2095: Blood and Iron

[Plzen]

"We the Peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, and for these ends to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples, have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims. Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organisation to be known as the United Nations."

- Charter of the United Nations, 26th June 1945

2095: Blood and Iron

A century and a half have passed since our forefathers have put those optimistic words on paper, and things are not going well...

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CITIZENS, WELCOME

Hello, and welcome to 2095: Blood and Iron, the latest roleplay hosted by yours truly. Blood and Iron imagines a future where the optimistic hopes of science and politics did not work out for the best, where modern society proved unable to move beyond its many contradictions and has collapsed back on its refuse. One and a half centuries have passed since nuclear punctuation has ended the most devastating military conflict in human history, and the internationalist experiment of the United Nations seems to be grinding to an halt as nations once more withdraw into themselves and armies once more march to battle. Backed between the harsh realities of a crumbling civilisation and the harsh fictions of international politics, what future can your nation seize for itself...?

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THE WORLD OF BLOOD AND IRON

The last hundred and fifty years have been no less turbulent than the devastating World Wars that preceded it. Where to begin...?

The 21st Century saw the machine of the Industrial Revolution culminate into a fever pitch, consumption confused with prosperity and wealth mistaken for righteousness. Now, in the aftermath of this consumerist party, as we awake from the haze of thoughtless advertising - we did what? we went where? - mankind now finds itself now charged with cleaning up the mess it left behind.

The greatest environmental challenge, perhaps, might be found in the horrors of climate change. This has been a threat foreseen not just by the scientific community, but by states and civil societies alike since at least the late 20th Century, but the world always was and still is too paralysed by petty squabbles and shorter-term issues to take any decisive action on the matter early enough to count. Petroleum and natural gas reserves were tapped dry in the mid-to-late 21st Century, and most of the world's great powers finally got around to agreeing on a global prohibition on coal use in the landmark Seoul Agreement of 2089, these were far too little, far too late. From 1945 to 2095 the world has heated up three degrees centigrade in temperature and almost two metres of sea level rise. While damaging enough on its own, with coastal cities inundated in storm surges and heat waves ravaging everywhere from southern Europe to Australia, its effects on the world's water cycle was far worse.

Satellite images today show a vast string of deserts encircling the world. From what used to be the Great Plains of the United States all the way to Patagonia, one vast stretch of dryland dominates the American continent. In the Old World, another vast stretch of desert stretches from the Alps to the Nigerian coast, stretching eastwards through the Middle East, Central Asia, Western China, and India all the way to the Burmese mountains. Even as typhoons devastate the American east, as summer gales terrify the British Isles and Scandinavia, and as typhoons inundate the already-flooded coastal cities of East Asia, people in the still-hydrated regions of the world sigh in relief that their homelands are at least still farmable. Somewhat, at least.

Chemical pollution is the other great threat of the era. Centuries of industrial debris, bits of half-degraded plastics, runoff from agricultural fertilisers, and the waste byproducts of the pharmaceutical industry, are embedded in every corner of the ecosystem, from the air we breathe, to the oceans we fish in, in the forests and hills of our ancestral homes. Cancer, stroke, and all sorts of what used to be old-age diseases are creeping down the population pyramid, as the haze of pollution slowly eats away at mankind's health.

All this has also played havoc on the global food supply. With the rapid population growth of the 20th and 21st Century combined with the devastating effects of environmental destruction, nearly five billion people live in wastelands with little or no ability to produce food, as more fortunate countries started hoarding food for their own stores and grain prices spiked. Now, billions of people - not just people in the developing world, but also the less fortunate in the wealthier countries - are kept alive on rations of caloric blocks. Food not grown from plants in the ground, but from microbes and chemicals in a chemistry lab.

Perhaps it is the greatest of ironies that the greatest suffering from both these problems are those levied on the developing world, who are not only the least responsible for them but are also the least able to deal with them. What, one wonders, is the difference between Britain of Cecil Rhode's time, who have stolen Africa's mineral wealth, and the United States of Donald Trump's, who have stolen the continent's very habitability?

The relentless march of technology during the Industrial Revolution has, if anything, only accelerated in the post-1945 world. Three important innovations came out of the Second World War - rocketry, electronic computing, and nucleonics.

While the Space Race captivated the public imagination, it was electronic computing that grew into its shoes first. The waves of automation starting in the 1970s put an end to the industrial proletariat that has so dominated political thought in the past century, driving workers away from vast assembly lines into little office cubicles, each man in his own. The Information Revolution of the 1990s transformed the way the world thinks about knowledge, as ignorance stopped being about not knowing, and instead started being about knowing too much of little value. Truth, not hidden, but buried in the irrelevant. While fears that artificial intelligence would make human labour irrelevant ultimately proved unfounded - the advancement of electronic computing met some hard fundamental physical limits in the late 2020s that finally broke the downwards trend in the cost of computing power - there can be no doubt that computing was still the technology that defined the post-1945 era.

The expense of nucleonics and its safety concerns - consistently perceived to be far larger than they actually are - has kept commercial nuclear power from fulfilling the dreams of early visionaries of the so-called "atomic age", but it, too, came to dominate the human way of doing things. A niche technology in its early days as all new technologies tend to be, the oil shocks of the 1970s was the start of the mass expansion of nuclear power around the world. The increasing cost of fossil fuels throughout the 21st Century and the measures of the Seoul Agreement only accelerated this trend, as renewable energy started to hit some hard limits. The development and installation of so-called "fourth-generation" nuclear power plants throughout the mid-to-late 21st Century has largely freed nuclear power from concerns of fuel shortages, and as of 2095 nuclear power - alongside 3rd generation biofuels, which comes a close second - is the dominant source of energy on the planet, except in those regions that enjoy an abundance of renewable energy or are so desperate as to renege on the Seoul Agreement. Neither 4th Generation nuclear power nor biofuels are cheap, and the cost of energy is perhaps higher than it has ever been since the dawn of the petroleum era, but at least in the developed world, cities can keep their lights on.

Military applications of nuclear bombs proved no less important. The American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki let a beast out of its cage that could not be put back again. The subsequent Cold War, an ideological struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, saw more and more nations build larger and larger arsenals of nuclear weapons, eventually resulting in the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction, that peace can be assured by the guarantee that any war would result in the collective destruction of all belligerents. The increasing sophistication of anti-missile technologies and, for the less technologically developed nations, air shelters and civil defence techniques, in the post-Cold War era and the early-to-mid 20th Century slowly put an end to this line of thought, but after the remilitarisations and instability of the late 21st Century, the number of nations who hold a nuclear arsenal and the sizes of arsenals they hold are larger than ever in 2095 - and with nations feeling ever-more-confident about their ability to survive a nuclear attack, worries that sooner or later someone really will turn the keys is intensifying.

Perhaps ironically, the technology that saw the greatest public enthusiasm and attention of visionaries - rocketry - proved, in the end, to have the smallest impact on human society. At least, so far. The Americans were the first to put down the first permanent moon base in 2039 and the Europeans the first to put one on the moon in 2058. Today there are more than two hundred people in space who do not call Earth home, who live and work semi-permanently in the various space stations, outposts, and research bases scattered across Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt. Today, the Asteroid Belt is slowly grabbing for itself a small share of the precious metals market - although this doesn't help the shortage of base metals like copper or aluminium, which are needed in quantities too large and prices too low to be shipped from space. Space exploration continues to push forwards, and a great deal of money and prestige are being won in the venture, but in terms of real social, economic, and political impact, space travel has so far failed to make any.

Moving away from technologies pioneered in the Second World War, biotechnology and genetic engineering, although late to development and application, have had a profound if often-understated impact on human life. Genetically-engineered life has been used in various capacities since the 1980s, with the first genetically-modified foods hitting the shelves soon after in the 1990s. The biological, often genetic, but sometimes chemical or even physical, modifications of human beings started to really come into use in the early-to-mid 20th Century. Initially, these means were used mostly to treat disease. But once the initial waves of public moral outrage and instinctive discomfort at playing with the fundamental building blocks of life were overcome, these methods began to expand. The same methods that could cure senility in the old could also be used to boost intelligence in younger people. The same methods that could cure blindness could also grant superhuman eyesight. And if you were going to remove skin conditions from your baby, why not also make that skin more in line with aesthetic norms too? Slowly, bioengineering moved on from curing diseases, to bettering the already-healthy, and finally on to vanity features like hair colour or height.

With many youthful and healthy hundred-year-olds walking around, Peter Schwartz seems to be well on the way to win his much-publicised $2,000 bet that there would be at least one person born in the 20th Century that would be still alive in 2150. Chances are good that there will be hundreds of thousands, too, not just one. But this also developed into a major social issue. The development of sophisticated new techniques raised the costs of medical treatment, and the slowly crumbling economy and rising manufacturing costs raised it further still. Throughout human history, the poor and downtrodden could at least console themselves that the rich and powerful lived and died just like them. But when the rich could actually make themselves stronger, smarter, and prettier, and when they had double or even triple the life expectancy of the common folk, well...

The progress of the late 20th Century led to dreams of a more equal world of shared prosperity. The great success first of the Asian Tiger economies of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and the later rapid growth of China and the Southeast Asian economies, gave hope to the newly-independent former colonies that anyone could make it among the ranks of the industrialised and respected. These dreams, however, were killed by the realities of the 21st Century, as inequality both between countries and within them grew.

The Middle Income Trap is a term first used in the early 21st Century to describe countries that were wealthy enough to no longer enjoy plentiful and cheap labour - the usual way by which low-income nations become middle-income nations - but were not wealthy enough to compete in the human capital and infrastructure of high-technology industries - the usual way by which middle-income nations become high-income nations - and thereby became stuck in transition between the underdeveloped and developed worlds.

With the advancement of automation, the Middle Income Trap became stronger than ever. The low-hanging fruit of innovation ran dry and the amount of research investment and expertise needed to make any significant discoveries in any field of applied science became ever-more-exorbitant, even as the development of information technology slowly ground down the value of undifferentiated, semi-educated workers and thus the advantage of low wages. As competition between cutting-edge nations intensified, the cost-of-entry to the high-technology industries grew.

After decades of strife and pain, decades of readjustments and collapsing state companies, China barely made it through the Middle Income Trap, barely averaging 3% a year in real economic growth in the forty years after the coronavirus pandemic and the trade wars of the 2020s and finally joining the ranks of the developed nations in public perception in the late 2060s. But the path that they took, the path that countries like South Korea took before them, was solidly closed to other developing countries with similar aspirations thereafter.

Inequality within countries did not significantly grow between 1945 and 2095 in absolute economic terms. As political power shifted between people more interested in social equity and people less interested in the same, income inequality within countries grew for a few decades, shrunk for a few thereafter, grew again, and shrunk again. All considered, the overall trend was fairly flat and society today is neither an egalitarian utopia nor a stratified hierarchy by the standards of 1945.

The social inequality between classes in the same country, however, grew worse in other ways. Research in the late 20th Century and early 21st found that there was a certain limit to how much the quality of life could be improved with more money. In the lower incomes, more money meant only having to deal with fewer money-related worries. In the high incomes, more money just meant more stuff - and more stuff was not necessarily better stuff, as the persistent string of high-profile suicides of wealthy celebrities or businessmen attest. But as technology advanced throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries, and real incomes peaked in the late 21st Century and started to decline as the post-industrial world crumbled, the proportion of people free of money worries declined.

Social mobility, too, started to freeze. As the era of rapid economic growth that began with the Industrial Revolution slowly came to an end, opportunities dried up, and increasingly those who had not found it difficult to put their children, with limited connections and limited experiences, among the ranks of those who had. Increasingly, the only opportunities for wealth and power that children of the poor had was that offered by the Civil Service and the public sector, ruled by a harsh meritocracy that had children working themselves to the bone for every last examination mark.

For those less inclined for all-but-bloody struggles for wealth, power, and fame in the public sector, there was always the familiar comforts of violence, narcotics, and prostitution, the three sisters of vice that always accompany any population of the resigned and hopeless. Or, for those too despondent for even that, the endless flood of cheap digital entertainment, courtesy of sophisticated information and communications technologies.

A "well-functioning democracy" near the dawn of the 22nd Century consists, in the end, of a large population of impoverished people kept pacified with cheap entertainment ruled over by, depending on the country, a private sector consisting of a well-connected and indispensable social elite, or a State and government consisting of brutal realpolitik struggles for power.

All this have seen nations withdraw on themselves. Nations do still form multinational blocs with their neighbours, and regional integration is still very much a serious force in global politics, but the brief 21st Century flirt with vast multinational corporations and globalised markets have largely come to an end. While certainly rising fuel prices have played a role in the decline of global trade, credit must primarily be attributed to political and diplomatic forces rather than the purely economic.

The widening gap between the developed nations and those left behind scratching a living in the ever-expanding deserts have inspired strong emotions, with tens of millions pledging bloody revenge against their exploiters even as tens of millions of their neighbours plot how to join them through leaky boats and goat trails.

While the rising tide of Central American migrants to the United States or Canada and the rush of Southern European or North Africa immigrants into Central or Northern Europe certainly do continue, the worst spectacles of desperate immigration can be seen in the mountains of Myanmar and the open waters of the Bay of Bengal, where the relatively better-off states of Southeast Asia tries to deal with the ever-increasing influx of Indians fleeing from a hopeless life. While the politicians and commanders of Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur still make a show of respecting the international conventions on refugees and illegal immigrants, they are slowly growing ever more exasperated at the situation, and extreme radicals that claim that the problem would be neatly solved by drowning Myanmar in blood are starting to grow louder and louder.

In the meantime, terrorism continues to haunt all but the most stable nations of the world. The world's great powers of the developed world - the United States and China, especially - seem entangled in an endless quagmire across the world's oceans trying to prop up their ailing allies and trying to suppress the coastal piracy plaguing the world's trade routes.

China is and has remained for half a century the dominant military, diplomatic, economic power on the planet - courtesy of their unmatched 900 millions in population - but with, on one hand, its western and northern territories rapidly desertifying and riling up "pacified" cultural minorities and, on the other hand, its educated urban populations demanding drastic social reforms, it's starting to become an open question whether they can even hold their own territory together. Its main challenger, the United States - 500 millions residents strong and growing - faces no less serious problems within their own borders. Desertifying western territories, racial strife, endless military quagmires trying to stabilise its southern neighbours, and a strong and increasingly radicalised domestic environmentalist movement...

In many ways, perhaps, despite so many changes, the world of 2095 shares similarities with the world of 1945 that neither shares with the world of 2020.

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JOIN THE CHAOS

You may apply as any highly autonomous organisation that de-facto administers some territory or population. In most cases - especially in the developed world - this will mean countries, but given the semi-dystopian nature of the world of this RP it may also be possible for corporations, religious institutions, et cetera to have powers and privileges normally reserved for independent countries.

The application format is as below. Replace all brackets with the appropriate content. I've made the format of the application very loose instead of demanding specific details, so feel free to not write about anything that you feel is not important to know in order to understand your organisation concept. The only thing I will specifically demand that everyone do in their articles - no exceptions - is that after reading your application, I should understand why/how your nation exists (if it doesn't exist IRL or is significantly different from IRL), what territory it covers, and roughly how much regional/global influence it has.

While I encourage you to talk about your 1945-2020 history in your application, this is not an alternate-history RP, and you may not change events that really did happen.

Since I will be judging your writing ability from your application, there is no need for you to provide an RP sample.

Code: Select all

[size=150][b](the English name of your organisation in all-caps)[/b][/size]
[i](the name of your organisation in your organisation's primary language(s), each language on a separate line - delete this line if your organisation's sole primary language is English)[/i]

(de-jure organisation type - is it a republic, a kingdom, a federation? is it not legally a country at all, and is instead some other kind of organisation?) with a (outlook).
[hr][/hr]
(an encyclopedia-style article giving a brief overview of your organisation's post-1945 history, politics, territory, economy, demographics, and military/diplomacy; minimum 1,000 words)

[hr][/hr]
[i]2095: Blood and Iron; an application[/i]

The outlook of your nation is a brief generalisation of how your organisation views the world. You may choose one of the following; if you feel that your organisation's ideology and guiding principles do not fall into any of these categories, telegram me to discuss your idea.

China and the United States may not adopt the same outlook.

Revolutionary Outlook
States with a revolutionary outlook believe that there is a need to protect the people from insidious foreign forces. This can take many forms, including nationalists protecting their nation from ethnic extinction, socialists protecting their people from international capitalism, et cetera, but a common theme is a certain paranoia for and distrust of foreigners.

Transhumanist Outlook
States with a transhumanist outlook reject the fundamental idea of humanity and human value. These states tend to have a very functional view of human beings - as entities that consume certain resources and produce certain outputs - and believe that humans ought to be made more efficient in this mechanical way through technology and that humans so improved are better than less efficient humans.

Arcadian Outlook
States with an arcadian outlook reject the basic assumption that a distinction can be drawn between human society and the environment in which it exists. In much the same way that a heart, lungs, and kidneys form a coherent and unified entity known as a body, human beings, the natural environment that supports them, and the civilisation they build form a coherent entity that either prospers together or perishes together.

Conservative Outlook
States with an conservative outlook are fairly cautious in attitude and generally agree with the post-1945 consensus. They believe - at least in theory - in international cooperation and they practice some kind of electoral government with leaders - again, at least in theory - being accountable to the people they lead. They also tend to have foreign policies revolving around common threats.

Neutral Outlook
States with a neutral outlook is a catch-all term for military juntas, cults of personality, absolute monarchies, and other such authoritarian states that sometimes pay lip service to tradition, democracy, or some other ideology, but ultimately bases their true legitimacy on their command of violent force.

The reservation format is as below. Reservations last 24 hours. It is intended that you put up a reservation when you start writing your application, to avoid having someone else put up an application for the same territory first while you were hard at work researching for your application.

Code: Select all

[size=150][b]RESERVATION[/b][/size]
Name of state/organisation:
Territory reserved:

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THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

NEW ZEALAND - a one party state with a transhumanist outlook
POLAR DEVELOPMENT CONGLOMERATE, THE - a plutocratic corporate fiefdom with a transhumanist outlook
RICHARD-KLOSSNER PACT - a federation with a conservative outlook
RUSSIAN FEDERATION - a federal presidential constitutional republic with a conservative outlook

[Joohan]

Right-wing America will occupy Ottawa, I swear it

[Plzen]

Right-wing America will occupy Ottawa, I swear it

Are you sure you can handle playing as the United States? I know that your military career forces your absence from NationStates from time to time.

[Joohan]

Right-wing America will occupy Ottawa, I swear it

Are you sure you can handle playing as the United States? I know that your military career forces your absence from NationStates from time to time.

Nah I was making a joke fam. I've barely got enough time for my own thing. I'm just gonna lurk.

[Plzen]

Nah I was making a joke fam. I've barely got enough time for my own thing. I'm just gonna lurk.

Ah, okee. Good to hear that you find this interesting, at least. :p

---

Revised a few things in the OP, corrected spelling errors and the like; should be good as-is now.

[Kenobot]

Well that was a read and a half...
Given the status of biotechnology, would it be safe to assume that some sort of cloning technology can in certain states/organisations be present?
I'm thinking of Transhumanist supremacist state, but tossing up whether to include cloning into the mix with it.

[Plzen]

Given the status of biotechnology, would it be safe to assume that some sort of cloning technology can in certain states/organisations be present?

It would exist, yes, for a variety of purposes.

[Kenobot]

Given the status of biotechnology, would it be safe to assume that some sort of cloning technology can in certain states/organisations be present?

It would exist, yes, for a variety of purposes.

Excellent! I shall incorporate it later into the RP though. Would be a wasted opportunity not to. Now to reserve my idea


RESERVATION
Name of state/organisation: The Greater Slavic State (Name may change, but some variation of this)
Territory reserved: European Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia

[Plzen]

RESERVATION
Name of state/organisation: The Greater Slavic State (Name may change, but some variation of this)
Territory reserved: European Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia

Noted! Remember that reservations last 24 hours.

[Kenobot]

RESERVATION
Name of state/organisation: The Greater Slavic State (Name may change, but some variation of this)
Territory reserved: European Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia

Noted! Remember that reservations last 24 hours.

Indeed. My research is underway. Is there a set way the Soviet Union collapsed in this RP?

[Plzen]

Indeed. My research is underway. Is there a set way the Soviet Union collapsed in this RP?

As the original post says, this is not an alternate-history RP. Events up until 2020 are as they were in real life.

[Kenobot]

Indeed. My research is underway. Is there a set way the Soviet Union collapsed in this RP?

As the original post says, this is not an alternate-history RP. Events up until 2020 are as they were in real life.

Woops my bad I must have missed that.

[New yugoslavaia]

Looks interesting, but I fear the overuse of text walls will turn away potential new players. Something more digestible would work better.

Also, map?

[Plzen]

Looks interesting, but I fear the overuse of text walls will turn away potential new players. Something more digestible would work better.

Ahaha, I may have gotten a bit carried away with the worldbuilding. :p It sets up an interesting social background, though, or so I hope.

Also, map?

None yet. Perhaps someone will volunteer to make one, but at the moment I don't really see a need to have one.

[New yugoslavaia]

Looks interesting, but I fear the overuse of text walls will turn away potential new players. Something more digestible would work better.

Ahaha, I may have gotten a bit carried away with the worldbuilding. It sets up an interesting social background, though, or so I hope.

Also, map?

None yet. Perhaps someone will volunteer to make one, but at the moment I don't really see a need to have one.

That's not the problem, it's just that there is a lot to read.
Which would be fine if it wasn't just text walls.

[Kenobot]

Abandoned this idea, but leaving for any other potential Russian player should they choose to incorporate elements of this

The Greater Russian State
Великое Российское Государство

Unitary One Party Republic with a Revolutionary outlook

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(an encyclopedia-style article giving a brief overview of your organisation's post-1945 history, politics, territory, economy, demographics, and military/diplomacy; minimum 1,000 words)
Russia or The Greater Russian State is a country in Eastern Europe. Extending from Kaliningrad in the West to the Urals In the East, south to the Caucuses and North to the Arctic, Russia is one of the largest nations in Europe and indeed the world, covering half of Europe's landmass at 5,172,382 square kilometres. With a population of over 215 Million people, Russia is one of the most populous nation in the world. Its capital and largest city is Moscow. Other major urban areas included St Petersburg, Kiev, Minsk, Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan. Russian is the official language and its Alphabet is Cyrillic.

The East Slavs emerged as a recognisable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. The medieval state of Rus' arose in the 9th century. In 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus' ultimately disintegrated into a number of smaller states, until it was finally reunified by the Grand Duchy of Moscow in the 15th century. By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation, and exploration to become the Russian Empire, which became a major European power, and the third-largest empire in history, stretching from Norway on the west to Canada on the east. Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian SFSR became the largest and leading constituent of the Soviet Union, the world's first constitutionally socialist state. The Soviet Union played a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II, and emerged as a recognised superpower and rival to the United States during the Cold War. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian SFSR reconstituted itself as the Russian Federation and was recognised as the continuing legal personality and a successor of the USSR.

Following the constitutional crisis of 1993, a new constitution was adopted and Russia was governed as a federal semi-presidential republic. Vladimir Putin became acting president on 31 December 1999 after Boris Yeltsin resigned and was elected president in March 2000. Following this, he dominated Russia's political system as either president or prime minister. His government was accused by non-governmental organisations of numerous human rights abuses, authoritarianism and corruption. In response, Putin argued that Western-style liberalism is obsolete in Russia, while maintaining that the country was still a democratic nation. In late 2020 during the Belarus crisis following the Presidential elections, Putin came to an arrangement with President Lukashenko whereby he would remain President of a subject Belarussian state inside a Greater Russia Union State. Sending Russian police into Belarus, Putin and Lukashenko violently put down the protests; actions which received wide-ranging condemnation and were met with yet more crippling and wide-ranging sanctions from the West. With the continuing low oil prices, economic sanctions and an adversarial West, the Russian economy found itself at a standstill and Russia itself a pariah state which few powers sought to deal with. The consequence of this new reality for Russia was country-spanning protests in early 2021 which were initially violently suppressed by the FSB until local police and army units turned against the government forces. By mid-2021, all but Moscow, where the police and army had remained loyal, had fallen to the rebellious Russian Army. Knowing the end was near, the flight of the oligarchs and regime officials began. Over land, sea and air, they fled to other authoritarian states promising sanctuary...for a fee. Putin himself however would go down with the ship and stayed on as the fractured rebel forces began their assault on Moscow, hanging himself in the Grand Kremlin Palace and denying the rebels the chance to prosecute him.

With the fall of Putin’s Russia, the task of rebuilding and reestablishing a Russian state began. Initially a military junta would administer Russia until free and fair elections could be held, wherein the elected government would take the reigns of power. Upon the election of a new civilian government, a conference was held with the US and EU to discuss the future of Eastern Europe. The issue of Belarus dominated much of the discussion with the western powers, with the Russians defiant on the issue of Belarus being within the Russian sphere. Eventually a compromise was reached, with Belarus’ independence being restored but the western powers acknowledging Russia’s legitimate right to protect Russian minorities in Eastern Europe if their rights were being infringed. Outraged at the outcome of the conference, the Baltic States and Ukraine united to form a new defensive alliance against Russia and withdrew from NATO. Meanwhile in Russia, while a geopolitically sound outcome for Russia itself, the population was outraged at the humiliation of having to surrender what they considered part of the triune Russian nation. It was this humiliation which brought together a group of disgruntled army officers, bureaucrats, nationalist activists and ex-security service agents to form a new political party to restore Russia to its rightful place on the world stage; the All-Russian Party (Vserossiyskaya partiya).


From its beginnings, the All-Russian Party was seen as anti-democratic and a natural progression of Putin’s United Russia Party and while it was certainly anti-democratic and partly inspired by United Russia, it did not seek to replicate the systemic corruption associated with Putin’s Russia. In 2024, just as the humiliation of the loss of Belarus had finally faded away, the new Russian government announced that they would be handing back territory taken during the reign of Vladimir Putin such as Crimea. This simply added insult to injury; the Western powers hadn’t asked this of Russia a few years earlier, so why would we hand back territory populated by Russians, historically Russian and controlled by Russia? It was a question no one in the Kremlin could answer but all Russians knew what it was; it was an appeal to the Western powers. Whatever the reason, it was one humiliation too many for thousands of Russians as they took to the streets in anger. Meanwhile in Georgia, it was thought that all the Russian government needed was a slight push in order for them to surrender South Ossetia and Abkhazia back to Georgia and preparations were made for a military adventure into these territories. At dawn on the 26th of September 2025, Georgian troops entered South Ossetia and Abkhazia, their advance being preceded by an artillery bombardment on Russian positions inside these two breakaway states. The response from the Kremlin didn’t come; not out of want to respond, but because of their fear that responding with force would result in crippling sanctions that would break Russia as they had only a few short years earlier. This inaction became the tipping point for many protestors and the leaders of the All-Russian Party used this to their advantage, sending provocateurs into the crowds and following them up with recruiters for the party. As the ranks of the All-Russian party swelled, it became apparent that the party would become quite influential at the following years’ parliamentary elections with many seats being held by the party while currently it held but a handful.

As the protests continued across Russia and the New Year dawned, it became more and more apparent to the Kremlin that should the All-Russian Party garner enough support, that they may attempt to seize power in coordination with the Army and overthrow the democratic regime. To prepare for this, the governing democratic party set up a number of paramilitary groups, with the goal of defending the democratic order in Russia. Chief among these was the United Democratic Front of Russia, who numbered some 50,000. As these democratic paramilitary groups began flexing their muscles to break up All-Russian Party rallies as well as other extreme-right wing groups, the All-Russian Party and other right-wing groups formed a united bloc for the upcoming elections and set up paramilitary organisations of their own, including a revived militant “All-Russian National Unity". This group saw the failures of Russia for the past century to be the result of the influence and control of foreigners, traitors and most particularly the ethnic minorities of Russia who resisted Russificiation. As both sides of the political divide began arming their supporters, conflict became inevitable and clashes occurred on the streets of major population centres across Russia. By the time elections were to be called, the violence on the streets had escalated into a bloodbath and almost every Russian had chosen their side. Knowing that defeat was almost inevitable for the democratic bloc in parliament, the President Grigory Yavlinsky instituted martial law and suspended elections pending the end of the violence, while enlisting the assistance of the democratic militias to enforce the martial law. This was the final straw for the right forces, whom declared the government to be illegitimate and stated that they would form a new government. Upon this declaration, the situation had escalated beyond a political crisis and into a civil war and the Democratic front leadership fled to Yekaterinburg, just across the Urals. Meanwhile Army High Command were split on their allegiances, leading to a stalling in the implementation of martial law, which rightist forces led by the All-Russian National Unity militia, used as an opportunity to seize Moscow from government forces in an important symbolic and strategic victory. As Army High Command debated on their course of action, individual unit commanders began pledging their allegiances for one side or the other. Eventually, Army High Command dissolved itself and was succeeded by High Commands on either side of the Second Russian Civil War.

The Second Russian Civil War was to last the next 7 years and cost the lives of millions of Russians, both civilians and military personnel. While right forces suffered initial victories at Kazan and Volgograd that made it appear that rightist victory was but around the corner, however the Democratic counter-offensive that opened the second year of the war quickly put an end to any hope of a quick and decisive victory. As each side bled more and more manpower, the desperation to win grew stronger and stronger and willingness to make otherwise immoral choices increased. As the war dragged on into its 5th year, the more moderate right forces had seen enough bloodshed and presented a draft peace treaty to be sent to the democratic forces, restoring Democracy while ensuring the position of the moderate leaders. The extreme-wing forces and leaders such as the new leader of the All-Russian National Unity Militia, Andrey Savelyev, were outraged by such a proposal and immediately began plotting to overthrow the moderate leadership of the rightist forces.

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2095: Blood and Iron; an application

[Sao Nova Europa]

RESERVATION
Name of state/organisation: North Asian Federation (NAF)
Territory reserved: Russian Asia/North Asia

[Kenobot]

RESERVATION
Name of state/organisation: North Asian Federation (NAF)
Territory reserved: Russian Asia/North Asia

North Asia? Sounds a bit much

[Sao Nova Europa]

RESERVATION
Name of state/organisation: North Asian Federation (NAF)
Territory reserved: Russian Asia/North Asia

North Asia? Sounds a bit much

North Asia is basically Siberia/Asian part of Russia only. I am not claiming other parts of Asia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Asia

Also, since you are the Russian player, we should work together on history and how Siberia became independent from Russia.

[Kenobot]

North Asia? Sounds a bit much

North Asia is basically Siberia/Asian part of Russia only. I am not claiming other parts of Asia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Asia

Also, since you are the Russian player, we should work together on history and how Siberia became independent from Russia.

Ok that makes a lot more sense. Was thinking you were including Northern China which could have been a stretch haha.
I'm currently writing up a civil war bit which starts in July 2026 where the right-extreme right launch a failed coup following the suspension of elections by the nominally democratic forces, which will be protracted and result in the extreme right (Basically actual nazis) taking charge of the right forces and pushing the democratic forces out past the Urals and stopping there. What kind of nation are you thinking of building in Russian Asia?

[Sao Nova Europa]

North Asia is basically Siberia/Asian part of Russia only. I am not claiming other parts of Asia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Asia

Also, since you are the Russian player, we should work together on history and how Siberia became independent from Russia.

Ok that makes a lot more sense. Was thinking you were including Northern China which could have been a stretch haha.
I'm currently writing up a civil war bit which starts in July 2026 where the right-extreme right launch a failed coup following the suspension of elections by the nominally democratic forces, which will be protracted and result in the extreme right (Basically actual nazis) taking charge of the right forces and pushing the democratic forces out past the Urals and stopping there. What kind of nation are you thinking of building in Russian Asia?

That works pretty well with me, as I was thinking of a democratic federation in Russia Asia, with federal republics having great autonomy and the central government having control over fiscal, monetary and foreign/defense affairs only. So I can have my country be founded by the democratic forces that were pushed past the Urals.

I am between Arcadian and Conservative Outlook, but I am leaning towards the later.

[Rodez]

RESERVATION
Name of state/organisation: Los Montañeros (Officially: Liga del Orinoco)
Territory reserved: Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, Curacao

[Hellslayer]

RESERVATION
Name of state/organisation: Cult of Byron
Territory reserved: Brazil

[Rodez]

THE LEAGUE OF THE ORINOCO
Liga del Orinoco/Los Montañeros

Federated Stratocracy with a Revolutionary outlook

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WIP

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2095: Blood and Iron; an application

[Kenobot]

RESERVATION
Name of state/organisation: Cult of Byron
Territory reserved: Brazil

I am very confused and interested to see what this turns out to be