It is arguably impossible to imagine international relations of the last three centuries or so without the influence of Russia, a country that, except for brief historical episodes, has always played first fiddle in global balances. From its founding by Peter the Great until its fall due to the February Revolution, the Russian Empire consistently ranked among the great powers, co-founding the Concert of Europe in 1815. The Soviet Union, of which Russia was the core part, was very much taken into account even as a pariah state of the Interwar Period, not to mention World War II or especially The Cold War, when it was one of the world's two superpowers. Today's Russia, despite its numerous acute failures and clear weaknesses following the collapse of communism in 1991, remains geopolitically significant, too — a reality that attracts crowds of both supporters and opponents.
The Russia in Ruins trope depicts a setting where Russia at some point ceased to be a major power in the international arena, instead drowning in a whirlwind of unresolved challenges. Russian Guy Suffers Most on the national scale, basically. At worst, Russia simply no longer exists on the world map, but more likely, it will still be around, albeit in a reduced territorial version, to better emphasize the severity of its decline. In such a case, its government is almost guaranteed to be despised wherever it continues to rule and have even worse reputation in those regions where Russia is no longer in charge and is replaced by local warlords, The Mafiya, or administrations of foreign powers lured by the opportunity to gnaw off a piece of a fallen rival's territory.
The reasoning behind Russia's fall into insignificance may vary. Perhaps, it was the pettiness of another of its autocrats that brought the country to disaster. Maybe, Russia plunged into a prolonged, bloody Civil War between many warring parties. Another option is that one of the very long list of invasions of Russia concluded successfully for the aggressor, so the former might have ended up as a Puppet State of the latter. Naturally, there may well be a combination of these and other causes rather than only one of them, although it is also possible that the origin of Russia's downfall will deliberately remain undisclosed due to the author's desire to keep things foggy.
Russia's elimination from the top league opens the door for other leading powers — most often The United States, China, potentially also Japan and European states like The United Kingdom, France, and Germany — to take advantage of the power vacuum and increase their influence worldwide (if not outright take over the world) or at least regionally. Due to geographical closeness, however, it's Russia's immediate and distant neighbors who may have the upper hand in immediately exploiting its turmoil; Poland, Turkey, and, again, China are good candidates, as they have both considerable enough potential and more or less direct access to Russian territories.
The huge nuclear arsenal of Russia deserves a paragraph of its own because of its fate involving one of the trope's most curious-to-explore risks in modern-day and near-future settings. In a case of Russia's disintegration, crazy terrorists, fanatical extremists, Private Military Contractors groups, small-scale bloodthirsty dictators, and the like all get a real opportunity to acquire a Weapon of Mass Destruction, which naturally leads to the prospect of them dictating their will to the world and, no less badly, uncontrolled nuclear proliferation beyond Russian borders. Realistically, no nation-state can quickly enough take control of all dangerous facilities on the territory of Russia's scale while simultaneously dealing with the threat from numerous peace-disrupting factions, especially in the face of possible competition from other states. As such, a task like this is likely to be entrusted to someone like the UN peacekeepers, who will act on behalf of the entire international community to save the world from an unprecedented threat.
Sub-Trope of Failed State and Balkanize Me. Sister Trope to Fallen States of America. Compare Russian Guy Suffers Most. Contrast Russia Takes Over the World, Make the Bear Angry Again, and Post-Soviet Reunion, in which Russia, instead of collapsing, becomes more threatening and/or powerful. This trope is almost a prerequisite for any Alternate-History Nazi Victory setting to come into being.
The prospects for Russia's future are frequently discussed nowadays, yet, due to the controversial nature of the topic, No Real Life Examples, Please!.
Examples:
- Jour J: Texan Apocalypse: After the Cuban Missile Crisis goes hot, Russia and the US annihilate each other via nuclear missiles, although Russia got the worst end of the deal due to underestimating just how many more nukes the US had (the US is now fragmented into several independent polities, none of which like each other, leaving France and the UK as the world's nuclear powers, although Mexico and China are eager to join).
In a handful of minutes, 32 of the 55 preprogrammed Atlas and Titan missiles as well as 40 Jupiter and Thor missiles are launched. 8 minutes later, the first W49 4-megaton independent warheads fell on Moscow, its suburbs, Leningrad, Kiev and all the Soviets' large military bases. [...] At this point, the Americans have already won the war, but those fucking SIOP
computers don't know it!
At almost the same moment, the 3 squadrons of B-47 stratojets on permanent alert take off from their bases, heading for Cuba.52 nuclear weapons strike Cuba, vaporizing 95% of its population and causing major contamination problems in Florida, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico and Haiti.3 hours later, 63 supersonic B-58 Hustler bombers cross the Soviet border at Mach 2, 70,000 feet up. Russia's moribund aerial defenses can do nothing to stop them. Each bomber is carrying 5 B43 bombs with a yield of one megaton each.These 63 strikes are followed by 242 B-52 bombers equipped with the same payload of nuclear bombs.[...]After a second American strike, on Sunday the 28th of October, 430 nuclear weapons had hit the Earth, the majority of which fell on the USSR, which disappeared beneath a cloud of radioactive ash.
- Fanfic writer A.A. Pessimal pulls together fragments of canon suggesting the existence of a Discworld "Russia", and suggested an alternate history where a sort of "Imperial Russia", called Rodinia note simply got too big and collapsed under its own internal stresses, including a revolution and the ill-fated establishment of a "Union of Soviets". Displaced Rodinians, who are potentially capable of reuniting the country, are very carefully identified and offered productive work by either Lord Vetinari of Ankh-Morpork, or Lady Margalotta of Bonk, to keep them gainfully occupied and so that their thoughts do not stray to the possibility of becoming either the Tsar or the Party General Secretary. This is discussed in works such as The Price of Flight.
- Babylon A.D.: Russia has fallen into ruin several decades into the future, with large swaths of the country being ruled by gangster warlords, terrorism from Central Asia being rampant, partial dissolution with territories like "New Serbia" being set up in former Russian territory, and a no-go zone in Siberia where another nuclear power plant apparently had a meltdown after Chernobyl.
- In canon, the Discworld's Russia is fragmented and moribund, with its biggest single remnant state being Mouldavia. In The Compleat Discworld Atlas, this country is described as being somewhat resurgent and seeking to bring neighbouring states, such as Borogravia and Zlobenia, together in a sort of economic union reminiscent of Russia in our world after the fall of the Soviet Union. The canonical novels (The Fifth Elephant, Wintersmith, and others) hint at a "Russia" on the Discworld, but do not go into any great detail on this.
- Metro: Russia, much like the rest of the world in the story, has been nuked into oblivion, with the prewar Russian government wiped out. Thousands of survivors in various Russian cities are forced to live underground and fight against various threats, from mutant wildlife and plants to hostile bandits and militants.
- In Shadowrun, Russia by the mid-21st century is no longer a world power. Most of Siberia was lost in 2031 to a rebel clique of shamans and sentient Awakened beings, halving Russia's territory. What's left is European Russia plus the Trans-Siberian Railway and Far East, an ultranationalist authoritarian regime dominated by neo-Soviets, the military, criminals, and global mega-corps.
- Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: The central event of the game's plot is a Civil War in Russia between the Loyalists, supporters of the current federal system, and the Ultranationalists, idolizers of the Soviet Union who want to make Russia a force to be feared by the West again. Russian territory is freely accessible to American and British operatives, who support the Loyalists. For their activities, the leader of the Ultranationalists, Imran Zakhaev, at the end of the game fires nuclear missiles at the United States from a nuclear launch facility he has seized. Although the strike was halted and Zakhaev himself was killed, the Ultranationalists eventually gained the upper hand in the war, so in the second and third installments of the series, the trope is Inverted into Make the Bear Angry Again, with Russia reaching the English Channel and fighting on the US east coast.
- Civilization IV:
- The "Broken Star" scenario revolves around a modern-day Civil War in Russia, which is divided into eight mutually hostile military districts. Aside from reunifying Russia, they fight to take possession of nukes on its territory; to win, you can either take control of seven nukes out of all ten available or convert four owned nukes from unarmed to armed, which takes a lot of time. To make matters more difficult, there are also the UN forces, who initially guard the nukes, and the rebels, who just seek to get in everyone's way.
- In the "Next War" scenario, the world is divided between four huge superpowers. Russia is not one of them and is instead part of Europa, except for its far east, which belongs to the Pan-Asiatic People's Cooperative.
- Crisis in the Kremlin: The game (the 2017 version, specifically), being a simulator of the General Secretary in the late USSR, features a wide variety of endings, both positive, in which the collapse of communism and the nightmares of The '90s are avoided, and negative, in which the player repeats real history or reaches an even worse outcome. Among the latter, particularly stands out the "Military Defeat" ending, in which the USSR, having previously carried out nuclear disarmament, becomes the target of a NATO military operation, with the winners ultimately breaking the USSR into several controlled democratic republics.
- Fallout: Averted with the Pre-War Soviet Union, which lost its status as a premier communist superpower at some point during the alternate Cold War but still remained at the forefront of world politics until October 23, 2077, i.e., the Great War. In a sense, the Soviet Union can even be considered lucky relative to other top powers of the Resource Wars era, as it was not a party to any of its large-scale conflicts and therefore avoided the misery like that of the European Commonwealth and the Middle East, whose futile war drained them of their last resources and thus might without any payoff, or the United States and China, whose war lasted a few years longer and crippled both sides even before they caused nuclear Armageddon.
- Pretty common across Hearts of Iron IV mods:
- In Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg, Russia, at least initially, is not doing well. About two decades ago, the nation lost the Weltkrieg by descending into a bloody Civil War, in which the White movement managed to defeat the Reds. Despite their success, the victors had no choice but to recognize the withdrawal of a number of territories of the former Russian Empire. Another disaster was that political, economic, and social disarray remained steadily high even after the war, with urgent issues more often being ignored than addressed. Now, in 1936, Russia is headed by an ultranationalist visionary, Boris Savinkov, who promises to restore the nation's glory by avenging its losses; it is highly uncertain, however, whether he will succeed or even stay in power until the outbreak of the Second Weltkrieg, a defeat in which, regardless of who is in power at the time, will mean the final ruin of Russia's great-power ambitions.
- In The New Order: Last Days of Europe, an Axis Victory Scenario, Russia has collapsed into many warlords after its defeat in World War II, with Moscow being under German occupation. If Sergei Taborisky reunites Russia, it will inevitably collapse again.
- In Red Flood, Russia is fragmented, with Kolchak's official government controlling most of the European part, and nothing outside it.
- Marauder: Russia is in a state of anarchy, courtesy of its leaders selling their country out to NATO, whose peacekeepers on Russian territory are effectively acting as occupiers instead of promoting democracy as they claim.
- Mount & Blade: The game map of With Fire and Sword roughly recreates Eastern Europe in the mid-17th century and features five factions: the Cossack Hetmanate, the Crimean Khanate, the Kingdom of Sweden, the Muscovite Tsardom, and the Polish Commonwealth. The elimination of the Muscovite Tsardom is a necessary prerequisite for the completion of two of the three quest lines, namely "The Secret of the Black Mace" for the Cossack Hetmanate and "The Deluge" for the Polish Commonwealth. As for the third storyline, "The False Dmitry", the player, instead of destroying the Muscovite Tsardom, must capture all of Eastern Europe for it.
- Downplayed in Red Alert 3's expansion: The Allies won in the previous game, but they don't have the resources and manpower to police the USSR (since they also have to do the same in Japan), allowing the Soviets to reassemble their forces.
- Wolfenstein: The New Order: Background information reveals that the Nazis, led by Deathshead, succeeded in completing Operation Barbarossa and took control of the entire Soviet Union by 1948, subsequently colonizing and renaming it the "Russian Territories". When resistance by the Russians made settlement untenable, the region was subjected to nuclear bombardment in 1971, causing the country to become uninhabitable and causing refugees to spread all over the world as "undesirables".
- In The Warrior Returns, Russia's own Glacial Warrior, Ivan Pushkin, fails to kill Minsu, who continues his advance from Korea into Russia, massacring anyone in his path. The situation becomes so dire that Russian officials decide to launch their entire nuclear arsenal at Minsu in an effort to kill him. But this doesn't even tickle Minsu after he transforms into a Demon Lord, leaving much of Russia irradiated and completely uninhabitable. Many of the fleeing Russian refugees are then killed by Minsu or by Belgis when Queen Elizabeth II unleashes the 20th-century Faith Warrior in an effort to slow Minsu down enough for the rest of Europe to evacuate.
- Russia's fate in a number of notable Alternate History scenarios will have the nation suffer this.
- In The Death of Russia, the Yeltsin administration's poor handling of Russia's economy following the dismantling of the USSR leads to an OTL coup attempt being successful in deposing and killing the president here. The subsequent implosion of the National Salvation Front leads to a brutal Civil War that goes on for three years (along with ethnic separatists fighting for a chance at freedom for their own nations) and culminates in an all-out nuclear exchange. When the dust finally settles, Russia's been split into eight different countries while the overall death toll numbers at around 38 million people. While not all is completely lost, as the people and culture still live on in some form through the successor states and a lively global diaspora of War Refugees, it's clear Russia's days as an influential power are over, but it does end on a hopeful note that, given time, the rebirth of Russia as a nation may still be possible.
- Taken to a horrific degree in The Anglo/American – Nazi War. The divergence point in this alternate timeline is Hitler deciding against deploying the Afrika Korps and instead sending the troops and equipment to Stalingrad. While this does leave Britain in much better shape, it also results in Stalingrad ending with a Nazi victory and ultimately leads to Russia's defeat by 1943. Most of the Russian population is subsequently either exterminated outright or sent into forced labour to slave away in appalling conditions for the Nazi industrial machine, and this fate really isn't very far from what the Nazis planned for the defeated Russians in Real Life. And then once the Allies win the war, things get even worse for the surviving Russians as their country fractures into several warring factions due to the Nazis decapitating their leadership.
- Steven Universe: As shown on a map of the show's radically different geography of Earth, the entire centre of Russia is completely gone, replaced with a huge, nearly circular body of water approximately centred on the location of The Tunguska Event. It's never commented on, so we don't learn what the actual geopolitical implications of all this are, but it seems clear that if Russia even exists, it must be in a very different form compared to Real Life.
