Finnish Twilight 2000 sourcebook: the timeline

[John Farson]

The timeline follows OTL up until the Duma's (parliament) mutiny against Yeltsin in October 1993, after which events diverge. I start from after the failed mutiny.

1993
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President Yeltsin arranges for new Duma elections to be held in December, having first railroaded a new constitution and an expansion in presidential powers in November. The elections turn out to be a pyrrhic victory for Yeltsin. Although Yeltsin stays in power and gets a Duma that is more or less favourable toward his policies, he is forced to compromise with the Russian military in exchange for their support and admit several military personnel into high-ranking positions.

At the end of the year there is open talk in China for the first time about the possibility of disintegration and civil war once Deng Xiaoping, the de facto leader of China, has passed on. As the central government weakens the wide economic autonomy granted to the provinces may get out of hand. Because of this, political and economic experts suggest increasing the power of the National People's Congress and moving to a US-type federal system. A senile Deng promptly strikes these reform proposals down.

As UN peacekeeping forces prove powerless to prevent the senseless slaughter in the former Yugoslavia, the UN expands its mandate to include "peace enforcement". Finland refuses to send actual combat troops, but the "traditional" UN battalion is readied for transfer to the former Yugoslavia. Regardless of official Finnish policy, in the future these men and women will be forced to fight for their very lives...

[John Farson]

1994
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On 19 March, the second anniversary of the declaration of Tatarstan's autonomy, fierce riots break out between local Tatars and Cossacks representing the Russian minority, resulting in a number of deaths. OMON troops use force to pacify the situation, but rioting spreads to the rest of Russia's Tatar population. This in turn leads to Cossack organisations going on a rampage, first in the Russian Federation before spreading to the Cossacks in CIS member states. All of this worsens relations in Central Asia between ethnic Russians and Muslims, which were tense to begin with.

The Itar-Tass news agency accuses both Iran and Iraq of supplying arms to guerrilla groups operating in CIS states in Central Asia and the Caucasus and of provoking the local Muslim population against ethnic Russians. The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan intensifies into open warfare again, leading Russia to send in the 104th Guards Air Assault Division and the 11th Attack Helicopter Regiment on 23 June to "separate the warring parties," as allowed by the CIS security treaty. In practice, the Russian forces defend the Christian Armenians against the Muslim Azeri and seek to occupy the disputed region. Russian veterans soon find that they are fighting a war that is very similar to the one they fought in Afghanistan a decade earlier.

In July Russia increases its military detachment multifold in the Sary Shagan missile testing range in Kazakhstan in order to protect it from crossfire between Islamic insurgents and Kazakh government forces. In the Duma the nationalist opposition, which has been quietly amassing power, demands greater Russian intervention in the domestic unrest of CIS states in order to protect the local Russian minorities. With the Russian economy finally showing tentative signs of recovery, however, Pres. Yeltsin is reluctant to start large-scale military operations. This in turn raises the ire of certain parties in the Russian military leadership.
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More to follow!

[John Farson]

1994 (continued)
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In the Dniester region the Moldovan Independence Day celebrations on 27 August first turn into rioting between Romanian-related Moldovans and Turkish-related Gagauz, then into a bloodbath as local Cossacks begin to "restore order" with military issued weapons. Both Moldova and Romania accuse Russian intelligence of supporting and arming the Cossacks. Yeltsin denies the accusations as "rubbish" and reminds people that Russia has enough issues of its own without interfering in the domestic affairs of other CIS states. In practice, by saying this he washes his hands off of affairs related to Russian minorities in CIS countries, which does not endear him to Russian nationalists.

Researchers in France and the USA begin testing a vaccine which would appear to be effective against HIV. The scientists quickly agree to demands of expediting the test programme, and US health officials immediately move from animal testing to largescale human experiments. It will take years, however, before pharmaceutical companies can update their production lines to sufficiently deal with the massive AIDS epidemic in the Third World. Health care in Central Africa in particular is on the verge of total collapse as a surge in AIDS victims is imminent; fearing for their lives, many health care professionals flee the area.

With Europe beginning to show increasing signs of unrest, Germany begins to quietly strengthen its military. In January nine divisions, which until know have been at half-strength, are brought up to full strength with each division having a reserve area defence brigade allotted to it. The German government responds sluggishly to growing ethnic violence, yielding to a compromise with the far right. This leads to the passing of strict immigration laws, which are widely compared to the Nazi race laws of the 1930s.

[John Farson]

1995
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With Deng Xiaoping having left the political scene in his old age the more-or-less inefficient Chinese central government begins to crumble on its own impracticality. The provinces, which have so far conducted their economies almost independently and grown richer as the central government has grown poorer, begin to systematically ignore Beijing's commands. Student pro-democracy movements, partially encouraged and funded by their wealthy foreign relatives as well as by the example of the Tiananmen Square protests over five years earlier, begin to organize peaceful demonstrations in China's university cities. These protests call for the transfer of power to the National People's Congress and for China to become a federal republic. The Chinese government, cornered like a rat and on the verge of panic, responds in the only way it knows.

On 5 February military units throughout China swarm from their garrisons into the cities to "restore order". The student protests are crushed by tanks, and the soldiers seize control of the provincial governments in the name of the Beijing government. However, with this act the government has unleashed a dragon it is unable to control. One after another, the military commanders in northern China refuse to pull their troops back into their bases, declaring martial law in their respective provinces. With southern China under the control of a military government - which had overthrown CCP rule in the South - almost a dozen separate civil wars brake out in the North as the northern provinces begin to settle their differences. No country recognises China' new (southern) government.

Having returned to Russian politics, Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party is able to get new immigration laws passed in the Duma. According to the LDP, these laws will "secure the position of the Russian population in the Federation". In effect, these laws render minorities into second class citizens. Cossacks and other extremist Russians begin to now openly provoke the locals into conflict in other CIS states.

Zhirinovsky, who has become the new interior minister, again makes waves abroad by blurting out that if the Russian minorities' situation in the CIS and the Baltic states doesn't soon improve, the locals will "only have themselves to blame for the consequences." President Yeltsin, weakened by health problems and alcoholism (partially exacerbated by political pressures), no longer seems capable of keeping political opportunists and lobbyists under check. He manages to hold on to his office mostly due to his populist skills.

In Romania, ethnic Hungarian anti-government demonstrations in several Transylvanian cities are quashed by Romanian riot police, leading to loss of life. Again the Hungarian government protests the fate of the demonstrators, while the ethnic Hungarians themselves claim it is but the opening salvo of a genocide planned by the government in Bucharest.

In June, for the first time in four months, China lets itself be heard. The southern government has managed to get the northern military districts to stop their squabbling and to unite under one banner: the territorial question of Manchuria, which for over 100 years has been a sticking point in Sino-Russian relations, is brought back to life. With Russia still economically crippled as well as weakened by domestic unrest, the Chinese consider Russia to be malleable towards territorial demands. The Kremlin's answer is that it will not negotiate with China about anything until the country has a legally elected government. Russian forces are massed at the Ussuri River to prove the government's point, in an ominous replay of events 26 years earlier.

Anti-Turkish demonstrations continue for several days in Bulgaria. These were sparked by the death of a Bulgarian-born national in police custody after his attempt on the Turkish president's life. Though Turkey claims that the death was the result of natural causes the situation turns into a crisis, with Turkish nationals advised to leave Bulgaria.

In response to the regional instability, Germany announces that the treaty restricting the size and disposition of its armed forces is "outdated with regards to the current situation in Europe." Six eastern area defence brigades are immediately upgraded into sub-strength divisions, and the original nine divisions are expanded to 12. In case of possible mobilization more forces will be sent from western Germany. Poland protests and increases the readiness of several divisions in western Poland as well as starts secret talks with Belarus. These talks falter on the question of the border city of Bialystok, however, and Belarus publicly informs that Poland has tried to involve it in a "military operation" against Germany.

At the end of the year UN peacekeeping forces are dispatched to Sri Lanka in an attempt to constrain the civil war raging in the country.

[pmulcahy11b]

This is good stuff. The people who wrote the Finnish books did a better job with the timeline than GDW did.

[Legbreaker]

I'm guessing the publishing deadline wasn't so much of a consideration...
GDW were pumping out a massive amount of product for such a relatively small staff. Errors were always going to creep in.