Russkaya Amerika

Peter the Great was determined that Russia would be the equal of the great powers of Europe in every way, including thriving American colonies. He ordered multiple expeditions to the Pacific coast, and began several colonies, with the eager cooperation of the Russian Orthodox church, which was promised many converts among the natives. To people this string of settlements, he offered pardons to all manner of minor criminals, following terms of labor much shorter than those they would serve in Mother Russia, and grants of land for homesteading should they prove of good character. Many, of course, simply fled into the wilderness, heading south into British (and eventually, Canadian) territories, but enough stayed. The population grew, and trade began to move down the coast to the Spanish colonies in California, as much as across the sea to Russia. This pleased neither the Russian priests nor the Spanish ones, but if there's a world where the power of faith outweighs the power of the purse, no one has yet found it. Small battles over the vast, mostly unclaimed (by Europeans) lands in between never erupted into outright war, though any number of Very Stern Letters were exchanged.

To facilitate this trade (or to serve as a logistic point for a possible war), a fortress and trading port was constructed near the area now known as Juneau in the early 1800s. A new wave of 'settlers' followed, with the primary industry being logging. It was a few years later that gold was found, triggering a rush of would-be miners and prospectors, not just from Russia, but from the Spanish south and the British/American east. The Russians had only two advantages -- they were closer to resupply from the Motherland than any of the other combatants, and the forces arrayed against them were fighting with each other, too. Further, the Spanish were distracted by the Mexican Revolution, and in by 1820, Russia had reached agreements with the British and American governments to a thin strip of land, about 50 miles wide, down the Pacific coast to San Francisco -- now Svyatoy Frantsiskgrad.

Alexander the First declared the new territory a Principality and found a well-connected cousin, Nikolai, to be Prince of it. One of Nikolai I's first acts was to create a local aristocracy, anointing some of the most powerful and influential locally-born families, creating a leadership that would be seen as native, rather than foreign; the lessons of the American revolution were still fresh. His selection was influenced by his opinion of their philosophy; he took Alexander I's liberal pronouncements far more seriously than the emperor himself did, and felt he could create a new, fairer Russia here, a model for the Motherland to emulaste. His son and heir, Nikolai II, who took power in the 1840s, followed the grand plan outlined for him by his father, creating a parliamentary system for the governance of the American Territories, drawing from the systems of the two neighboring nations. He also set in motions programs of "legal harmonization", complex negotiations with Canada and the US to settle differences in law, especially as regarded trade, regulations of weights and measures, and settling of disputes between buyers and sellers across borders. Near the end of his life, in the 1880s, he secured funding and resources from both nations for a vastly improved rail network throughout the "Russian Territories", as they were often called, in return for guaranteed rights of passage for commercial transit to the coastal ports, and that any tariffs or taxes imposed on imports or exports by Canadian or American businesses out those ports would be identical to those paid by Russian businesses. (At least on this side of the Pacific.)

"Relationships, Like Beets, Are Often Strained"

The Motherland remained on its prior course. If anything, the continual liberalization of the Amerikanskih Territorij backlashed, increasing crackdowns on dissent (and, ironically, sending to the Territories, as criminals, a good number of writers, poets, and scientists, giving what the US sometimes called "Frozen Australia" a new cultural elite.) In the early 1900s, Prince Pavel I agreed to a non-aggression pact with Japan, one of its closest trading partners. This infuriated Tsar Nicholas, but his ability to enforce his will against the Territories, especially when they had become closely tied to the US, was limited. After the 1905 Revolution, when Tsar Nicholas ignored the successful bicameral duma of the Territories, and decided to make his own, with blackjack, and hookers, the Prince followed in the path of his southern neighbor and declared independence. The sudden lack of goods from the Territories only exacerbated already existing issues. They remained formally neutral during the Great War, but when the US joined in, large numbers of Territorial citizens volunteered to join American regiments.

The Coronation Uprising

Despite the fact most of the 'nobility' in the Territories came from, originally, criminal or lowborn stock, many had attracted spouses of 'true' noble blood from the Motherland, and this had infested some of the family lines with ideas more suited to prior centuries. When Pavel I died and his heir, Gregor, was preparing for his coronation, a small, well-funded (most likely from Nicholas himself) group attempted a coup, with their own imported pretender set to take the throne by means a dubious claim of closer descent to the Tsar. The plot was leaked early on, and allowed to proceed so that the plotters could be caught out, in public, attempting the assassination of Prince Gregor (who was well guarded and in no danger). The leak came from not one, but several, independant sources who had been approached and feigned interest long enough to gather details. The counter-plotters were rich, comfortable, wielded economic and political power by birth, and could, as one of them put it years later "read newspapers". They knew that retaining their power and privilege would mean giving up small bits of it. As another said "If the choice is ignoring when a servant steals a spoon or having the servants as a mass rise up and tear you limb from limb, I say, take all the spoons you wish." ("Take all the spoons you wish" became a popular idiom in the US for business and legal negotiations where one side was accepted a concession smaller than they'd wish, but not entirely meaningless.)

Revolution

And then, the 1917 Russian Revolution occurred. The newly-formed USSR of course claimed the Territories as part of it, and expected revolutionary fervor to spread, but it did not. The ruling Prince, Gregor, had inherited the throne shortly after the Declaration of 1906, and following the Coronation Uprising, made aggressive and successful moves to shift power in Parliament away from the Congress of Nobles and towards the Congress of Citizens. He then decreed that, regardless of the 1906 Declaration, the Territories were now the rightful heirs to the governance of Russia, with its nobility having a direct line back to Alexander, and demanded the nations of the world recognize it as such. Many, notably America, Canada, England, France, Japan, and Mexico, did so.

It is now 1930. There were two short-lived attempts at a direct military assault from the USSR; they were repelled by the rapidly-developing Territorial Navy (previously, they'd mostly had a coast guard to deal with smuggling and similar minor threats) in alliance with the Japanese in the first attack and the US in the second. The war has shifted to other fronts; the cities of the Territories are now hotbeds of spies, saboteurs, and propagandists, forcing Gregor into a corner: If he cracks down as many, noble and commoner urge, he undermines the reforms that prevented revolution from spreading in the first place, but if he does nothing, the pressure will continue to rise until his hand is forced. The US has made it quite clear it will happily supply military forces to 'protect against insurgency', but Gregor is not falling for it. (At the same time, neither the US nor Canada will permit the USSR to claim the territory; Canada has covertly told the Hoover that if it comes to that, they will recognize the right of the US to claim and hold the Territories as a "Protectorate" no matter how they ended up that way.)

BREACH

This is one of those worlds where BREACH as a branch of NATO, not as the exploration/scientific organization many operatives claim or wish it was, really comes into sharp relief. The current situation in the Territories is a perfect ground for the interdimensional cold war, and both NATO and Russian forces are operating there with only the barest pretense at plausible deniability. Modern weapons, spy gear, and propaganda techniques are making their way throughout the territories. Actual dendrihistorians are denied access due to fear of them getting caught in the sometime literal crossfire, or being compromised somehow. To some young and eager agents in the NSA or GRU, this is a chance for them to live their Cold War fantasies, with all the danger such an attitude entails. At least no one's trying to teach anyone there how to build nuclear weapons.

As far as BREACH knows.

World Type

Alternate Hitory

Divergence

1725

Current Year

1931

TL

6 (with some smuggled TL 8)

Author's Notes

I started this with the intent of having California be allied to American Russia as its own nation, calling it the Twin Bear Republics, but just as my characters don't always do what I want, neither do my alternate histories. And lest there be doubt, my research for this was pretty cursory and I tried to focus on the end goal (of having a "Russian Taiwan", that is, a territory remaining after a revolution that was able to secure its independence), despite a lot of side tracking on the way (I've got like 10 Wiki tabs open now).

I could definitely run an espionage, plots and counter plots, poison umbrellas and microrecorders campaign here. I hadn't really had that part as my end goal, but as I said, I just start typing and I'm often surprised what I end up with. If I go with my plan to mostly stop adding new worlds at the end of March and then spend the rest of the time incrementally improving them, I will be coming back here for sure.

Authors Notes 2

I wrote the above late on 3/3/2023. Early today (3/4/2023), I wanted to quickly glance over this for grevious spelling errors or internal contradications, and post it. Instead, I replaced placeholder titles with names, and added in a lot more history, notably the Coronation Uprising, which just seemed to happen. Both myself and ChatGPT write without thinking much beyond the next word; the difference is, I can reflect on what I've written and go back to improve it.