Earth II [ARCHIVE THREAD #1]

[Helissa]

That as well, and its kind of redundant when someone can just ctrl+F and find what they are looking for anyways.

^ LAWL

Did I miss something?

[Hi No Moto]

http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?p=12936664#p12936664

FYI


ESPECIALLY Hi No Moto!!!



So who wants to be the first? Now taking bids.

The first ship to travel through the Thai Canal will also be the first ship to sink to the bottom of it.

Also Lay I prefer the the way you set out mine and IM claims. Looked more professional and organised.

[Razhtigr]

If I am interested in joining do I post my application to this thread?

[Layarteb]

ATTENTION

I have decided to pull up the timeline for our new thread transition. Effective immediately I am putting a bit of a hold on Earth II (trust me it won't be that long). During this time no new claims, no new applications, no new history, and no new threads will be accepted. Everything up until this point has been accepted and the update will go into the new thread. Furthermore, since I am putting a hold, I am going to give a reprieve to the posting requirements for this time (trust me it won't be that long). With the new thread, all posting requirements will reset to 0 (use the time to prewrite, trust me it won't be that long).

Upon posting the new thread, I will make a final post in here giving the information and then I will ask the moderators to lock the thread. We'll be set with the new thread and business will resume as usual.

If you have requirements below in this list please address them BEFORE the transition (i.e. NOW).

Updates

Last Official Update: Mon Jan 28, 2013 5:44 pm [EST]

GENERAL UPDATES

• Byzantium Imperium
  
  • History added
• Drvarska
  
  • Currency symbol added.
  • Military factbook thread added.
• Helissa
  
  • Factbook thread added.
  • Storefront thread added.
• Itailian Maifias
  
  • Thread added.
• Olmeria
  
  • History added
• Terra Reborn
  
  • Thread added.
• The German Region
  
  • Please post your currency symbol.
  • Please post your independence/founding date when you have it.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS
Due to the drastic change in the situation with Amigard and the hold that I put - all claims previously made will be invalidated. With the new premade constructed and history established, the hold order is removed. Going henceforth, you may act.

If there are any pending claims that are complete then speak now and I will put them into the new thread and update the lists.

Page 406

[Byzantium Imperium]

I consider Persia complete honestly, however as we agreed upon I will be putting posts forward to wrap it up officially.

[The German Region]

Oops thought I posted the currency symbol. My bad.

Spreadsheet Changes:

Currency: French Franc, ₣
Independence/Founding Date: January 20th 2013

[Layarteb]

Oops thought I posted the currency symbol. My bad.

Spreadsheet Changes:

Currency: French Franc, ₣
Independence/Founding Date: January 20th 2013

I consider Persia complete honestly, however as we agreed upon I will be putting posts forward to wrap it up officially.

Both noted - thank you

[Drvarska]

I have pretty much concluded my introduction story, just the couple meetings that remain between the governments. This can be played out in the next thread to avoid lagging the old one on.

Also just a note I cant post this weekend and some of next week, computer has taken a turn for the worst and needs to be replaced.

[Layarteb]

That's a lot of land and for so few posts, seven, and four of them are communiqués.

[Drvarska]

No problem, there will be a small time jump to later in the year with the current one.

[Helissa]

I dont know how you northerners handle this cold. This Florida boy is in DC now freezing my balls off.

[URBOV]

On the question of Russia: What is it? Why is it? How is it?
An OOC Essay to explain Russia in E2.

I have portrayed Russia inconsistently since assuming the position in late 2009. Fresh from my n00bishness in Malta, I was committed to proving myself to be a competent roleplayer who could manage a fake nation as gloriously as Cotland or Layarteb who in my mind represented the pinnacle of Earth2. Without much thought I rushed into the vast territories of Eurasia with only the knowledge given to me by my glorious Michiganistani Public Education System. Supplemented by internet articles and a depressingly few number of books, I constructed the Southern Russian Republic which was to last for a number of months until I reached the Urals.

Led by Dmitri Granin and his shadowy Comrade “Misha”, the Southern Russian Republic expanded as far north as Tula before internal divisions led to Granin killing Misha himself. This was immediately followed by my attempt to roleplay Communism since I had just finished Marx’s Das Kapital (and the Manifesto but that goes without saying). Cotland I know remembers that I had no real understanding of Communism and portrayed the new “Soviet Union” as a Progressive Socialist Regime that was committed to Democracy above all else. You all know that in reality I am a Communist of one kind or another but that is now, after reading Lenin, Mao, Guverra, Marx (again), Stalin, Trotsky, Orwell, Labriola, Tito, and practically everyone else on the Marxist Internet Archive, at the time I was a 14 year old kid who had just learned that isms were a real thing.

So this new Soviet Union extended it’s reach into Siberia where I confronted Alaska and the Siberian Federation. The war was mercifully short, Alaska proving to be more incompetent though it should be remembered that I declared victory only after his nation ceased to exist. The victorious Red Army then pursued the Alaskan Military back into Alaska itself where I secured Port Alexander and held hostage the nuclear arsenal of that hermit Republic. I believe it was then that I managed to secure the Ukraine, though not yet treating it as the heartland of my nation. Again at this point I had read very little and was going mostly off of stereotypes which I’m sure anyone can recognize if they look at the surviving writings.

I was now 15 and improving gradually, the Soviets were firmly allied with the Anti-Communist Motons and I had also secured an alliance with North Germania who was back for a short time. Using this alliance I received a number of “Sawtooth” tanks or whatever he called his version of Layarteb’s MBT (the real name escapes me) which funnily enough I have never RP-ed having. So with boundaries mostly secure I delved deeper into Eurasia, coming into the Russian Far East just as I visited London for 3 weeks in November of 2010. There I was exposed to lots of history (given the run of the city as my mother was busy with business and my father was in USA USA USA). I spent the majority of my time at either the British Imperial Museum or the Victoria and Albert Museum which funnily enough has/had it’s fair share of Russian artifacts from the Empire.

While there I wrote my first 5,000 word post which saw the Union safely transition to a centrist State dedicated to United Russia’s then chief ideology known as “Sovereign Democracy”. I remember I read the book, “The New Cold War” which convinced me of the supremacy of Gazprom over all other companies within the Russian Federation of reality and so my first non-Soviet thread heavily featured the Energy Giant. This was also where I began to advance into Belarus which after a short confrontation with Cotland I partially incorporated into the Russian Union State. It should be noted that I did not properly fight Cotland as I still had little understanding of how war actually happens nowadays and my WW2 esque tactics against Alaska would not stand up to the Realm’s Military.

I maintained the Russian Union State for over a year, gradually absorbing more Russian Territories and being relatively content to represent most of Russia as opposed to all of the Former Soviet Union. That is until I became a true Russophile and re-read all of my Dostoyevsky (which includes almost everything he’s ever published that has been translated into English, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Chekov, and a number of histories that range from the ancient Kievan Rus to the Cultural Development of Russia, to (a great number of books on) the Great Patriotic War. It was also at this time that I became a true Communist (by reading the individuals listed above and by speaking with a number of industrial workers in Michiganistan) and I used my newly gained understanding of both Russia and Communism to create the Pochva Ideal.

A mixture of Fascism and Pan-slavism, Pochva was really something that I feel I could do a lot with now but didn’t do enough with then. It is influenced by my other creation Novaya Bolshevism which features only in I.I. . Those familiar with Temnorus or Abruzi know that while it is ultra tyranny, it is intelligent tyranny based upon the worst bits of many prominent thinkers or ideologies. Attached will be a series of links that can serve as a primer to Novaya Bolshevism. Back to Pochva, it saw the RUS expand into the Balkans in the name of Slavic Fraternity and the brief transformation into the Union of Sovereign Slavic Republics.

The new U.S.S.R. rattled sabers with the Persian State before Glicksor again passed into CTE-ism. Immediately I and Layarteb acted against Persia though it must be remembered that war was inevitable and agreed upon while the player was still there. Crudely I roleplayed the Persian Genocide which saw the depopulation of what is in reality Iran north of Tabriz. The largescale destruction of a troublesome region is more of an Anglo Tactic than a Russian one (the Russians have a long history of turning a troublesome region into a Russian region by recruiting locals who stand to benefit into it’s camp before ultimately betraying and incorporating those locals) but that was the reasoning behind what was very much an I.I. Solution.

Persian prisoners were used to spread radioactive waste around Layarteb’s outpost in the Far East, again an I.I. solution because I was and remain too unknowledgeable to wage an effective war against anyone who knows what they’re doing (though I do believe that Layarteb/Cotland would explain the proper procedures if we ever did fight). So, at this point I turned to Moldova where Layarteb and I had a great thread centered on the Russian Mob/GRU fighting a shadow war with the MOI. Ruining the ending, President Siloviki (leader of the RUS/USSR for a long time) was blown up to be replaced by Anarcho-Syndicalists and Leninists.

After a few months of developing the ideological makeup of the New Russia, I found that Far Left Thought while interesting (to me) did not fit into E2 or the E2 Russia in any real way. So I asked to retconn the rise of the new Radicals and return to a Centrist Russian State based upon Peasant’s Pravda which was granted by our Dear Leader. Now we come to the point of this essay, what is Pravda and what is the New Russia?

I’d like to answer this question first by explaining the changes to my timeline.

Obviously there are no new Communists and the dozen articles on the news thread I’ve written are now irrelevant. I’m planning on editing them to reflect local government as the “Red Belt” is as much a thing in E2 Russia as it is in reality. Also and most importantly, the Soviet Union that I roleplayed never existed, nor did the brief Constitutional Monarchy. Russia does have a Communist Past in E2, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics existed from ~1917 to 1991 just like in RL. It comprised all of the territories of the real State save those claimed by Cotland since we worked out in a previous draft of history that Moscow (and North of it) was lost to Russia in the Imperial or Victorian Eras respectively. The disasters in Magadan and the rest of the various cities of Russia, did not happen, though that is more or less irrelevant because they were small ones that only affected me and only for as short a time as it took to clean up the wreckage. My war with Alaska does remain but that gets us into what Russia looked like between 1991 and now when I stand to finish unification as soon as me and Layarteb conclude our thread in Yakutsk (which is awesome, go read it).

Dissolution in 1991 looks a lot more like the Civil War in 1921, though this time there are no Red, White, Green, and Black Factions. Instead we see a return to ethnic-regionalism with Tartar Republics, Russian Republics, Ukraine petitioning for Drvarska to assume control of it (pending his reply to my TG), etc. Local Warlords and self styled Czars rule over the Eurasian landmass. The Southern Russian Republic then no longer is the direct successor to past Russian States, that goes to Ukraine, the Southern Russian Republic is instead just another Warlord based State though it is remarkably successful when compared to others. This state is eventually incorporated into Ukraine which then goes about uniting the rest of what was the Soviet Union through various diplomatic, economic, or in some cases military means.
That is all fine and good, but I have yet to explain what Peasant’s Pravda is and what Peasant means in the modern world.

Peasant’s Pravda is a reference/based upon the code of laws established by Yaroslav the Wise which became the basis for Russian Law in some form or another until at least Tsar Peter I (who established what was known as a “German Bureaucracy“). These laws known as Russkaya Pravda were thus widely tied to the Russian people as they developed from the fearful cities that cowered at the fringes of the Golden Horde into a Great Power of Europe and Asia. The Pravda guaranteed the freedom of Peasants to chose their masters (though this was later limited to one or two days a year and then finally eliminated), that taxes are based on community (Volost I think it is), and that land ownership is communal. Private Property is/was always a shaky concept in Russia and for this reason the new Russia in E2 will have seriously egalitarian tones (communal ownership of land and factories, etc.). It must be remembered that this is not my own ideological leanings or any remarkably Soviet remnants in Russian Society, instead it could be said that the Soviets were merely affirming the already long held belief that everyone owns the Land.

A note on “The Land”, this is taken to mean the land itself but also the people who live and work it. Peasant’s then represent the Land while the Tsar (or in this case President) represents the State. The late Russian Empire’s slogan of, “Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality” is a reflection (though modified) of the basic Peasant’s Pravda notion of “God, Land, and Czar” which can be interpreted to express the love/fear of God, the right/freedom to work the land in common, and the respect of the Czar who at the time was not an absolute Autocrat but was limited by the very feudal society Muscovy was/Early Russian Empire was.

In modern times Peasant’s Pravda can be thought to be this:

1. Authoritarian Regime in the sense that Democracy above the Federal District is essentially a sham. As Lay knows (and I’m sure others) I support the Russian Federation of reality if taken in the context of a Russian State. Russia has never and will never possess a liberal democracy like the West and while I try to distance myself from “Iron Laws of History” when not talking/thinking Marxism, it’s history means that Authoritarian Leadership will be the only Russian Leadership.

2. Communal Property while back in the day this meant that everyone helped everyone farm, in modern times it can be looked at as the Village/Region owning all of the land around it and dividing it up between households. Look at a village as a corporation that is responsible for a certain amount of taxes per amount of land it holds. This land could be occupied by a factory or shop, whatever, it remains a communal though in the sense that the village itself owns it despite it being run by whomever. There are no quotas, there is no Central Planning Agency, but each village represents the foundation of economic activity as opposed to each person, again a pretty Russian concept/idea which I will demonstrate in the next RP I have that shows civilian life.

3. The Regime does not interfere with the Commune I realize that when one thinks of Russia they don’t necessarily think of an Authoritarian but distant Regime. Instead there is the belief that the State is always watching and for some time periods this may be correct (earl and late Soviet Union, late Russian Empire, etc.) but it should be remembered that before the founding of the “Security Police” by (I belief) Nicholas Romanov the Tsar was seen as a distant but benevolent figure who the people were loyal to from a far.

This is much more obvious before the rise of Tsar Peter I’s Civil Service where the people were able to directly appeal to the Tsar to ease taxes/set taxes, and so on. In modern times this can best be thought of as a minimal Internal Ministry and a lack of Police State mentality (that is constant surveillance, etc.). However like I’ve mentioned before the Regime is Authoritarian, it will kill/imprison/torture people if they are disloyal and in many ways it is very Soviet Esque in terms of mode of operation.

With taxes being assigned to the community as opposed to the individual that also means that Safety Nets are present but remarkably relaxed. The community itself is a safety net though there will be free housing, food, medical care, education, for those that need it. Though to receive it there will be a cost in labor, still working that part out but I think it’ll be similar to the Civilian Conservation Corps from Depression Era USA (building roads, parks, etc.). A further note on the Taxes thing, this does mean that internal movement is limited for many people, a village doesn’t want people to leave when taxes are assigned to the region as opposed to the number of people.

This is going to be modified to be the number of people in a region means that a certain amount of taxes will be placed upon it. Sort of a melding of the more modern individual taxation with the Peasant’s Pravda taxation. This also means cities will be responsible for lots of taxes, bringing me closer to the concept of “Oriental Despotism in the Marxist sense. Russia is as much an Asiatic State as it is European so it’s no coincidence that traditional Russian ways of thinking includes lessons from the time of the Tartar Yoke.


4. Mistrust of Capitalism this is pretty obvious for any Russophile, before the rise of the Communists Russia already was practicing what was basically State Capitalism and while there were private entrepreneurs they required permission from the Tsar to operate. This can be carried into the modern era very easily by having the State grant permits of activity to various foreign businesses that desire to operate in Russia. Again the communal nature of taxes/production benefits this policy because in the absence of “Free Trade” the Factories, Farms, Businesses, etc. will be responsible for being as efficient as possible and satisfying as many people as possible while still competing with other Russian firms.

The Russian State naturally will own the majority of the Defense Companies and it is these products which will be competing on the global market more so than consumer goods. It is reasonable then to say that the Russian people live a relatively decent life though are several years behind the West in terms of quality of goods. This of course will be affected by what businesses operate within the RUS and it is also reasonable to assume that those businesses will be primarily Moton or Byzantine and not so much Cottish or Layartebian.

In the absence of an Autocrat approval will be given by the Governor of whatever Federal District (which I recognize the corruption inherent in this but any good Russian State must have personal networks being more active than civil ones due to the fact that there never were real strong civil institutions and that personal networks are as basically Russian as Orthodoxy). So yes, if you are a company from the Evil West you can slip the governor some money or something and boom, freedom to operate in Russia with cheaper labor, etc. Though I feel that a business would also have to pay an annual rent to the Village/Territory but still, I imagine this would be a rate set low enough to be competitive or even undercut many Western Properties.

The State Budget can be summarized to be this formula:

A (Arms sales) + C (Communal Taxes) + P (products/minerals sold from one territory to the factories/stores of another) = R (Revenue)

State Expenses are this:

M (military) + I (infrastructure that crosses Federal District boundaries) = E (expenses)

Expenses in many ways are placed more firmly on local government/regional government so while that does mean less revenue to the national government, it also means that the majority of that revenue goes to the Military or National Projects. I mentioned safety nets, those are the responsibility of both the National and Regional Governments so for now I’m going to tentatively omit them from my ultra complex simple addition formulas.

Because Earth 2 is divided along Geopolitical lines, it is very reasonable to say that there is no Global Economy. While the West (OA) may trade heavily between them, very few goods flow West to East or East to west. Instead I see a number of regional or bloc markets that could very well see Russian Cars in Byzantium, Byzantine clothing in Moto and Moton computers in Russia with a few nations (Brink) that benefit from being neutral with one bloc and friendly with another being the only true Imperialistic-Capitalistic Nations (in the sense of Capital flowing from one nation into the Markets of another, outlined in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by V.I. Lenin).



5. Russia is a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional Nation that has never been a concrete nation-state. Russia represents so many different cultures, religions, doctrines, and ideals, that it is essentially an earlier, angrier Melting Pot of the type that the United States claimed to be in the late 1800s. While there was never much foreign immigration into Russia, there are so many people within Russia that it cannot help but be both Far Right, Far Left, Orthodox, Islamic, Asian, European, East, West, at once. Russia in E2 will by many indicators (property, egalitarianism, social freedoms, legal code) be a Leftwing State while by others, (Closed Government, Honored Place of the Military, Cultural Traditions) it is a Rightwing State. It’s people will at once be Russian (in the sense of having a Russian Soul as defined by my personal favorite author Dostoyevsky) and Tartar, Jewish, Georgian, Armenian, Ukrainian, etc. Nationalities in the Western Sense do not apply to Russia when it is Russia, the Russians or Rus themselves lack an ethnic Republic while the Crimean Tartars, Sakhans, etc. all possessed territories of their own. It is this non-nationality based Nationalism that gives Russia it’s stable instability. Because as both I and Layarteb have joked on IRC, it is always both on the brink of collapse and at the apex of it’s power.

This paradoxical state is the Russian State, and on E2 will remain the Russian State.

I write this because with the unification of Russia at hand this will be the final form of the Russian State for as long as I am on E2 (I imagine for years yet) and to explain why I’ve suddenly asked to retconn over 4 years of RP.

Novaya Bolshevism

1.
2.
3.
4.

Shigalovism is not my creation, it is Dostoyevsky's and as I mentioned he is my favorite author. For all of the enjoyment he has brought me, the least I could do is tip the hat to him.

[Terra Reborn]

Claims for New Zealand, Stewart Island and my Indian claims complete, although the thread will continue for a few more posts.

As a result of this, population increase by 260,000,000 to 563,000,000 with military population remaining at 1% of national total at 5,630,000 active duty personnel.

[Layarteb]

Claims for New Zealand, Stewart Island and my Indian claims complete, although the thread will continue for a few more posts.

As a result of this, population increase by 260,000,000 to 563,000,000 with military population remaining at 1% of national total at 5,630,000 active duty personnel.

Noted

[Earth_ Two]

ATTENTION

This thread is currently closed. It was a good run but have no fear, we have a new thread. Earth II continues onward. This thread will serve as an archive for Earth II should we need to reference things in the past (and we will). So please mosey on over to the new thread in the link below and let the RP continue.

New Earth II Thread

Thank you

Earth II Management