone for good after 4/10]].

* WhyWeAreBummedCommunismFell: A section of the chapter "Screaming" is from the in-universe memoir of one Arkady Babchenko, who recalls the commissar assigned his sorry band of scared conscripts telling them how tragic Russia's fall has been for the unnamed commissar, a lifelong KGB man that once worked in Dresden and saw nothing but the best of the USSR thanks to him owning a dacha on the Black Sea and the Americans, British and French having to combine their strength to equal them. Babchenko however, sees it differently.

* LastStand: [[spoiler:Everyone had written off the Far Eastern Republic as a dead man walking in the face of the DPRK invasion, yet the city's defenders and Aksyuchits himself were willing to fight to the end for Vladivostok. It was thought to be hopeless until the Pacific Fleet came back home...]]

* AllForNothing: The reforms put into place by Gorbachev and thought to be solidified by Yeltsin died with the latter, as Russia goes through their own [[UsefulNotes/TheYugoslavWars Yugoslav Wars]] that shatters the nation. [[spoiler:Even worse is Gorbachev surviving his time in NSF (later Fascist) captivity and being bartered off to the West for food and medicine, living to see what failure had brought]].

** Russia invades Ukraine and takes Crimea from them on irredentist grounds, driving Ukraine into the arms of the Western world... in 1994 instead of 2014.

* EagleSquadron: Timothy McVeigh, along with Arkan and his "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serb_Volunteer_Guard Tigers]]", are among the most infamous foreign fighters in Russia, all of whom alligned with the Nationalist government.

* MinimalistCast: PlayedWith. The timeline is told in a ScrapbookStory format in the form of passages from historical texts with the occasional interview (namely Creator/KentaroMiura, Creator/EiichiroOda and Creator/HideakiAnno discussing how the Second Russian Civil War affected their respective works). In the "[[ShowWithinAShow One Soldier’s War in Russia]]" extracts, the only consistant characters of note are Arkady Babchenko (who documents his time as a Red Army conscript and Fascist [=POW=] in a memoir) and his sociopathic commissar Vladimir (ironically, the only other survivor from Arkady's original unit).

** 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".

** The atrocities of the Second Russian Civil War openly influence some of the most horrid scenes in ''Manga/{{Berserk}}''.

* MinimalistCast: PlayedWith. The timeline is told in a ScrapbookStory in the form of passages from historical texts with the occasional interview (namely Creator/KentaroMiura, Creator/EiichiroOda and Creator/HideakiAnno discussing how the Second Russian Civil War affected their respective works). In the "[[ShowWithinAShow One Soldier’s War in Russia]]" extracts, the only consistant characters of note are Arkady Babchenko (who documents his time as a Red Army conscript and Fascist [=POW=] in a memoir) and his sociopathic commissar Vladimir (ironically, the only other survivor from Arkady's original unit).

* 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. To give an idea of how shocking the Second Russian Civil War was, the chapter "Screaming" outright states that the horror and brutality of the conflict served as Creator/KentaroMiura's inspiration for some of ''Manga/{{Berserk}}'s'' most violent and sickening scenes.

* WhamEpisode: The chapter "''It All Returns to Nothing''" details the events of April 10th, 1996. The date is forever connected to [[spoiler:a nuclear exchange between the Nationalists and Communists in addition to a limited exchange between the Nationalists and NATO. In a single day, over ''twenty-two million people'' are left dead by the end of the exchange, amplified thanks to the Zass Plan calling for the ''nuclear genocide'' of ethnic minorities in a plan openly inspired by ''Literature/TheTurnerDiaries'', with most of the damage being done to Russia moreso than any Western power]].

* MinimalistCast: PlayedWith. The timeline is told in a ScrapbookStory in the form of passages from historical texts with the occasional interview (namely Creator/JunjiIto, Creator/EiichiroOda and Creator/HideakiAnno discussing how the Second Russian Civil War affected their respective works). In the "[[ShowWithinAShow One Soldier’s War in Russia]]" extracts, the only consistant characters of note are Arkady Babchenko (who documents his time as a Red Army conscript and Fascist [=POW=] in a memoir) and his sociopathic commissar Vladimir (ironically, the only other survivor from Arkady's original unit).

* CentralTheme: "Leave the past where it belongs". The failiure 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]].

** [[spoiler:Someone who is all but stated to be [[UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin Ol' Vladdy himself]] is instead a KGB commissar assigned to some sorry Red Army conscripts before being captured by the Fascists, before blowing his brains out after the events of 4/10]].

* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:Babchenko's commissar Vladimir blows his own brains out following the nuclear exchange between Petrograd, Stalingrad, and the West due to refusing to want to live in a world without a Russia in it]].

** [[spoiler:Someone who is all but stated to be [[UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin Ol' Vladdy himself]] is instead a KGB commissar waxing on about the height of the USSR to the sorry Red Army conscripts he's in charge of overseeing]].

* WhamEpisode: The chapter "''It All Returns to Nothing''" details the events of April 10th, 1996. The contents of the chapter? It details [[spoiler:the events of April 10, 1996 a date forever connected to a nuclear exchange between the Nationalists and Communists in addition to a limited exchange between the Nationalists and NATO. In a single day, over ''twenty-two million people'' are left dead by the end of the exchange, with most of the damage being done to Russia moreso than any Western power]].

* 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".]]

** One chapter is aptly named "[[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion It All Returns to Nothing]]". The contents of the chapter? It details [[spoiler:the events of April 10, 1996 a date forever connected to a nuclear exchange that kills over ''twenty-two million people'']].

* PuppetKing: Alexander Rutskoy ends up as the NSF's puppet President [[spoiler:prior to how his death, along with that of Chairman Makashov and Administrative Chief Konstantinov, in a mysterious plane crash, leads to the Communist and Fascist factions of the NSF turning on each other]].

* ShoutOut: A map made by a contributor to show the situation in Russia by New Years Day 1995 quips that [[Manga/KomiCantCommunicate Komi "can't form alliances"]] while recapping the Komi Republic seceding and declaring neutrality in the civil war. The author later gets in on it when Komi allies with [[spoiler:Lebed's Siberia]], with President of Komi Yury Spiridonov telling their new allies that they were "Komi’s first friend" and that they hoped to make a hundred.

* WretchedHive: While Russia isn't that much safer, Tuva is noted to be among the worst places in the nation in 1994 at least east of the Urals with ethnic tensions between Russians and Tuvans being beyond saving, unemployment being the highest in the country, and the crime rate being so sky high that it would have the highest murder rate of any state in the world if it went independent (which Tuva eventually did).[[note]]To put this in perspective, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate_by_decade#1990s in our world in 1994]], both Colombia and South Africa nearly tied at 71.0 and a solid 70 respectively. Evidentially, neither {{The Cartel}}s or UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra went quietly.[[/note]]

* EqualOpportunityEvil: While ''evil'' might be too strong a word for [[ALighterShadeOfBlack Alexander Lebed]], he is legitimately proud in how Tatars and Chechens fought alongside him and has a Jewish second-in-command [[spoiler:who he trusts to oversee an important war front in Lebed's bid to restore sanity in Russia]], despite being an authoritarian militarist.

* HistoricalDowngrade: Arkady Babchenko's KGB commissar is [[spoiler:all but stated to be none other than Putin himself, far from any position of power in the renewed Russian Soviet Republic]].

* OnlySaneMan: In a government dominated by Fascists, out and proud Neo-Nazis, and Russian nationalist mystics, Igor Shafarevich is increasingly becoming one of the saner men among the Nationalists, openly snarking against the insane pseudo-historical beliefs of his colleagues.

** The [[spoiler:Far Eastern Kingdom's policies towards religious minorities are in many ways a continuation of Soviet-era policies with how their officials and soldiers inform indigenous communities that said policies would continue except for Orthodox Christians and villages who do not build or operate Orthodox Churches would not recieve development aid]].

* ThePurge: In order to seize control of the communists forces when the civil war does kick off, Anpilov gets to work purging all opposition so that only he can rule the newly reconstituted Russian Soviet Republic, starting with his rivals within the Communist faction with [[spoiler:Gennady Zyuganov]] being amongst the first victims of said purge. Just wouldn't be the Stalin Years: Remastered without them and it's later revealed that Anpilov's empowered KGB got so busy, some estimates conclude that almost half of politicians in Stalingrad had been executed and replaced by sycophants either truly loyal to the cause or scared for their lives. Ordinary Russians living under Anpilov's rule are not spared the ravages of the purge either with how life under the Russian Soviet Republic is notorious for its unending terror.

** During [[spoiler:the Battle of Moscow, the Communists end up using VX nerve gas on their enemies during the fighting for the ruins of the city]].
** [[spoiler: The use of nerve gas in the Battle of Moscow proves to be the start of mass use of chemical weapons in the Second Russian Civil War with the Communists, Fascists, and secessionist rebels all using chemical weapons in the aftermath of said chemical attack, most notoriously when every major settlement in Udmurtia was bombarded with chemical weapons by Fascist forces.]]

* HearingVoices: [[spoiler:Anpilov is stated explictly that he made his decision to form a short-lived truce with the Uralic Alliance owing to voices in his head telling him to do so, with his advisors too terrified of being purged to suggest it to him.]]

* MonumentalDamage: When the NSF finally turn on one another and fight to control Moscow, both St. Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin were destroyed by communist forces in order to keep the Fascists from getting a propaganda victory by capturing them. Later chapters mentions that Red Square, the Bolshoi Theatre and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier are also among the monuments lost in the war.

* PostSovietReunion: Very downplayed. The NSF would ''love'' to get the borders of the Soviet Union back, but the farthest they get is taking the Ida-Viru region from Estonia, the Latgale region of Latvia, and Crimea in Ukraine before the civil war kicks off.

* PuppetState: [[spoiler:North Korea ends up as a Chinese puppet state under the rule of Jang Song-Thaek after the failed invasion of Primorsk and the subsequent Chinese invasion of North Korea.]]

** Petro Poroshenko, President of Ukraine from 2014 until 2019 in our world, [[spoiler:is the "Chocolate Warlord" who is notorious for being amongst the Ukrainian oligarchs who bankrolled Ukrainian nationalist militias supporting Circassia.]]

* HearingVoices: [[Anpilov is stated explictly that he made his decision to form a short-lived truce with the Uralic Alliance owing to voices in his head telling him to do so, with his advisors too terrified to suggest it to him.]]

** [spoiler:Sergei Shoigu proves to be one during the Battle of the Three Armies, which leads to his overthrow by the Mongolians for his incompetence and corruption.]]

* ThePurge: In order to seize control of the communists forces when the civil war does kick off, Anpilov gets to work purging all opposition so that only he can rule the newly reconstituted Russian Soviet Republic. Just wouldn't be the Stalin Years: Remastered without them and it's later revealed that Anpilov's empowered KGB got so busy, some estimates conclude that almost half of politicians in Stalingrad had been executed and replaced by sycophants either truly loyal to the cause or scared for their lives. Ordinary Russians living under Anpilov's rule are not spared the ravages of the purge either with how life under the Russian Soviet Republic is notorious for its unending terror.

** [spoiler: The use of nerve gas in the Battle of Moscow proves to be the start of mass use of chemical weapons in the Second Russian Civil War with the Communists, Fascists, and secessionist rebels all using chemical weapons in the aftermath of said chemical attack, most notoriously when every major settlement in Udmurtia was bombarded with chemical weapons by Fascist forces.]]