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Well, it took for the fascist movement to take over the show for the Tsar to see Brusilov line was bad and the far right was evil.

Maybe there's an auspicious side to everything, If (and I'm guessing so) this uprising is quenched, all the fascists will have outed themselves so it'll be easier to find and get rid of them.

Finally there's an election alliance on the left, and action on the ground on the far left.

And the ending, it's such a cliffhanger now :)
 
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This might be too spicy of an opinion for people here, but a fascist Russian Chauvinist government would be good for the minorities. In the sense that the Tzar would immediately be opposed and large portions of the Azskhnazi and Khazar elite as well as the Christians and Turks. If there would be a time for Tatars, Turks, and Mongols to break out a civil war would be a great time.

Also I find it curious that a fashy party was able to gain such widespread support without such a strong authoritarian leftist/communist bogyman. Correct me if Im wrong, but in OTL Germany many veterans were radicalized by the situation afer ww1 with the reds, and also it was fear of communist appropriation of assets that lead big business and the wealthy to support the fascist movement in Germany especially but also elsewhere. Also with a victory in the weltkreig I would suspect many of the veterans would not have the bitterness that happen OTL and many of te rightwing elements would essentially be more reactionaries inside the traditional conservative sphere

If I were gonna take it again from the start, I would of given the radicals more of a black hundreds vibe
Fascism doesn't need a strictly Communist bogeyman. In this case I'd say 'the people we consider to be less than human suddenly being treated like equals by liberals in a way that will fundamentally change the way the Empire works' is enough of a spectre.
 
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1913-1914 – A Test of Wills

With the mob baying on their doorstep, the moderate conservative waverers who held the balance in the vote to restore the Brusilov Line shrunk away, falling back in line with the party and movement. Only a handful joined Zalman Bloom in rebelling against the government – allowing the vote to restore Brusilov to pass by 355 votes to 346. News of the victory was greeted by deafening cheers by the huge crowd outside the Duma, turning a riot into a jamboree. Days later a second vote was passed than banned the Grand Turanian Congress from standing candidates in any subsequent Polish election. For the reactionary hardliners of the National Alliance, their restoration was complete.

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Gaidar might have hoped to bask in the adulation of the conservative public after these totemic victories. Yet it was Makarov who adopted a new swagger, and increasingly presented himself as the true champion of right – the man who had held the moderate Deputies of the National Alliance to the fire to ensure they did not betray their voters. Finding a new role, it is notable that the Radicals subtly began to de-emphasise their traditional redistributive economic views, as they positioned themselves as the vanguard of the conservative revolution.

The events of 1913 were disturbing to many conservatives, who feared they were losing control of their own political project to the unruly thuggishness of the Radicals. These feelings were not limited to the moderates of the Zalman Bloom mould, or those who had sympathised with him over the Brusilov issue. Indeed, the great Yildilz Kazimzade, serving out his semi-retirement as an octogenarian backbencher in the Agudat Yisrael, took to the press to write a number of influential opinion pieces that described Makarov and the Radicals as dangerous hoodlums who the conservatives, their restoration complete, should abandon post-haste. Makarov dismissed the former premier as a ‘miserable old Turk’, yet opinion in the Alliance was clearly shifting.

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The passing of this legislation provoked an almost immediate violent response. In the east, the Brotherhood had largely exhausted its military strength in the Great Turk Rebellion and its aftermath, but still had extensive support and networks of agents through much of the empire. Shifting tactics, they unleashed a campaign of bomb throwing and assassinations, with individual agents and sympathisers launching small scale attacks on agents of the Polish state, military and civilian, as well as Russian settlers in traditionally Tatar areas.

Elsewhere, the socialists took the opportunity to accelerate their paramilitary efforts. Josef Bronstein published an infamous pamphlet ‘Socialism or Tyranny’ in which he claimed that Poland was hurtling towards an extreme right wing dictatorship that the moderate parties were powerless to exist, leaving the responsibility at the feet of the Trudoviks to find salvation. As such, the Red Front took aggressive action against Radicals and conservatives – waging pitched battles against blackshirts, attacked Hasidic communities – seen as the bedrock of reactionary Poland, and attempted to disrupt right wing politicians by all possible means. Most notably, they adopted a strategy of creating ‘reactionary free zones’ – attempting to make any conservative and Radical activity impossible in their areas of greatest strength, most successfully in the sprawling industrial centre of Minsk.

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With tensions at boiling point, Poland prepared for a new election campaign in March 1914 to elect a new Duma based on the revised constitution. The right had every expectation of a landslide. Had they replicated their 1912 vote within with the Brusilov Line reimposed, they would secure a dominant position. As such, the result represented a modest swing back from the right’s 1912 high tide. The conservatives were savaged. The National Alliance vote collapsed in many areas. Recording half as many votes as in 1912, and with the great bulk of its support concentrated in the west, its vote share dropped by more than a third across much of European Poland as it lost support in equal weight to both centre and the Radicals. With its share of the Duma dropping from 38 per cent to 18 per cent, the conservatives were reduced to the status of Poland’s third force for the first time in their long history. The largest beneficiaries of the Alliance’s collapse were the Radicals. Winning a shade over a quarter of the vote and emerging as the comfortably the largest faction in the Duma – the far right had achieved great success. However, this victory was not all that it seemed. Their new votes were drawn almost exclusively from the National Alliance – with scores of generational conservative rural seats changing hands – while they party had fallen back slightly in urban areas, with the Trudoviks appearing to benefit. Indeed, across the country Radical candidates scored only slightly higher levels of support than 1912 – making gains only through the collapse of their erstwhile allies. After seeing the socialist vote fall in every election of the twentieth century, the Trudoviks were major winners – seeing a major surge of support that pushed them into second place with more than 100 seats. This was additionally impressive in light of the socialists’ traditionally higher support in the minority-dominated eastern provinces relative to the parties of the right. The liberals largely failed to prosper, their like-for-like vote falling back modestly, although they were still able to elect a phalanx of Deputies, including two Democrats. In the minority areas, the ban on the Grand Turanian Congress naturally drastically altered the electoral calculus – leaving the Hindu-Muslim Block to dominate the Tatar and Mongol vote. Nonetheless, it is notable that a sizeable number of hardline separatist voters chose to boycott the election, suppressing Tatar turnout overall.

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The election results were a disaster for Polish moderates of all stripes. Combined, the extremes, the far right Radicals and a Trudovik party now firmly in the grasp of the far left, had a clear Duma majority. Having won a clear plurality, the Radicals assertively demanded their right to form a government – with party members holding victory marches across the empire. Tsar Radoslav IV spoke for many of his subjects when he made clear that he saw neither party as suitable to govern, noting of their leaders Makarov and Bronstein ‘one could not find another pair of wretches so unworthy of the office of Prime Minister in all of Poland’. This was the birth of a grand conspiracy.

The Tsar invited the leaders of the moderate parties to the Boyarka Palace and asked them to come together form a grand coalition, while the Duma was temporarily suspended. In essence, the sovereign hoped the moderate parties would grant a decree of political legitimacy to a palace-led coup. The Democrats, anathema to cooperation with a putsch, walked out almost immediately, while the Hindu-Muslim Block refused to cooperate unless the Tsar promised to restore the pre-1912 constitutional settlement – something that was impossible if he was to retain conservative backing.

Despite these setbacks, the leaderships of the National Alliance, Constitutionalists and Christian Block agreed to come together. With Gaidar discredit as a potential leader of an anti-extremist alliance through his cooperation with the Radicals in the previous parliamentary term, the putschists needed a new leader. The Tsar decided to call upon the wisenly, increasingly frail, old head of Yildilz Kazimzade, a man who had been close to his grandfather Tsar Nikolai, to become Prime Minister for the third time, nominally as an independent. It was hoped that the respect for the grand old man, particularly from those on the right, would dampen the inevitable popular backlash and further increase the legitimacy of the new regime. Indeed, among its ministers, the third Kazimzade administration could count upon three of the last four prime ministers in Ivan Tymoshenko, Jan Sigorski and Ivan Gaidar; and the leaderships of parties that had won around two fifths of the popular vote.

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On March 18th, five days after the election, imperial troops entered Kiev and in a series of swift announcements, the Tsar invited Kazimzade to form a government, the conservative-liberal-Christian coalition was unveiled and the temporary suspension of the Duma announced. Almost immediately, things began to unravel. The secret agreements reached in the Boyarka had been made by party leaders alone, and they had clearly failed to read the mood of their grassroots. Large numbers of liberals and moderates were horrified by the attack on Poland’s democratic institutions. The conservative movement was especially divided, with many shocked that the Alliance’s leadership would conspire to overthrow the Duma rather than join together with the Radicals who had, after all, stood should to shoulder with them over the past two years. Indeed, dozens of Alliance Deputies openly denounced the seizure of power and called instead for the reopening of the Duma and a coalition with Makarov. On the left, fearing arrest, Josef Bronstein fled Kiev from Minsk, were he denounced the new government and called for armed resistance – with the Red Front taking effective control of Minsk and most of Northern Ruthenia over the course of the following days.

With Tsar Radoslav’s hopes of a popular coup stillborn upon arrival, the greatest threat came not from the left but the right. Like Bronstein, Makarov had fled Kiev in the midst of the putsch – retreating to one of his areas of greatest strength in the Don Valley, where ethnic Russians were solidly for his party and the blackshirts especially militant. There, he rallied popular anger against the cabal of centrists that had stolen him of his election victory and demanded action. Making use of the press, his party organisation and a flurry of speaking engagements he spread out a call for his followers to descend upon Kiev to bring down the putsch. Soon tens of thousands of blackshirts, Radical supporters and conservative anti-putschists were descending upon the capital.

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On March 27th, the first sizeable column of blackshirts, with Makarov at their head, reached Kiev. As they entered the city, the soldiers sent to confront them refused to fire upon them. Founded by the merger of the Radical Labour Party and the Veterans League, the Radical Republicans had deep roots in military circles and, following their Veterans League traditions, had spent their existence advocating for the interests of soldiers and veterans – ingratiating themselves to officers, generals and the common soldiery alike. With many military men already leaning to the right, and often the radical right, the party enjoyed a great well of sympathy among both the common soldiers and military leadership. Makarov had gambled upon these loyalties when he organised his March on Kiev, and this proved to be a master stroke. With blackshirts pouring into the city, and the army either standing aside or at times actively assisting them, the Radicals moved to take power.

As the organs of government fell into Radical hands a grand drama ensued. The Tsar initially attempted to flee from the Boyarka, but saw his car intercepted by blackshirts who returned him to the palace under effective house arrest. While many members of the putschist government fled, Kazimzade had no desire to go on the run at his age and willingly turned himself over to the blackshirts, resigning as Prime Minister. The Duma was reconvened on March 29th with only Radicals and a smattering of fellow-traveller conservatives present to confirm Boris Makarov as Prime Minister – an appointment the Tsar was compelled to consent to from his confinement. With the baubles of legal legitimacy, Makarov pushed for a motion granting him extraordinary powers to restore order to a nation rapidly falling apart.

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While the Radicals were capturing control of the state in Kiev, the socialists had expanded their revolt in northern Ruthenia – establishing control over a swathe of, traditionally Trudovik-voting, territory including the cities of Smolensk, Minsk, Warsaw, Gdansk, Vilnius and Riga. Bronstein called for a revolutionary war for the establishment of socialism, overthrow of the Radicals and restoration of democracy. In the east, the Tatar and Mongol majority areas that were already under martial law witnessed a tremendous upsurge of violence. Although, with the Brotherhood of the Wolf still on its knees following the Great Turk Rebellion and the repression that followed, revolt in the region was poorly organised and faced an already intimidating military presence that prevented a more cohesive rebellion taking hold. Finally, the Tsar’s apparent acceptance of Makarov’s ascent had fooled few of his former allies, who believed their sovereign was a prisoner and the new regime in Kiev illegitimate. These Tsarists found popular support among the Christian western and southern peripheries of the empire. As Tymoshenko reached Krakow and formed a continuity putschist government, he established political leadership over an emerging Tsarist revolt. The threats of the socialists and Tatars likely helped to solidify the Radical regime, with many Tsarist sympathisers within the armed forces ultimately shunning rebellion in the name of fighting the reds and Turanists.
 
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A gameplay explanation of what happened here. The Radicals won the 1914 election with a plurality of the vote. When you have a fascist government in power in a democracy you get that 'March on X' event several months in. There is then a choice between civil war or accepting the new regime.


The Duma is about to be stormed. Woe be to the deputies if that happens. Makarov might be carried into premiership by this crowd if he plays his cards right. Much like Mussolini was in OTL.

The Duma escaped being stormed in 1913, but the energy Makarov gained out of the incident - being able to accuse the conservatives of being divided on the key questions - helped propel him to the top of the dogpile in the mess we are currently in.


Gaidar is an idiot and there’s no other way of putting it. There is no controlling fash, only opposition.

Glad to see, on that score, that the Mensheviks are planning some on the ground anti-Radical action. Nothing else is going to stop Makarov and his brutes.

The imagery in the final paragraph is obviously troublingly familiar. There doesn’t seem to be any prospect of an autogolpe, at least, so here’s hoping the blackshirts can be beaten back. And that Gaidar is shafted for goodness sake.

His gamble certainly ended up going very sour indeed. His biggest mistake was going along with the radicalisation of the political right, and then being shocked to find that the Radicals were always able to go one step further.

Would you believe it but I actually had this aspect of the story planned out way before this was originally paused back in September/October - but of course found much of the imagery is directly lifted from recent real world events.

This sounds like plenty of risky gambles being made. Hope this doesn't turn into a wildfire.

Well ... that went well :p. Wildfire well and truly alight!

Poland is on the brink of collapse. With them alienated due to Finland... this'll be a disaster.

Also, I see that some antisemitism does exist in Poland.

And it's certainly only gotten worse in the last update.

Wierdly anti-semetism is probably the appropriate word for anti-Ashkenazi sentiment from Slavic Jews, with the latter lacking semetic roots, as well.

I agree with Densley; Igor Gaider is making one of the classic world-historical blunders, thinking that he can use the radicals for his ends rather than vice versa.

It was a trick that worked out for a time, but ultimately a dusty parliamentary leader lost control of a situation in which the violent mass politics of the crowd was taking hold.

Oh boy. Poland is about to recieve a reckoning.

I wonder how the Empire's neighbours are viewing all this?

We will hear a bit more from the neighbours in the next update. Suffice to say, some are worried by the instability but others are licking their lips at seeing the world hegemon tearing itself apart.



A case of real life writing the plot, one supposes.

In any case the best hope for Poland seems to be royal intervention against Makarov followed by the movement being violently crushed. There might have been a time when his movement could have been defeated through constitutional means, but that time has passed. It does help that this Tsar seems to be almost as antifascist as the Socialists, and in favor of keeping the Brusilov Line at that. It does help that he's Blessed Karl.

Got it in one with the Cabaret reference ;).

And as mentioned in Denseley's comment above - believe it or not much of that aspect of the story was already in the plan, although real life certainly provided the flavour and imagery.

I was impressed that you more or less guessed that we would have a monarchist coup. Even if it ended up failing in the end.

What a uniformly depressing series of developments. :confused: The domestic situation is unspeakably bad and as for foreign affairs, I wouldn't be surprised if a war with Denmark was just around the corner.

I suppose a strong external threat might actually be a good thing. Maybe it would stabilise things within if there was a enemy without.

At least for the duration of the conflict...

We didn't end up with a war against Denmark, so decided to tear the country apart from within yet again! It has been a long while since our last civil war! :p

This might be too spicy of an opinion for people here, but a fascist Russian Chauvinist government would be good for the minorities. In the sense that the Tzar would immediately be opposed and large portions of the Azskhnazi and Khazar elite as well as the Christians and Turks. If there would be a time for Tatars, Turks, and Mongols to break out a civil war would be a great time.

Also I find it curious that a fashy party was able to gain such widespread support without such a strong authoritarian leftist/communist bogyman. Correct me if Im wrong, but in OTL Germany many veterans were radicalized by the situation afer ww1 with the reds, and also it was fear of communist appropriation of assets that lead big business and the wealthy to support the fascist movement in Germany especially but also elsewhere. Also with a victory in the weltkreig I would suspect many of the veterans would not have the bitterness that happen OTL and many of te rightwing elements would essentially be more reactionaries inside the traditional conservative sphere

If I were gonna take it again from the start, I would of given the radicals more of a black hundreds vibe
Fascism doesn't need a strictly Communist bogeyman. In this case I'd say 'the people we consider to be less than human suddenly being treated like equals by liberals in a way that will fundamentally change the way the Empire works' is enough of a spectre.

We will have to see if in the long run all this is beneficial to the non-Russians of Poland. Certainly, it might push some of those who had spent the last several decades relying on the ethnic majority throwing them breadcrumbs to seek an independent future.

Yes, most OTL fascist movements rose partly in response to a threat from the far left. And here we actually got a bit of that in reverse - the threat of the far right pushing a centre-left social democratic party into a radical left socialist-going-on-communist party. As HIMD notes, here the big spectre that they emerged in response to wasn't a revolutionary red threat, but the reordering of the Polish state and society in a way that dismantled the power of the religo-ethnic majority and raised up a group of hated minorities.

Well, it took for the fascist movement to take over the show for the Tsar to see Brusilov line was bad and the far right was evil.

Maybe there's an auspicious side to everything, If (and I'm guessing so) this uprising is quenched, all the fascists will have outed themselves so it'll be easier to find and get rid of them.

Finally there's an election alliance on the left, and action on the ground on the far left.

And the ending, it's such a cliffhanger now :)

Things did not turn out quite so rosy! :eek:

The liberal electoral alliance didn't manage to achieve a whole lot, but the radical turn of the Trudoviks really was a game changer. Makarov is now sitting in the seat of power in Kiev, the question is - will he still be there by the end of the next update? :eek:
 
Josef Bronstein published an infamous pamphlet ‘Socialism or Tyranny’ in which he claimed that Poland was hurtling towards an extreme right wing dictatorship that the moderate parties were powerless to exist

As future predictions go, this one seems up there with "the sun will rise in the morning" and "summer will follow spring".

Tsar Radoslav IV spoke for many of his subjects when he made clear that he saw neither party as suitable to govern, noting of their leaders Makarov and Bronstein ‘one could not find another pair of wretches so unworthy of the office of Prime Minister in all of Poland

Oh dear…

That all seems to have gone just about as badly as it could have gone. Let's hope Makarov soon ends up upside down in a service station…
 
Bugger.
 
That's certainly one way to deal with winning a war.

Also hilarious that the most moderate, and likely most respectful of democracy (and specifically parliamentary democracy, where a minority centrist coalition is as legitimate as a minority radical single party government), faction is also the one supporting a monarch held hostage by a radicalised rump parliament. My big floppy Cavalier hat is uncomfortably perched on my Roundhead horseman's pot, so onward, the Tsarists!
 
That's certainly one way to deal with winning a war.

Frankly, I don’t think this fact can be emphasised enough. All of this is happening to the victors!
 
Well, Radoslav refusing to play Victor Emmanuel doesn't seem to have helped much. I have some forlorn hope that the Socialists and Royalists agree not to kill each other until the Fash is beaten, but I'm not holding my breath. It's been a while since a megacampaign went Fascist, at any rate.
 
Oh wow, a completely :eek: moment! It finally imploded, and the last straw was a harebrained putsch idea! They should've swallowed their prides and formed a grand coalition led by the socialists (of course the game doesn't work like that, but commenting in universe is more fun). Do the tsarists have a charismatic heir or something to rally around while the Tsar is in custody?

Some of the rebels have to ally with each other or else Makarov will eat them one by one. Doesn't seem like a very nice situation, and I honestly have zero idea how this will end.
 
Now we need to pray that no neighboring country seizes the opportunity...
 
So we now have a very unstable foundation for the new party. Only time will tell if they will persevere.
 
This is grim indeed. Makarov needs to die.
 
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Yesterday I read up every thing I had missed in my absence
The first thing is that you have awesomely brought out all best parts of Vicky2 like population mechanics and economy. The pops thing in particular is why I still play this game to this day

The radical conservatives look scary but I have a feeling that they will stick around
Maybe they will be center piece of a story that ends in perhaps Hearts of Iron 4;)
 
1914-1917 – This Land Is Mine

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By April 1914 the most pressing threat to the Radical assumption of power was Josef Bronstein and his revolutionary socialist movement that had already taken control of large parts of western Poland stretching from the Baltic to Smolensk. With the Radicals firmly entrenched in Kiev, and southern Poland generally being unwelcoming territory for the left, the Trudoviks directed their efforts northwards with a large offensive into Muscovy. There, coordinating with socialist groups in major industrial centres, leftwing Tatar and Mongol militias and even Turanists, they hoped to overwhelm the crucial province. This assault helped to galvanise the bond between the Radicals’ paramilitary popular base and the regular military – with blackshirts and imperial army joining together to oppose Bronstein. The ensuing battle lasted for several months, with cities like Novgorod and Moscow changing hands several times, before the Reds were sent into retreat in the summer.

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While the Reds were engaging in a bitter offensive, the faction claiming to support the captive Tsar and the remnants of his putschist government was struggling to find cohesion. The Tsarists had found far less sympathy among the armed forces than had been hoped for – the majority of military commanders accepting the Makarov government or in the case of some units in far flung territories declaring openly for neither side and focussing on maintaining order in their respective areas of deployment. Instead, they looked to Christian militias to form the rank and file of their movement around the Baltic and Black Sea and Krakowian lands.

Yet they had an advantage that both the Minsk and Kiev regimes lacked – international connections. The revolutionary appearance of both the socialists and Radicals shocked many across Europe and both the Holy Roman Empire and Papal States were quick to weigh in on the side of the Tsarists. Both great Christian powers accepted Tymoshenko’s claim to represent Poland’s legitimate government, and sent material aid in arms and equipment to their disorganised forces – providing them with the firepower to resist the Kievian government. The Papacy in particular saw a geopolitical opportunity in Poland’s troubles as they sought to encourage Israel to adopt an independent stance.

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Viewed from Poland, Israel was rarely understood as its own unique society – instead looked upon as a sacred object that needed to venerated and protected, but could for the most part by ignored. Yet through the nineteenth century it had endured its own distinct progression towards modernity. Like Poland, it faced something of a minority problem. By the early 20th century it had around 3,000,000 people – two thirds of whom were Jewish and a third Arab. Israeli political culture was far more conservative than Poland’s, being dominated by the influence of the institutions of Jewish Orthodoxy’s High Priesthood and different religious factions.

Of its enfranchised Jewish population, around a fifth were Conservative Jews – those who rejected the formation of the Orthodox Church following the reconquest of the Holy Land and the revelations of Jacob Shamir – predominantly from Sephardic and Mizrahi backgrounds, a further fifth were Hasidic while the remainder were largely aligned with mainline Orthodoxy, with the exception of a smattering of secularists. Since it moved towards democratisation in line with Poland from the mid-nineteenth century it had been dominated by Orthodox Jewish conservatives with close links to the High Priesthood, while balancing the interests of Hasidic and Conservative Jews. It had therefore avoided the culture wars that rocked Poland through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with liberals having scarcely any influence – leaving Judaism at the heart of the Kingdom and the Arab minority in its place.

Israel’s elites had close links to conservative Poland, and particularly the Agudat Yisrael – Yildilz Kazimzade being something of a folk hero. When Radicalism emerged in Poland in the twentieth century it found little appeal in the southern Kingdom, failing to establish itself as a significant force in Israel’s political life. As Poland descended into internal conflict in 1914, Israel’s elites were in clear sympathy with the Tsarist cause. The Papacy looked to take advantage of this sentiment by offering to arm Israeli volunteers and ferry them to the Crimea to join the Tsarist lines – both supporting the faction the Pope had aligned himself with and alienating Israel from the regime in Kiev.

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On the front, the anti-Radical were undermined by squabbling. In May, the Reds and Tsarists had attempted to launch a combined invasion of Pomerania, the birthplace of Radicalism and a source of fanatical Makarovite fervour. This soon turned into farce when Tsarist troops attacked Gdansk after most of the Red garrison had moved out of the city for the offensive, leading to a battle for control of the city. While their enemies fighitng among themselves, the blackshirts pounced forth from Pomerania to drive back both armies and capture Gdansk for themselves. This mutual enmity was far from an isolated incident, and was a notable problem in ethnically mixed communities. In Lithuania, nationalist militias fighting under the Tsarist banner attacked Red controlled Kaunas and Vilnius – two traditionally Lithuanian cities that had acquired Russian majorities over the past century. Elsewhere there were similar clashes over Riga and Lodz.

With their opponents failing to find common ground, Makarov’s forces made great progress. In the south, they made sweeping gains around the Black Sea, capturing Odessa, most of the North Caucuses and Georgia to force the Tsarists to retreat into the heavily fortified Crimean peninsula – where a mixed army of Crimean Georgians, Khazars, Tsarist army defectors and Israeli volunteers held out against the odds. Further north, after the Red retreat from Muscovy in the summer, the Radicals counterattacked – capturing Smolensk in August and bringing Minsk under siege by October. In the west, they were held up from entering Slovakia by bitter fighting in the Carpathians, but were able to push into the Polish plains towards the vicinity of Krakow by the autumn.

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In the cold winter months the Radicals’ rivals began to collapse. Both Minsk and Krakow – the centres of Red and Tsarist movements respectively – fell within a week of one another in mid-November, and neither faction ever truly recovered. Having fled the city as their enemies approach Krakow, Tymoshenko and his government chose to go into exile in the Holy Roman Empire rather than fight on to the end, and they were soon joined by tens of thousands who took advantage of the open western border to escape retribution from the Radicals. This exodus likely accelerated the collapse of the Tsarist lines on the Krakowian portion of the front. The Reds did not have the luxury of an easy escape route, nor a foreign government willing to grant sanctuary, and as such few of their leaders were able to leave the country after the fall of Minsk. Nonetheless, both armies saw their positions collapse, leaving the government in Kiev with little more than a mopping up operation in the western provinces by the new year. One area that did hold out was the Crimea, where the Radicals had found the Isthmus impossible to storm until the Black Sea fleet – that had aligned with the Tsarists since the outset of the conflict – switched sides and facilitated the collapse of the last anti-Radical bastion.

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Although the government’s writ did not run entirely unchallenged in every corner of the empire, by early 1915 Makarov’s regime was firmly established as Poland’s government. The empire had emerged from the war a tired and diminished nation. Diplomatically, Poland had not been so isolated for two centuries – with its ties to the powers of Europe largely severed, as many states continued to recognise the Tsarist government in exile as the empire’s legitimate government. Its traditional Pannonian satrapy, while not being so brave as to break with Kiev entirely, had taken the opportunity of the civil war to assert a strong degree of autonomy. More concerning, the Kingdom of Israel, having vigorously backed the losing side in the civil war, refused to recognise Makarov’s regime – marking an effective declaration of independence.

Domestically, during the war the Radicals had established a regime that shared power with rightist elements of the old conservative movement and key military personnel under Boris Makarov’s overarching leadership. As might have been expected during a time of civil war, this regime established a raft of authoritarian measures – with heavy handed state censorship and a harsh ban on the activity of non-government political parties and organisations. These measures only grew more constricting with the conclusion of the war, as the regime consolidated its dictatorial grip. In the aftermath of the conflict there was a strong emphasis on purging elements of society that had opposed the Radicals in the civil war and ensuring the loyalty of key institutions. The labour movement was a key target. Although never entirely dominated by the Trudoviks – the Radicals’ having long had a strong presence within the trade union movement – labour unions were seen as a dangerous breeding ground for socialist sentiment. The government therefore abolished all independent unions in favour of state-controlled national unions – with purged membership lists and closely controlled by regime loyalists. These would serve a further purpose of managing labour relations going forward, building cooperation between workers and employers. Another landmark piece of authoritarian legislation were a series of laws that drastically reduced the internal movement of people within the empire. Most pointedly, these made it virtually impossible for non-Russians to migrate away from their home regions, while allowing for Russian settlement to continue unabated.

Poland's economy had been severely weakened by half a decade of recession followed by civil war. There was a need to rebuild, restart the economy and, crucially, satisfy the grassroots demands of the Radical movement for socio-economic change. This was to be achieved through massive state investment in reconstruction projects, the industrial economy and a project to rebuild and expand the armed forces. The Radicals’ continuing reliance on conservative and military support precluded a significant redistributive programme, yet nonetheless the government did take the opportunity to seize the land and property of those who had sided with their enemies in the civil war. Much of the land seized was then promptly doled out to veterans who had served on the government side during the conflict in an effort to reinvigorate the smallholding class that had been so devastated by the crash of 1909.

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Politically, through 1915 and into 1916 the Polish public was treated to the grand spectacle of the Lvov Trials. Several thousand prominent figures who had been captured during the course of the civil war were placed on a series of public trials that were reported on across the empire and even broadcast on the radio, a form of mass communication with growing popularity. They were accused of all manner of crimes and conspiracy, and, remarkably, many defendants put forward detailed and elaborate confessions of their guilt, despite knowing that in doing so they were condemning themselves to death. Over the course of the trials much of the pre-civil war leadership of all of Poland’s great political movements were executed. Yildilz Kazimzade himself, the short-lived premier of the putschist government, only escaped this fate as a result of his advanced years and the lobbying of government-aligned conservatives – being sent into an internal exile in Siberia.

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After Lvov Trials, the regime could not delay addressing the question of the monarchy any longer. Ever since the March on Kiev, Tsar Radoslav IV had been kept as a prisoner in the Boyarka while still nominally serving as Poland’s head of state. Yet the details publicised by the Lvov Trials had made his involvement in the 1914 coup and civil war impossible to ignore. However, while much of the Radical movement were eager for the sovereign's head, respect for the monarchy among conservatives and the armed forced held Makarov back from putting the Tsar in the dock. Instead, Radoslav agreed to abdicate as Tsar of Poland and King of Israel in January 1916 – passing the role of head of state of both realms on to Makarov as regent during a period of interregnum. Radoslav had hoped to leave Poland entirely, but the government feared that he might go to Israel to reclaim one of his thrones or otherwise be used as a diplomatic pawn against the regime. He was therefore sent to the ancestral Zvenislava estates in Prussia to live out his days as a member of the landed gentry.

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Constitutionally, Poland had existed in an uncertain limbo ever since the Boyarka Coup. Legally, Makarov exerted his power through his position as Prime Minister, and from 1916 regent, and a rubber-stamp Duma whose only active members were Radical Deputies and those conservatives that had aligned with them. In practise, Makarov sat at the head of a junta consisting of Radical Party long marchers, senior generals and fellow traveller conservatives. This situation carried too many ambiguities, and the government therefore sought to forge a new constitutional arrangement in its own image. On February 2nd 1917, just under four centuries from its creation, the Tsardom of Poland was abolished – bringing a close to the Third Polish State and almost a millenia of monarchical rule in Poland. In its stead, the Russian Republic of Poland was proclaimed. Within this new state, Makarov took on a dictatorial role as the Vozhd of the Russian People. The Fourth Polish State was born.
 
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The Radicals have won out, the Tsardom is dead and instead of our traditional Polish pink we are Russian green :eek:.

Well. This is very very not good.

It all unravelled very fast. Only time will tell what the future has in store for Poland under this frightening new regime :eek:.

As future predictions go, this one seems up there with "the sun will rise in the morning" and "summer will follow spring".

Oh dear…

That all seems to have gone just about as badly as it could have gone. Let's hope Makarov soon ends up upside down in a service station…

He's avoided the old service station fate for now. But there's a lot of road yet to run. ;)

That's certainly one way to deal with winning a war.

Also hilarious that the most moderate, and likely most respectful of democracy (and specifically parliamentary democracy, where a minority centrist coalition is as legitimate as a minority radical single party government), faction is also the one supporting a monarch held hostage by a radicalised rump parliament. My big floppy Cavalier hat is uncomfortably perched on my Roundhead horseman's pot, so onward, the Tsarists!

Atleast Radoslav escaped having his head chopped off! :p Considering the fate of most overthrown monarchs, quiet retirement in a Prussian estate doesn't sound so bad.

Frankly, I don’t think this fact can be emphasised enough. All of this is happening to the victors!

Indeed! It helps point to just how unstable our huge multinational empire was to begin with. Had we lost the war it is likely the entire empire would have exploded into a dozen new states.

Well, Radoslav refusing to play Victor Emmanuel doesn't seem to have helped much. I have some forlorn hope that the Socialists and Royalists agree not to kill each other until the Fash is beaten, but I'm not holding my breath. It's been a while since a megacampaign went Fascist, at any rate.

The socialists and Tsarists ended up making this far too easy for the Radicals by squabbling among themselves in the key early stages of the war.

This is actually the first time I've ever played as a fascist state in V2, so it was fun to see how different they play. Kind of extremely OP in game, with the way you can turn reforms on and off at will. (Not sure it makes a whole lot of sense for a fascist dictatorship to expand political freedoms willy nilly, but okay :p). Regardless, we definitely needed a bit of ideological diversity among the great powers going into the DH section.

Oh wow, a completely :eek: moment! It finally imploded, and the last straw was a harebrained putsch idea! They should've swallowed their prides and formed a grand coalition led by the socialists (of course the game doesn't work like that, but commenting in universe is more fun). Do the tsarists have a charismatic heir or something to rally around while the Tsar is in custody?

Some of the rebels have to ally with each other or else Makarov will eat them one by one. Doesn't seem like a very nice situation, and I honestly have zero idea how this will end.

The moderates were left in a pretty impossible situation in 1914. The socialists would likely only have agreed to a government which they led in their own image, which sounded almost as frightening as the radicals (the socialists having drifted far to the left than their 1900s version of themselves). Their best option would probably have been to force a new round of elections and hoped for better results.

We shall see going forward if the repressed political movements of Poland can find any heroes to champion their causes from abroad.

Now we need to pray that no neighboring country seizes the opportunity...

We did see our neighbours try to pick off some scraps - most obviously the Papacy on the Israeli question. But there were no major armed interventions threatening our broader territorial integrity. We were perhaps fortunate in that the civil war was fairly brief - lasting less than a year.

So we now have a very unstable foundation for the new party. Only time will tell if they will persevere.

The Radicals have held on and formed the Russian Republic they dreamed of. But its not quite the proud superpower they thought they were about to inherit. We're wracked by economic problems (and will have some more detail there in the next update), at least half the country hates the government, we're completely isolated and much of the country is in ruins.

This is grim indeed. Makarov needs to die.

And it gets grimmer still. I won't spoil the fate of the Vozhd just yet ;).

Yesterday I read up every thing I had missed in my absence
The first thing is that you have awesomely brought out all best parts of Vicky2 like population mechanics and economy. The pops thing in particular is why I still play this game to this day

The radical conservatives look scary but I have a feeling that they will stick around
Maybe they will be center piece of a story that ends in perhaps Hearts of Iron 4;)
Thanks orc!

Yes, I really love V2 for that giving an insight into that side of your nation's development. If you dig into the numbers you can get all sorts of interesting details out of it.

And not HoI4, we are heading for DH next! :D
 
Nothing remotely redeeming about the situation, and one is mostly left bemused as to how everyone seemed to conspire for so long to allow it to happen.

Let's hope the Papacy and the HRE maintain their diplomatic fortitude.

They were accused of all manner of crimes and conspiracy, and, remarkably, many defendants put forward detailed and elaborate confessions of their guilt, despite knowing that in doing so they were condemning themselves to death.

Funny that…
 
Well, I, uh, shit.
Literally my only consolation is that forum rules prevent Makarov from doing anything as bad as what the mustache man did OTL (at least that's acknowledged in writing), but in some ways that might be worse; without such overt evil there might be nothing to discredit Fascism. All I can say is that Polish democracy has been a consistent disaster that has done nothing but breed division and conflict. Democracy should have been granted to all equally or to nobody at all; the way it was done in this AAR only led to the horrors of Makarov.

I'd also like to congratulate you on writing this, because this section of the AAR has been very good from a worldbuilding perspective. It delved deep into a serious issue that would naturally arise for Poland in this situation and built up politics around it, ultimately culminating in probably the best buildup to the rise of Fascists I've seen. Obviously I'd have preferred the glorious Tsardom continuing (or, you know, any non Fascist situation) but this is a depressingly realistic way for the story to go.
 
The russian state of Poland? What the fuxk does that even mean???