After the May Revolution and subsequent Denikin Affair, it was to the surprise of many that the fractured Socialist-Revolutionaries staged a comeback and won the snap elections. President Vladimir Rikhter's administration focused more on rebuilding Russia's institutions from the ground up than militarizing the country for war, achieving his bold campaign promises and uniting the party behind himself, the true heir of Chernov.

  
Patronizing State Duma Chair Sorokin's Reforms, quelling the Central Asian Rebellions, clearing out German Economic Influence, restructuring the economy in a "New Russian Capitalism", making Russia's self-defensive democracy an envy of even the civilized world, and resolutely solidifying the Values of the February Revolution through Rikhter's so-called "idealistic" vision of a Great Peasant Republic, a bridge between capitalism and socialism, yet radically and democratically republican. Despite the turmoil of the 1930's, the PLSR-RDP-PSR coalition came out with an astonishing 70% voting intention.

  
Still, not all was golden. Even after persuading Denikin to finally retire and cleansing the Army of reactionaries, General-Fieldmarshal Sergey Markov made it clear that the influence of the military would not go into the night quietly. If an offensive against the Reichspakt was not undertaken, he had said, the Sword of Damocles would fall directly onto the President's neck. Rikhter had little choice but to acquiesce, for the thinly-veiled threat of a coup like the one that had brought down Savinkov was all too familiar.

  
Upon reviewing the infantry, concentrated mostly under freshly-reinstated Marshals Vasily Boldyrev and Yury Sablin, Rikhter initially had little hope of pushing the Teutons back to their own borders. But Markov didn't care about their lack of offensive bite: the doctrine the Marshal had so carefully cultivated just prior to the launch of Operation Yekaterina exalted the modern weapon Russia was capable of wielding: Tanks.

  
When the time for the preemptive strike to finally be launched, sixteen top-of-the-line armored divisions, placed under the command of Markov's protege Aleksandr Vasilevsky smashed through northern Ukraine and southern Belarus, enabled by Markov's logistics reforms to capture Kyiv in the two months of the war, followed swiftly by Minsk and Riga in the next two, destroying nearly one hundred divisions in the series of encirclements conducted through the campaign. With Operation Yekaterina's primary goals accomplished, radicals among the Stavka even suggested rushing down Berlin and forcing the Germans to surrender.



Markov, Boldyrev and Sablin all knew, however, that the Prussian would not go with his tail behind his legs. Under the leadership of former Prussian Minister of War Kurt von Schleicher, Germany had been transformed beyond recognition. Their manpower reserves were described by an exasperated Sergey Voytsekhovsky (general of the First Army under Marshal Boldyrev, deployed in some of the most heated fighting) as "beating us at our own game (mass mobilization)". With the Ukrainian People's Republic, Belarus and the UBD all still very much holding on, the outlandish plan was quickly shot down for risk of overextension.

  
Instead, Markov decided to concentrate the armored forces for a push towards Odessa, thus cutting off the Ukrainian interior and allowing for a proper consolidation of the front lines, made all the more necessary by the recent entry of the federalized Austria into the war. The first phase of the plan was even more successful than assumed, for the first few divisions to reach the west end of the Black Sea reported eighteen Polish divisions merely sitting in the port, waiting for further orders. (1)

  
While Vasilevsky wasted no time in gleefully crushing the pocket, the planned liberation of Central Ukraine was complicated by what the Stavka aptly referred to as a "reverse Brusilov offensive", with a Reichspakt force concentration level and subsequent rout of Boldyrev's forces reminiscent of what had happened in 1916, albeit with Russia and the Central Powers in the opposite situation. (2)



Initially, dozens of miles of territory and a few divisions were lost, but with the entire Armor Corps diverted to halt the breakthrough, things were about to make a dramatic turnaround. (3) By October's end, a gap of roughly four months, aided by Edward Rydz-Smigly's coup and secession from the Reichspakt, our forces reached the Polish border, and nearly two hundred more divisions were liquidated in a series of encirclements near Brest-Litovsk, avenging the humiliations cast by that damned treaty (4). Despite a bit of back-and-forth in the lines forcing a retreat from Rivne, Christmas Day marked an extra seven and a half million (yes, 7.5M) Reichspakt casualties compared to the Fall of Riga eight months earlier.

  
The French, despite gaining allies in the Spanish Civil War and the Belgian War of Independence, were capitulated by Christmas 1941, meaning the full force of the Reichspakt was now directed against our borders. Having already broke the back of Central European demographics, however, there wasn't much force left to throw at the Russian war machine. An unnamed colonel noted that as the war had progressed, the composition of the enemy frontline had shifted from German and Ukrainian to Austrian and Polish, to Bulgarian and Italian and then Haitian and South African. 

  
This wasn't just troop shuffling: by December 1943, after a series of campaigns in East Prussia, the Ukrainian rump territory, Galicia and recently-liberated Poland, the Reichspakt had reached almost 25 million casualties total, and our armies had crossed the Vistula. (5) Instead of pushing further into Germany, however, the decision was once again made to secure the flanks and push deep into the Austrian heartland instead. With an even greater force of fourty-two tank divisions assembled in Galicia, even the mighty Carpathians were soon vanquished as every crown land, save for the alpine ones, were conquered, and the Italian peninsula was rushed down with minimal resistance. (6)

  
It was clear that Germany was finished. Not quite two months past the Italian surrender, on the 2nd of October 1944, the German Empire admitted defeat. Somehow, Sweden, which had been the greatest thorn in our side (on the northern front, predictably), managed to escape with nothing but a white peace, in a diplomatic maneuver that even Swedish diplomats had no idea occurred. (7)

  
A year later, after the first entirely armored campaign that brought an early grave to the so-called Ottoman Renaissance, we come to the present day, where Russian hegemony stretches from the jungles of Southern Sudan to the frozen wastelands of Providenya. The Qing Empire, having actually defeated Japan on its own, had invaded our allied states in Mongolia and Tibet, but we simply ignored their pleas for help, which both kept their governments-in-exile alive and gave us a casus belli for a campaign against the resurgent dragon. (8)

  
But contrary to western imagination, the lands under our occupation were not colonies. Far from it: similar to American president Abraham Lincoln after their civil war, we pursued a policy of reconciliation with Europe. Their people had suffered under (mostly) horrific regimes, and we had liberated them.

  
In Germany, Schleicherist tyranny and Hohenzollern decadence was replaced with a united democratic republic, reminiscent of 1848 and endless austerity, for that was always Chancellor Bruning's response. Our Polish allies were expanded into West Prussia, regaining access to the Baltic sea, as well as into Galicia and Upper Silesia. Greater Romania was achieved, as King Michael's National-Liberal Democracy that had joined the Moscow Accord in the closing months of the war (and been a great assistant) was duly awarded with Transylvania, northern Dobruja and Suceava. 

  
The multi-ethnic empires of Austria and the Ottomans could have very easily been dismantled at our command. But to the surprise of many, with advice from Ilya Fondaminsky, Rikhter ultimately decided to retain the Habsburgs and Osmans on their thrones. Fondaminsky had argued that both were critical in building something greater, in bringing peace to previously squabbling ethnic groups and giving rise to united identities. 



As constitutional monarchs whose governments had merely aligned with the Germans due to economic reasons and the reasonable (and true) assumptions that they would be next should the Prussian fall, they were in fact supporting the best interests of their people. And so, to prevent ethnic violence and preserve stronger states against Internationale or Entente aggression, and to further build goodwill with occupied Europe, we merely stripped away the regions that had been historically part of Russia or other lands, and hinderances to their realms. The same principle was duly applied in Afghanistan, where zealous modernizer visionary Amanullah Khan was retained on the throne, merely being required to cede most executive power and hold elections in due time, which he was too happy to do once he saw the benefits of the Moscow Economic Council and Accord in development and peacekeeping.

  
And so, with a democratic Entente inches away from reclaiming their birthrights against the increasingly sieged Union of Britain, it is obvious that the world is entering a new, brighter future.

A Fairer Empire: A Russian Right-SR AAR