Kiev Revived

This a timeline I made in the other AH forums.


So, what is this about?


This a spur of the moment timeline that popped into my mind when I thought about a Russia without Ukraine and an independent Cossack state in the Caucasus mountains. Basically, this will have an independent Ukraine centuries before Ukraine was actually a country.


Isn’t that ASB?


If you think about it being nationalism, no. it will be explained better in the timeline. But it will be more world spanning (though a lot of focus will be on central and eastern Europe because of this). This timeline will be a stretch, but it will hopefully make sense.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kiev, Ruthenia, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth


November, 7, 1608


It was cold. Terribly so. But the young child had to work on the farm. The 8-year old Peter Tsaritovsky was, much like his father Ivan Tsaritovsky, a serf. He had to work on this be it hell or high water or the nobles that owned his family would…he didn’t want to think about it. His 30-year old brother, his nephew, and his grand-niece had left. “It is too cold for a bountiful harvest.” He had said. They had escaped to Austria. Peter hoped they were having a better time there. Here, in Kiev, the harvest was bad. The crops were dead or dying and there was very little to eat. He looked up at the sky. It was getting dark. He looked back at the crops. They were far too dead to harvest. He decided to leave the work and help his sick father. The nobles wouldn’t care if 1 serf didn’t work to keep other serfs from dying which would mean more work, right? He ran home.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

…Taken from Chapter 8: Fall of The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and The Holy Roman Empire, The Superpowers In Chaos of Theatrum Tenebrarum Europe – The wars and politics of Europe following the Renaissance, by Michael Ferdinand…



The Winter of 1608 was one of the harshest eastern Europe would ever experience [1]. The crops that was the bounty of the nobility that owned the little serf pockets of population in Ruthenia had suffered even worse. There was little to no food for the nobility to gorge themselves on and, worse for the Russian held region, was under attack from constant raids. In 1610, the Polish king and Grand Duke of Lithuania, Sigismund III Vasa, increased taxes on the nobility of Ruthenia. The reasons as of why has been lost to history, but many historians assume that because of the buildup of the military due to the fear of Russia recuperating from the times of troubles and going to war with Poland for Smolensk and Sigismund feared his own nobility far too much, as they controlled the Sejm and could attempt an overthrow of him if he didn’t do what they believed was best.


The nobility of the region was reasonably angered and coupled with the unrest from the peasantry following the poor harvests of 1608 and 1609 and Cossacks within the region constantly raiding, it was a storm brewing. Throughout 1612-1650, multiple revolts would sprout within Ruthenia started by nobles and backed by the peasants to lower taxes and get the poles to treat them as equals [2]. Throughout all of this, a young man would make himself appear for the first time in history. Peter Tsaritovsky [3], the son of a serf, was forced in the military in 1616, at the age of 16. The young man would grow to resent his generals but respect the military and begin to think about things that would be brought up with more passion in the future.





Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania (1587-1632), King of Sweden (1592-1599)


While this was going on in Poland-Lithuania, in 1618, an explosion set off the match that was central Europe and the Holy Roman Empire. In May 1618, the king-elect of Bohemia, Ferdinand (later to be Ferdinand II of the Holy Roman Empire and Austria) sent two catholic councilors to Prague to administer the government while he wasn’t there. On May 23, 1618, a protestant assembly seized them and threw them out of the window in the event that became known as The Second Defenestration of Prague and would spark into what became known as the Thirty Years war.




The Second Defenestration of Prague


The event lead to war and the first of the Thirty Years War’s phases, The Bohemian Revolt, occurred from 1618-1621. Though many Protestant nations came to the aid of Bohemia, who wanted their own king, the Electorate of Brandenburg, Under John Sigismund von Hohenzollern, did not join. He believed that there would be no way that Brandenburg-Prussia, as the duchy of Prussia had united with Brandenburg in 1618 when the former duke of Prussia, Albert Frederick, died. Dying in 1619, John convinced his eldest son and successor George William to not intervene in the that was raging across the Holy Roman Empire until it could benefit their electorate. George William, to his own chagrin, would respect the final wish of his father [3], then the two talked about Poland. This part of the conversation was lost to history, but it is assured they were talking about what to do against their overlord when they were a electorate of the Holy Roman Empire and not some vassal tied down to Poland.


On December 23, 1619, John Sigismund of Brandenburg-Prussia died. George William would then go about creating a thing that John Sigismund expressed the desire for most: a professional and well-equipped army [4]. He would first bring in officers from Poland, Austria, Spain, France, England, Denmark-Norway, Russia, and Sweden to help train the army, then he would increase the military budget by 20%, making it be 60% of the budget of Brandenburg-Prussia. Finally, he would increase the size of the army from a small 15,000 to a massive 50,000 by 1623 due to many reforms by him in the political field and the nobility being frightful of him raising taxes on them if they didn’t contribute troops, something that he could very well do.


He then would launch political reform after political reform, one of which being that the electorate would be turned into cantons to be governed by nobles. He then established a system in which all men would start at the bottom and would work their way up based on merit and character. The reform, called The Enlightened Class System by many, was what allowed Peter I The Great of Russia to create his own nobility system, The Table of Ranks. The reforms, unpopular with the nobility, were nevertheless successful, and was combined with better school education reforms and the right to practice Catholicism and Calvinism in private was given. [5]


George William’s Reforms were finished with a law that he created in 1624, while he was slowly dying of a disease that many believe was smallpox. The law stated that no reforms could be overturned unless the duke and elector of Prussia/Brandenburg, all the military generals and admirals (for George had plans to invade Pomerania to gain a port on the Baltic sea and create a navy), the nobility, and the Great Court of Justice (a court of 15 judges that was created by George William in an attempt to speedy and fair trails and weaken the power of the nobility slightly more), the family that was within the territory, the heir, and the royal advisors was to agree to remove the reform. The reason The Law of Reformation was created was because George knew that when he died, the nobility would try to convince his successor to undo all his reforms. The reforms would allow George to gain the name George William the Reformer.


On January 14, 1625, George William the Reformer died [6], leaving behind him a 5-yearold child to succeed him. In his will, George expressed the desire for his wife, Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, to be the regent for his son, Frederick William and for the best teachers to educate his son. The final words of his, being “Poland, Poland, Poland, you survive me, but can you survive my successor?” [7] gave one meaning that many historians agree upon: war with Poland. And on the 16th of August 1625, Elizabeth Charlotte declared war on Poland and brought in their ally of Pomerania (George had allied with them in 1623 because he thought they would help him in a war against Poland) and supported the revolts in Ruthenia. The Brandenburg-Polish war would go on from 1625-1629 and would shake the eastern European’s superpower to its already fragile core.







George William the Reformer, who allowed for The Ascendance of Brandenburg-Prussia [8] to be possible through his reforms


Throughout this time, Poland had been at war with Russia and Sweden and was now being severely limited by the Liberum Veto as well as weakened internally by the revolts of the Ruthenian Nobles. These revolts had now been targeting the Polish military outposts near their immediate area. The biggest hope being to grab the weapons supply and start a full-on rebellion against the poles, all but one failed. The Periosky Revolt was a revolt in which 60,000 peasants, under the leadership of Alexander Periosky [9], attacked and seized the polish military fortress at L’viv. Alexander was the son of a lower Nobleman and had heavily suffered under the tax curse of 1610, as the Ruthenian Nobility of the commonwealth called it, and The Winter of 1608. Resenting the poles growing up for the brutal treatment of his people and their blatant disrespect of them from Legislature caused him to revolt in 1622. His capture of L’viv brought many Ruthenian Peasants and Nobles to support, join, and fund him and by 1625, he had captured the city of Brest-Litovsk and his numbers had swelled to 200,000 men. The situation was dire for Poland, which was in desperate need of aid because of the war on all fronts except the southeast at this point. [10]


One final acknowledgement is that in 1620, Peter Tsaritovsky deserted the polish military and joined the Swedish one, not because he hated his people, but because he wanted to learn better ways of war than the polish one. Peter’s time in the Swedish military would allow him to learn a great many things and would have him become quick friends with the king of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus.



---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] – The winter is colder than in OTL and thus it is worse for them.


[2] – This is a pretty big possibility as the polish nobility is pretty much in love with themselves and, much like the Hungarian nobles in Austria-Hungary, don’t want much change. The only difference is the Polish nobility is in full control of the Sejm while the Hungarians only controlled half of the diet (other half being Austrians). As a result, you can expect that the Ruthenian and the poles are pretty disconnected from one another and hate them.


[3] - Fictional character. You will find out why he keeps getting mentioned in an update or two.


[4] – we don’t have much info on John William (at least as Wikipedia is concerned, which I know is the most reliant source ever for research on history) so he could’ve had wanted a better army, or he could’ve been wanting a more pacifist Brandenburg-Prussia. We’ll never know till more is found out about him.


[5] – Don’t know if these reforms would’ve passed but most likely since the head of state was the first and foremost legal authority within the HRE and the emperor being at war with the protestant states, most likely they could’ve. But on a sidenote, this means that Frederick The Great’s Religious toleration reforms is done almost a century earlier, though with a few pieces missing.


[6] – in OTL, George William would die on December 1, 1645. I’m sure you have a feeling of whom I’m planning on Frederick William to be like…and yes, he will be even greater than IOTL because of the reforms his father made that will allow him to springboard and make more of his own reforms and my plans for him.


[7] – Geeze George, could’ve been a little less obvious there. Anyways, George William could’ve hated Poland, or he could’ve been a Pole-phile We’ll never know till we get some more information from him.


[8] – Basically think The Rise of Russia after Poltava (crap, I just spoiled what’s going to happen! ABORT! ABORT!)


[9] – Fictional Character. You’ll be seeing a lot more of him later on, don’t worry.


[10] – because Thirty Years War and all that stuff.


So there is my first update ‘Kiev Restored’, I tried to make this as little as ASB as possible, so if it is very much so, then I apologize. I would like to receive an editor to help me and constructive Criticism is always appreciated. Also, if I don’t update in two weeks, go scream at me to update on my twitter @Historical_King and I’ll be sure to make another update you do that. Until next, Tigerdovefan34, out! also, sorry for the shite map quality. I can't make a map

ok, so you guys probably don't know this but these things are called Timelines. Basically, it's an alt history you create. you can have things happen in your Timeline that seem weird but make sense later on.

I'm used to Alternate Histories having a familiar break-point, like the Battle of Waterloo, something that actually could have gone either way, and then proceeding to discuss how different or how similar our world would be today and the process by which the alteration would occur. That process would be the timeline.

Yours sort of stops in the 17th Century (after losing me from the start, because I don't know anything about Poland-Lithuania other than, damn, that's a big country, it'd be cool if it had absorbed Moscow instead of the other way around, plus the basic fact that the Catholic/Orthodox split follows roughly the old eastern boundary of the Polish Kingdom in the Ukraine).