Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

Alternate Obituary: Vladimir Anitov

The world breathes a sigh of relief in 1973 as Anitov, Soviet Dictator, died peacefully in his bed, sleeping with someone else’s wife. The succession crises has not yet resolved, but it appears that Yelsin or Lychokov will take over as dictator, leaving a dangerous hole for the soviet empire.

Born in 1890, Anitov grew up in Siberia as the son of one of the Tsar’s exiles, and developed an abiding hatred for the Tsarist State. He was forced to join the army at fifteen and was one of the troops earmarked for the Japanese front in 1905, before the war ended. Posted to St. Petersburg, Anitov discovered the communist party and became one of their moles in the Tsar’s forces.

Ironically, he would be decorated by the Tsar after an accidental burst of heroism that saved one of the Tsar’s nieces from death. With that award, he was able to stay close to the Tsar when World War One broke out. When the Russians revolted in 1917, Anitov, who was still part of a communist cell, took the Tsar prisoner and was his guard until 1919, when he managed to arrange for the Tsar to be smuggled out of Russia to Britain.

Anitov was lucky. He had become a close ally and hatchetman for Josef Stalin, one of the most ambitious leaders in the communist party, and Stalin protected him by pointing out the political benefits of releasing the Tsar. Lenin was unconvinced, but allowed it to slide.

When Stalin took over as general secretary and dictator, Anitov remained by his side until the purges in 1930. When Stalin disposed of much of the army leadership, Anitov became the commanding officer of the army and discovered how important it was to have a good and able force as the exile Russian forces struck back though Poland, with Japanese support, in 1934. The Tsar had been able to fund new armies and supplies, with support from Hitler and a number of other anti-Communist factions.

When confronted with the results of his actions and the fact that his huge army was practically useless, Stalin panicked and ordered a huge purge. Knowing that Russia was doomed if the purge was allowed to happen, Anitov struck first and killed Stalin and Beria, taking the title of general secretary for himself.

Though cunning diplomatic maneuvering, Anitov was able to divide the opposing forces up and destroy them at a number of very high-cost battles in 1935. The Japanese forces were shoved back and the exile forces were shoved back into Poland. Lacking the capability to invade Poland, Anitov settled for forcing the poles to hand over the Tsar to Russia and taking small bits of land, including the Baltic States, for the USSR.

Anitov built up the Russian army over the next five years, planning to punish the Poles for their actions and spread Russian rule throughout Europe. He got his opportunity when Hitler offered him a half-share of Poland, which he accepted. The Germans and Russians divided Poland between themselves and then Hitler attacked France.

When Hitler’s forces struck deep into France in May 1940, Anitov abandoned the policy of neutrality and stabbed Hitler in the back. Soviet forces, including the famed T-34 tank, which had been a pet project of Anitov, marched across Poland and into East Prussia before meeting serious opposition.

When Hitler managed to extract a division of Panzer tanks from France to fight, it was almost too late to save his own life as the soviets had reached Berlin by that time. When Hitler was captured in august 1940, most of the bottom fell out of the German State, although die-hard Nazis did continue to run resistance raids for the remainder of the occupation. Not being one to let opportunity slip by, Anitov invaded France in early 1941, crushing it and the BEF in a two-month campaign.

Signing a peace treaty with Britain, as the soviet forces were over-stretched, Anitov started a mass assimilation campaign, teaching Russian as a common language in the conquered territories and suppressing guerrilla movements with extreme violence. He was willing to use puppets when necessary, such as the French communist party, but preferred to use Russian forces.

When Japan attacked the USA, Anitov saw opportunity and declared war on Japan. The battle of Nomonhan, in late 1942, saw a Japanese force routed and deep soviet stabs into Manchuria by the time the campaigning season ended. Not one to waste time, Anitov shipped arms and supplies – and ‘advisors’ – to both sides of Chinese, arming them for war against both the Japanese and each other. The war ended with soviet forces in control of Manchuria, Korea and northern China, while Japan starved under a US blockade in 1943. The British soon discovered the communist penetration of India was rife, as a number of small civil wars broke out across the continent.

In 1944, after the Chinese civil war had begun, Anitov launched an invasion of China, the ‘advisors’ having sabotaged both of the Chinese sides, crippling their responses. Despite US protests, Anitov’s forces managed to destroy most of the active Chinese forces and claim all of China. India soon became ungovernable and the British withdrew to the Middle East in 1945.

No one can prove where the viruses that decremented the Chinese and Indian population came from, but there is a strong current of belief that Soviet forces deliberately set out to exterminate the natives of those countries in need of land for Russian colonisation. Certainly, the ‘russification’ program in Europe smashed most of the native social structures, effectively forcing the Russians as a master race over European slaves. Industries and other useful materials were carted back to Russia and most of Europe was returned to an agricultural state. For the first time in centuries, most Russians had enough to eat, an achievement that was brought at a terrific cost to the other nations.

The effect on America was remarkable. Forced to realise that they might be next on the list for Russian consumption, the United States merged with what remained of the British empire and fought the short Mosul War of 1954, a war which saw the first use of nuclear weapons. The war had been provoked by Anitov as an excuse for seizing the Middle Eastern oil wells. He had calculated that the British would be unable to react, however, when the soviet forces made a breakthrough in East Turkey, the British resorted to a nuclear bomb to destroy the advancing army and another one to destroy Stalingrad. The Soviets reallaitated by destroying Newcastle, but Anitov realised the open war threatened the USSR with destruction and divided the world between the US and the USSR in the Gibraltar conference of 1956. Loosely, the US holds Britain, North America, Brazil, Argentina, Iran, and Iraq, most of Africa and Japan. The USSR holds the rest, having crushed Finland, Sweden and Norway in 1960 and Switzerland in 1962.

Both sides competed for space access, the USSR beating the US to the moon in 1965, but the US was the first to develop a SSTO system and a working spacebase. Space is militarised in 1970, when both sides deployed nuclear weapons, which resulted in the lunar missile crises in 1971. The old tyrant was getting old at the time, and he allowed the crises to resolve peacefully with a monitored disarmerant program.

Quite how the Russians saw him is something of a mystery. He is a hero for having fed them and for grabbing so much land for Russians to live in, he is, however, a villain for allowing the nuking of Stalingrad and for his ruthless crushing of dissidence.

The rest of the world has no doubts. They see him as the worst villain of modern history and see his assignation of Stalin as the deciding moment in history. He has almost completely wiped out the Indian and Chinese population and viruses that look man-made have sprung up in Africa. The seeds of conflict have been sown there and in Latin America, held in the US only by massive investment and an equally massive military force.

Anitov died while in bed with the wife of Yelsin, his director of security (the Special Security Force), who was promptly shot by his own personal guard. There are whispers that his wife, Ludmilla, was somehow induced to poison Anitov, which has led to the candidacy of Lychokov, the director of space forces.

Anitov leaves behind two wives and seven children. The funeral is on March the 23^rd. Attend or be shot.

The Why’s and Wherefores: This started out as a TL about what might have happened if Stalin had made a few different decisions. For example, what about the one where he decreed that the USSR’s tank forces were to be broken up among the Infantry, rather than being massed together? Or the later purges? Soon, however, I found that if you change too much of Stalin, you change the world and the course of the Russian Revolution too much. Therefore, I invented Anitov and let him change history in minute bits until he took over from Stalin. A soviet dictator with a military background would be a far more dangerous man than one who had a vested interest in a weak military.

Emperor Blair compared the first draft of this to the Draka books. He’s got a point, but there are some differences. Anitov is a Russian supremacist who believes that Russia should rule the world. He considers Europeans to be just below Russians, and Chinese, Indians and Japanese to be at the bottom. He’s not above betraying either Poland (by making what is esscaally the same deal with Hitler as Stalin did in OTL) or Hitler while he’s involved with France. In such circumstances, the Nazi’s would have been pushed back a long way and then been defeated. France would probably have suffered a communist revolution and Anitov would have sent in the red army to assist.

Invading Manchuria was the same idea as in OTL 1945, grab what you can before peace comes. Fomenting trouble to kill off potential foes was vintage communist methodoly and the soviets were supposed to have a working biological warfare program in 1930. With primitive conditions in China and India, large parts of the population could have been wiped out.

Fighting a war in the Middle East with Britain was considered by Stalin, Anitov does it. Neither side is aware that the other has nukes, which makes a dangerous situation even worse. East-West rivalry is worse than in OTL.